CUBA LIBRE CHRONICLES

23 Dec 2015 -  Wednesday - Memphis to Mobile

Weather plays an inordinately large role in my Cuba Libra Chronicles and it started while leaving Memphis this AM.  A light rain under deep overcast skies did not prevent Kris from forcing me to drive to Graceland.  (for those of you across the pond, Graceland was Elvis Presley’s Memphis Mansion)  Sure, I remember Elvis but I never threw my underwear at him while he was on stage like some people I know.  An interesting phenomenon at Graceland did come to my attention however.  

Scratchings

What is it about painting, drawing, scratching or carving one’s initials on any available surface that I do not understand?  Marking territory I understand, but 99.999% of the Scratchees will never return to look for their handiwork. Furthermore, no one cares that your scratchings are about you.  Everyone cares that your scratchings are taking up space I could be using for my own scratchings.  From whence comes this undeniable urge?  Is there some transference of fame, talent, or magic from Elvis (or whatever location) to the Scratchee that I am unaware of? I know it has been going on since Paleolithic times… (see Lascaux in southern France, et.al.) but I guess the gene carrying that memo is missing from my DNA. Regardless, I found this the most interesting part of our short Graceland visit and thought about it for several hours as we drove south through more rain.  We both were puzzled by a weird electronic beeping noise from Kris’s I-Pad.  Finally solving the mystery, we realized it was a severe weather warning in her Weather Bug App.  We had driven directly through the area affected and had not seen the two tornadoes that took half a dozen lives that afternoon.  Suddenly my ruminations about graffiti seemed quite petty.  It was a severe storm just as predicted by NOAA and warned by the Weather Bug app. 

You know you have arrived in the Real South when Po Boys are the first listing on the menu and we enjoyed excellent sandwiches at Penn’s, in Meridian just before getting to Mobile and the boat.  I have been a little worried about AURORA not having been here since November.  NOAA weather has shown enough rain in Mobile the past couple of weeks to float the entire state of California.  AURORA has spent her entire life protected from water falling out of the sky.  First in LA (because it NEVER rains there) and then in Kentucky where she lived under a tin roof that kept her dry even in the winter. Boats have a tendency to dry out under those circumstances and AURORA was no different. The two days of October rain while bringing her down the Tombigbee proved the truth of my worries and I spent quite a few hours locating and plugging leaks around windows, hatches and deck seams before I left her in November.  Now the two or three weeks of rain in Mobile would put to the test my effectiveness as a waterproofing expert. 

Still afloat and waiting

 It is not a good sign when you splash into the pilot house and water flows over your shoe tops.  The small deck in the pilot house is sealed completely so it did not run down onto the cabin sole but it did fill up the seat next to the starboard window.  Obviously the space between the sliding glass windows was the source since the prevailing winds would drive water into the opening between where the glass panels overlapped.  OK, we can fix that.  Checking below in the main cabin, I saw one small stain across the floor from a drawer to the forward hold hatch cover.  Going forward, there were no apparent leaks in the forward cabin at all and so off to the aft cabin.  A small leak had appeared from the starboard aft porthole above the bed, but I had anticipated that one because of a dried out o-ring seal and had placed a makeshift catch basin under it so the mattress was ok. Returning to the main cabin, I checked the drawers under the bench seat and found the middle one had two inches of water in it. Obviously there had been more because all the canned goods stored in that drawer had illegible or missing labels. Hmmmm, some cooking surprises will result no doubt.  But where in the world was the water coming from?  And why was only the middle drawer inundated?  Every boat owner knows this dilemma intimately. The actual leak will never be in an obvious location nor one easy to access. The water will travel the length of the boat if need be to confuse and frustrate my attempts to locate its source. 

After cleaning up the standing water, sealing the leaky window and guessing at where the canned food drawer water came from, Kristine and I opened all the hatches and allowed a warm breeze to aerate the interior.  Mr. Sun had come out to welcome us back to AURORA as well and life could be worse.  And sure enough, it got worse.  An overnight heavy rain kept me awake and getting up every hour or so to watch the flooding water creep up towards our car.  It was parked exactly where Brett’s car had been totaled by flooding just a month ago.  Car déjà vu?   About 2 AM I got up, put on a light foul weather jacket, went out and moved the car to higher ground.  This vacation is starting out with more stress than I had anticipated.