Rain, Rain go away!

For the past week or so, we have been subjected to the remnants of ex-Tropical Cyclone Winston. Basically what this translates to is strong winds and torrential rains. We were able to get off the boat a couple of times (not without getting absolutely saturated, of course!) but otherwise we were pretty boat bound. It took about five days for cooler temperatures to come in to accompany the rain and that brought welcome relief, i.e. we were no longer sweating inside our aluminium can!

And while this rain brought an abundance of water, a week plus without seeing the sun meant that our solar panels weren’t able to do their job and our batteries were suffering. 

Last April, when we rewired our boat we added two more solar panels (for a grand total of four) and did NOT reconnect our Wind Generator. There was an issue with regulating the intake of power from the Wind Gen and was thought that it could’ve been hurting our batteries. Since we had just replaced our battery bank, we wanted to keep it from harm as much as possible and so did not reconnect the genny. So that left the Solar panels as our only option to naturally replenish our power. When the sun is shining, we have an abundance of power. More power then we know what to do with! But since we hadn’t seen the sun in awhile, we were struggling and our only option was to run the engine to recharge the batteries. We are a sailboat, we don’t like running the engine. It’s noisy and smelly. But we figured that rather then sit in Airlie Beach running the engine, we may as well go somewhere and that was how we ended up motoring across to the islands in the middle of a downpour. 

Bryce was a champ, navigating Batty through it all, while I was (and will probably forever more continue to be) a fair-weathered sailor. Luxuriating down below and coming up, wrapped snuggly in Bryce’s rain jacket, on occasion when the rain eased up. Bryce had just accepted that he was going to get wet so the jacket was superfluous! 

As we approached Cid Harbour on Whitsunday Island, we watched as a giant front of torrential rain passed directly through the harbour in front of us. We willed it to move faster so that we didn’t have to anchor in the middle of it. By some miracle, the rain let up to a mild spit just as we were ready to let the anchor down and no sooner then we were snug down below did the clouds open up again! 

What we were lacking in power, we made up for in surplus water. As long as it was raining, we literally had an unlimited supply. We had buckets out in the cockpit that were overflowing with beautiful fresh water. The only caveat was that it was ice cold. 

We were each able to take long, might be a stretch to say luxurious, showers and wash our hair, throwing water around without a care in the world. I could hear Bryce chuckling down below every single time I doused myself with a bowlful of ice cold water and squealed. I returned the favour when it was his turn! I did the dishes in an entire sinkful of water… absolute luxury. 

Though the forecast still looks grim (90-95% chance of rain everyday)…. hold on, it’s just started raining, I’ll be right back! Well, the weather people win today but what I had been about to say, was that we woke up this morning to sunshine and blue skies and were looking forward to getting off the boat. We can hear the rivers running on the island that we have previously only seen dry so we are looking forward to exploring them. 

Hopefully it clears up later so we can still head ashore but in the meantime, we are working through our library! Perfect rainy day activity!