Deluge

Yesterday, Abaco received more rain in a few hours than it has all winter long. The water was badly needed for the cisterns, trees, and plants. We had expected rain, but not these torrential downpours. Our 7,000 gallon cistern, that collects rainwater from our apartment roof, overflowed. There are two huge auxiliary tanks that each hold 44,000 gallons of rainwater that comes from the workshop roof. It feeds with a valve into the central cistern when needed, but both tanks have been dry (when this happens and our cistern gets down to under half, the watermaker is started). After yesterday morning's deluge, one of the tanks was full and flowing out the vent, so they diverted the water to the second tank! Marina managers Linda and Craig's house collected 12,000 gallons of water. With this much rain comes flooded boats though. Dandy almost sank and required our electric pump. Jim R's skiff almost turned turtle at the dock and Dave arrived just in time to pump that out. Our skiff's bilge pump worked fantastic and kept up with the water (one day a couple of years ago I went out and had to bucket bail it with water up to my knees). Boaters in the harbor are thrilled because their boats are rinsed and many collect the rainwater too. However, they have to bail out their dinghies with gallon jugs. One of the ladies said she took 107 bailing buckets of water out of her dinghy. Except for that though, there are a lot of happy (& clean 😉) people around today!