We're drying up!

And I'm not talking about what we do after washing up.

The weather has been interesting since we arrived back. At nights we've been rocked to sleep by the waves under the boat, stirred up by unrelenting, gusting wind, often with thrashing rain. Last night and most of today we have experienced unbelievable wind speeds. It's really quite fun in a strange way.

But these extremes have abated from time to time, leaving us with beautiful days that would be quite warm if the wind were to drop altogether. I spent an hour under such a sky as these washing the algae off the roof, dumped there by the soggy ropes that had grown the stuff over the past months. The trouble with spot-cleaning like that (though "spot" doesn't adequately convey the actual size of the green patterns that snaked down the length of the roof on both sides) is that it shows up the dirt on the areas you haven't cleaned. The job will have to be done the next time we have a dry, still day. I'm in no hurry.

Meanwhile, we find Kantara's suffering, not from the wet, but from the dry!

Who would expect that a boat, sitting on the water, in weather that frequently pours rain over us in large quantities for prolonged periods, can be too dry inside? About a year ago, we bought a combined thermometer/hygrometer to monitor the humidity inside Kantara. Too damp is obviously not good for furniture fabrics, books, and other things that shouldn't get too damp lest they get mouldy. Too dry isn't good for the woodwork, nor for people, though it's only the wood that shrinks. 60% is where you might expect mould to be thriving. Around 50% is good.

We have a dehumidifier that we leave running while we're away over the winter, and we run it overnight while we're here in the sort of weather we're getting at the moment, too. But during the day, come rain or come more rain, our Bubble stove keeps us both warm and dry. Yesterday, however, we saw that the humidity was down to 43% - far too low. (The picture above is not of our device. We wouldn't want 56% humidity, and 25° Celsius is rather too hot!) And that happened with a window open, mushroom vents in the ceiling, grilles in doors and various other gaps where the air gets in. How can that be?

The problem was simply solved by putting a pan of water on the stove.