A Floating Home

Through the eyes of Cyril Ionides and his wife, this account tells how a family turned a working Thames sailing barge into a year‑round home. The narrative blends personal memoir with a vivid portrait of the skippers who haul the barges, their stubborn humor and the thick Essex dialect that still lingers on the river banks. It also shows how abandoning conventional rent and rates offered a practical, if unconventional, solution to the financial pressures of keeping a respectable education for their sons.

Readers will find step‑by‑step details of the conversion—layout sketches, budgeting, and the modest crew needed to keep the vessel moving in summer while it simply moors for winter. The authors celebrate the barge’s ability to slip through narrow tidal channels, reach quiet estuaries, and even pause on sandbanks when the wind dies down. While the book does not promise a blueprint for every would‑be sailor, it offers enough insight to spark the imagination of anyone curious about a floating life that balances romance with thrift.