Sinking in the snow

February 8, 2014

There are some houseboat house problems that are the same as for a land house. But there are others that are totally unique – like worrying about sinking from a heavy snow. This February we had three consecutive days of 4-inch snowfalls –the most accumulation I’d experienced in my 30 years of living in Portland.

On the third day, I had gone for a short x-country ski in the nearby park on my new knee with neighbor Monica. When we got back the moorage was in a flurry. My neighbor Tom’s son Tom told me that he’d climbed on the roof of my tenderhouse to get off the snow because one corner of the floating shed was sinking. Houseboats were tilting and there was worry that some of them would slowly sink into the river and fill up with water.

Everyone pitched in, and we went to work from houseboat to houseboat like a gang of marauders. Men climbed on roofs getting snow off, and women worked with shovels clearing decks, scooping the snow into the river. Mary wanted to help but she was sick and we convinced her to go inside – but she made hot chocolate and brought it out to us in steaming mugs to take a break. I think it was dark and around 8 p.m. when we finally stopped and I went home exhausted but marveling at my new knee.

The photos are of a houseboat on a neighboring moorage. The first one someone took took during the snowfall and spread around; the others I shot later from my kayak. In the last photo friends of the houseboat owner are taking things out of the houseboat and bringing in some heavy thing to try and balance it.