Worst Floods Yet

Whenever it rains, the road in front of the boat yard always floods, but this morning was the worst I've seen. The water mark on the outside of the main office was about 2' high, and that's at least 3-4' higher than the road, so it must have been 5-6' on front of the yard and a couple more at the intersection a hundred yards North. Reminds me a little of back home.

Coming from a low lying coastal area with a high level of clay in the soil, I'm used to flooding, especially during heavy rain storms, but was surprised at how bad it is here. It probably has more to do with poor design and maintenance than anything else. However, they have done a lot of development over the last few years which causes more runoff.

I was told that the drainage project they started a few years ago to fix the problem was divided into 3 sections, and this section, the lowest and closest to the water, would be the last. They decided to do the upper sections first -- so developers could build stuff that ended up exacerbating the problem --but never got around to this part. It's been flooding badly ever since I got here a few months ago, but I'm told it's been this way for years. Every time it rains, several cars get stuck at intersection and need to be towed away. The water goes down fairly quickly -- we're just 1/4 mile from the bay -- but it also goes up very quickly. It's almost like a flash flood, but just for an area the size of a football field.

Luckily, I'm on the high side of the yard, so we stayed dry. The other side is still somewhat underwater and is slowly draining into the street. It stopped raining a little while ago, so the standing water in the street is mostly gone, but that can change quickly. The sidewalks down that way stay flooded long after the street clears, so we still can't walk down there anyway.

Boat watch:

If it clears up this afternoon, I do some work on the deck. I still need to do some sanding, but also want to fill the holes for the extra winch on the starboard side of the coach roof next to the sliding hatch. The previous owner added it, but it's sorta tight and since the deck was never stiffened properly, you can see where once side of it dented the deck due to tension on the line.

I think I can get by with only one winch on the port side. That's what was originally there and the deck has a reinforced pad where it goes. I'll need to add, and reinforce, a place a few inches forward of it for a clutch/line stopper so I can use it for more than one line at a time, but for right now, I'll just use it for the main halyard (I had temporarily added a clutch before, but need to move it and properly reinforce the deck, so it will have to wait unless I finish early and have some extra time on my hands).

Another simplification I plan to make is to remove the bow roller I added a couple of years ago. In order to do that, I'll need to fix the toerail which was already rotted out right at the stem. That's what made it easy to add the bow roller in the first place, i.e., I had to cut out a piece of toerail and the bow roller helped fill that void. But the more I think about it, that's not the way I want to do it. I could remount the bow roller to sit on top of the toerail and fasten directly to the stem, but that would require some deck work that might not really be what I want.

However, I have a windlass for my anchor, so I'll need something to help deploy/retrieve the anchor chain. I just don't want to keep the anchor mounted like that all the time. If you never go to sea, it might be okay, even convenient, but once you start taking waves on the bow, it becomes a hazard. The previous owners also had two sets of anchor chocks mounted on the deck. I removed both of them because I don't want the deck littered with stuff I might trip over in the dark, or might be ripped off by a wave.

I plan to mount all my anchors in the cockpit lockers, but have been thinking of adding a hatch for the chain locker up in the peak of the foredeck so I can keep my main anchor there -- there's always a danger of either carrying a 35 lb. anchor forward, or 30' of chain aft, to deploy an anchor in bad weather, so keeping is close to where it will be used is a really good idea. I'd need to seal the bottom of the chain locker and add drains, but I don't think it's really that big of a deal, and would really simplify a lot of things. But that's something to think about later. Right now, I just need to finish painting her as she's currently setup.

Zoe watch:

She's off schedule due to the rain, but I'm going to walk her again in a few minutes. She's soaking wet under the boat right now, but after the walk, I'll dry her off and either leave down there or take her on board. She'll let me know what she wants to do, but normally, she prefers to stay down there. She like to keep a lookout for bunnies.