Chiswick woman loses her home as houseboat sinks in the heat

Enfys Dickinson aboard Corita, which has been refloated

Enfys loses “everything” as extreme temperatures cause the timbers of the historic wooden boat to crack

A woman who lives on a houseboat in Chiswick has been made homeless after her boat sank due to the heat.

Enfys Dickinson bought Corita 11 years ago, her solution to finding an affordable home of her own in London.

She was staying with a friend on Sunday night when the boat sank at Chiswick marina, otherwise she could have woken up in the pitch dark to find her cabin four foot deep in cold, dirty water.

“I’m lucky I wasn’t there or I could have drowned”, she told The Chiswick Calendar.

As it is, she has lost many of her possessions – personal papers and photographs, work, two laptops, all her hard drives and her camera, which she used for work as a freelance in the film industry, as well as furniture and equipment.

Her mattress and soft furnishings were unsalvageable, as were the fridge, freezer, washing machine and oven. The shower and toilet are also beyond repair.

“It’s devastating” she told us. “It’s so traumatic. I’ve lost everything”.

Below decks – the saloon (L) before and (R) after

Corita refloated due to the quick thinking of marina staff

When I went to meet her at the marina, I half expected to see just a mast sticking up above the water.

In fact, the boat was refloated due to the quick thinking of marina staff who noticed Corita was sitting much lower in the water than she should have been.

If you don’t pay much attention to boats, you may look at the photograph of the motor vessel below and not think anything was amiss, but if you do know about them you would realise she should have been about four foot higher in the water, with the water line showing – as the boat on the right is – so the harbour master realised instantly that meant there was about four foot of water inside the boat and she was sinking fast.

Corita – the boat on the left in the picture sitting low in the water, sinking, beside another boat properly afloat at Chiswick Marina

They called a salvage company who were there in about 90 minutes. Corita’s bilge pumps had come on automatically but one of them had failed and the other was not coping on its own. The salvage company connected the boat to more powerful diesel pumps and were able to save her from sinking completely.

Everything – the saloon, the captain’s cabin, and more importantly the engine room was deep in Thames water.

“I don’t know yet whether she will be a write off – she will be if they can’t get the engines working”, Enfys told me.

As she showed me round, an engineer was there examining the two engines, a 5 cylinder Gardner engine and a BMC wing engine. They need to be stripped down and cleaned and an assessent made as to whether they can be repaired.

The jury is out on how much, if anything, she will get back from the insurance until she is able to take the boatyard and have Corita surveyed.

“If I’d had an accident out on the river they would have paid out. But this happened in an enclosed marina because of the weather and I’m not sure how much they will cover”.

The no longer functioning washing machine, and Enfys’ storage space which were submerged in dirty water

Getting rid of the slimy Thames silt and the eels

Corita is an historic boat built in 1958, made of wood. Wood expands and contracts with the seasons, of which Enfys was well aware. She has lived on boats for 15 years and was watering the timbers regularly, but because of the extreme temperatures and continuous heat they cracked, letting in the water.

“I rang my boatyard and he said straight away, ‘I know what you’re going to say, you are the seventh or eighth boat owner who has rung me that this has happened to’.”

Fortunately, Enfys has good friends who have rallied round, springing into action to offload bags of her possessions – some to go to the tip, others to be cleaned, removing  the slimy silt which remained once the water had been pumped out, and getting rid of creatures such as eels which had made themselves at home.

She thinks she has managed to save most of her clothes after a good wash, and her pots and pans, which have been through three cycles in a friend’s dishwasher, and she is staying with friends until she can sort out something more permanent.

Go Fund Me page set up by Nick Thain

Go Fund Me page to help Enfys get her home back

They have set up a Go Fund Me page for her, asking people to contribute whatever they can to help her get her home back.

“I felt very uncomfortable about it, but they said: ‘come on, you need help, you’ve lost everything’ and did it anyway’.

The target has been set at £5,000 because if you don’t reach the target the money is refunded, but they estimate she will need more like £15,000 to cover:

• £3,000 marine survey, required before she can insure or move back aboard
• £4,000 hull and structural repair
• £3,000 stripping and drying the interior, replacing flooring and soft furnishings
• £2,500 higher-rated bilge pumps, a redundant third pump, and automatic high-water alarms, so this cannot happen again
• £2,500 replacing the essentials lost to the water, and contingency for what the survey turns up

‘She has somewhere to stay’, writes Nick Thain, who set up the page, ‘so none of this is accommodation. It is all boat and it is all necessary.

‘Funds go straight to Enfys. Invoices get posted here as updates. Anything raised above the total that she does not need goes to Macmillan Cancer Support, which was her choice, not ours.

‘£50 from a hundred people gets the survey done and the hull started. That is the whole thing.

‘If you cannot give, share. A share to the right person is worth more than a donation. And if you have a van, a dehumidifier, or you do marine electrics, say so in the comments.

‘Her friends can carry the bin bags, dry out what’s left and put a roof over her. We have done that. What we cannot do is find £15,000 between us. That part only happens if people who have never met her decide to help anyway’.

The Go Fund Me page is here: On Tuesday 11 August, Enfys’ home sank

Corita at Chiswick Marina