07.14.04 - Three days ago, our annual monsoon rains started. Although I've misplaced my rain gauge since last year (lost due to lack of use, no doubt), a friend who lives in Payson where "MoonTan II" is trailered insists he had four inches in his gauge on Monday and 2½ more on Tuesday. Making the time to stop by the boat, I did so, only to find the cockpit completely full of rainwater. I had apparently neglected to clear the cockpit drain. I had noticed that something was amiss with the boat from all the way across the parking lot - the enormous weight of all that water in the cockpit had caused the boat to rock back on its stern, lifting the bow and the tongue of the trailer high into the dark and threatening Arizona sky!

After sprinting to the side of my distressed craft, slipping out of my flip-flops and scrambling up the trailer's akimbo boarding ladder, I transitioned from the relatively dry land outside the boat into knee-deep water inside the boat! At the time, it seemed like the most blatantly counter-intuitive thing I had ever done! Reaching down into the bath-temperature rain water, I cleared what turned out to be "Black Jack" oak leaves and juniper berries from the drain with my index finger. Five minutes later, the nose of the trailer settled once again on its front support wheel with a gentle thud. Sitting there in the now mostly-level but wet cockpit feeling ridiculously as if I had just survived my first marine near-disaster - on dry land - I mentally kicked myself for reacting too quickly - the first thing I should have done is grabbed the camera! Oh well, maybe next time... and knowing the high winds and our monsoon season, there will be a next time!

Just so as not to make this trip to the boat a non-productive one, and to fill up the one last empty space I still had back home in the garage, I disconnected and removed the old, dirty battery that had been aboard for who knows how many years and took it home. Maybe tomorrow, I thought, I'd clean it up and put the trickle-charger on it... just for kicks.