Rain!

The day we arrived in Mexico in mid November it rained in the night. Since then, we have not seen a drop until today, although we passed near a shower that produced a rain-arch on one passage. It comes as something of a shock when you wake up here to overcast skies and doubly so when these are accompanied by drumming rain and rumbling thunder.

We have rigged a tarp to collect rain water in anticipation of doing this often in the tropics. The results so far are not spectacular - we have collected enough water to brush our teeth, but the water is rich with fragments of blue tarp. I think we will either need to make a custom tarp to collect rain or try to use the boats scuppers to collect run-off. (The deck has high bulwarks, which will trap the run-off from the cabin and sails if we block the scuppers that drain over the side).

Rani tells me she loves the sound of rain - it takes her back to being a little girl in India. She would run outside, dancing and twirling, the drops landing heavily on her head. Sometimes the rain would come so quickly and heavily that the parched earth could not accept it immediately and everything would flood. And then the worms would come out and make it hard to get back to her house as she had to walk on tip-toes to avoid squishing them. My early memories of thunderstorms take me to my parent's bedroom where I must have ended up hiding under the covers and counting the seconds between light and crash.

Being in a sailboat in a thunderstorm with that big metal pole poking up toward the clouds is not an entirely relaxing experience. I take heart that there are 6 other boats in the anchorage some with quite a lot taller masts...