In life, you rarely get got where you are expecting it. Such was the case with my water fears. Despite the TV meteorologist’s proclamation that the danger from rain was over, the day after posting my “water tight” post, we had a little sprinkle. It was just enough to get Brenda and me running around with plastic sheets covering stuff. And then it stopped with the ground speckled with little wet spots where the drops had hit and everywhere in between was dry. Besides getting Brenda and my heart rates up, all the rain really accomplished was to take the very fine, even, invisible layer of soot from the next door cement trucks and turn that layer into a blotchy mess on all the cars and the Mahdee. Oh, and it re-confirmed that listening to the weather forecast is a waste of time.
Despite our apparent luck, we plodded forward with project “water tight,” along with all the other work to get Mahdee ready for re-launch. The deck is now better than ever and we were feeling pretty safe. Most of our belongings are in storage locations. One place has pretty limited access, so we rented a garage in a small apartment complex for storage with 24/7 access. We have had the garage for over a year, but it wasn’t really packed tight until we moved out of our apartment August 1st. Three days ago, we got a call that a water heater on the second floor had burst the night before. We rushed over and sure enough, lots of our stuff was soggy. We had been “got by water”, but where we least expected it. We knew the boat deck wasn’t yet sealed so we worked on that; the work shop leaks like a sieve; so we are really careful of what we put where and how thing are covered. The other storage unit looks like it has leaked in the past so we cover our stuff there, but the garage–it had proved safe and dry–until now.
We hauled the wet and soggy stuff to the boatyard so that we could lay it out in the blazing sun that has been relentless for 5 months now–this is the desert. And, for the last three days, it has been completely overcast with no sun. Not only is it proving very difficult to dry out the wet stuff, but my solar showers are suddenly not nearly so enjoyable.
Some good information has come to light as a result of this mini disaster. It turns out that the apartment building is up for sale, the past owner is suddenly not returning phone calls and the handy man tells us that the records show that no one is renting the garage we are in. We would have hated to have had the new owners cut off our locks and auction everything. As it is, we are pulled everything, not just the soggy stuff, out of that garage. We are disappointed because we had hoped to keep that garage for storage while we sailed the west coast. Apparently fate has a different plan. And if you are going to get got, you are going to get got. Water has an amazing ability to go places you least expect. Well its time to drill some more holes in the bottom of Mahdee so the water has someplace expected to go.
