Oct 14
We have made the decision to return to cruising, and today is the last day of work for both of us. While we are both thankful that we had the opportunity to work for good companies, and make good money, we also have been faced with the same things that formed our original decision to go cruising when we did. That is that we have lost several close friends, younger than us, in the past year, and that just keeps bringing it home that you have to live your dreams while you can, because tomorrow is never guaranteed. Do we have enough money saved to retire forever? Who knows. Probably not, but we're fortunate to work in a field where if we need to work more later, we should be able to.
Our loose plan today is to cruise during the winters, and store the boat during hurricane seasons and return to the States. This plan is based on Barb's parents needs, so she will plan to spend summers with them in Ohio. We bought a house in Ohio last year, which her parents rent from us, and there is a full basement we can be based out of. I will probably try to work some short-term contracts while we are back to keep some cash coming in.
Oct 15 - Nov 1
We spent two weeks packing our stuff and taking care of wrapping up this phase of life in Houston. We have done a fair job of not accumulating a bunch of crap over the 2 1/2 years we have been back on land. We always hoped the day would come that we would return to MoonSail, and even if we didn't, cruising has taught us that living a simple life without a lot of stuff is liberating. A week after we left our jobs, a new wrinkle got thrown into our plans. We got an offer for both of us to work a very lucrative contract in Connecticut. The contract is a Windows 7 conversion being done by the company that my nephew-in-law works for. He can use us both from Nov through the first of the year. While we are anxious to get back to MoonSail, the money involved is quite a bit, and this would be a good connection to have next summer when I want to work some. There a lot of logistical issues though. We already have plans to go to Key West Nov 2 for 6 days, and our trip to Antigua, including flights and an apartment for a week while get the boat launched is booked, paid for, and non-refundable. So, we negotiated a deal that we will start this contract at the end of November after we have launched the boat.
This now makes the logistics of packing even more complicated. We gave away some of our furniture to friends who are just getting started in their lives together. The rest of the furniture will go to the basement of the house in Ohio. We have been amassing bits and pieces for the boat over the past few months, so they have to be packed to travel. Barb did an excellent job of repacking things from original boxes in some cases, or adding little bits to boxes to take up wasted space. We split the boat stuff between three large bags and padded with clothing. In the clothing department, we left a lot of clothes on the boat, so the clothes we have here have to be split between what goes to the boat, what can be stored in Ohio, and what we will need to wear in CT while working the contract, which we will leave at my brother's in NY when we return to the boat. We don't have a lot of warm clothing, so spending six weeks in winter will be a challenge.
In addition to packing, we have to do the things like arrange to turn off our utilities, terminate our lease, sell Barb's car, etc. Our lease was actually up in September, and we just went month-to-month (at a 25% premium rent) for two months, so that worked out well. We arranged a Penske truck rental for the move, and included a trailer to take my PT Cruiser with us. We sold Barb's car to a dealer, so that was easy. I'm sure we could have gotten more selling it privately, but there is a lot to be said for quick-and-easy. We took it to Carmax and got an offer, then took it to a place called Texas Direct Auto, who advertises to beat Carmax's offers. Their original offer was $600 less than Carmax's, but when I showed them the offer from Carmax, they upped their offer to $100 more and cut us a check.
Nov 2 - Nov 7
We had planned months ago to attend Meeting of the Minds, which is the annual national Parrothead convention in Key West. We attended once before, in 2005, and didn't really plan to do it again, except we had inside knowledge that a special event was going to happen. Based on that knowledge, we made our plans. We flew to Ft. Lauderdale and rented a car for the drive to Key West. We had reserved a plain old intermediate car from Avis. When we got to the Avis counter, the agent started to process us, and then got to a point where he said "let me see if I can find you a car". He then went and conferred with a couple other agents. After a few minutes, he came back and asked if we would like a mini-van for the same price. I thought about it a second and said "not really". He then went and conferred some more. He then came back and asked "how about a Jeep Liberty"? That is an SUV. Sensing that they were very short of cars, I said OK. So, we finished the paperwork, signed everything and headed for parking space E-5 in the garage. When we got to E-5, we found another couple loading their stuff into the Jeep. We compared contracts and clearly both had the same car assigned, so we headed back to the desk. On the way in, an employee coming out asked if there was a problem. I told him we had been assigned a car already assigned to somebody else, and he said he could take care of it. He said to follow him over to the little office in the garage. As we were walking, he said he was the manager, and was apologizing for the inconvenience. He said he wanted to make things right for us. So, I facetiously said "How about putting us in one of those Camaro convertibles?" He never missed a beat and said "Sure". I had priced convertibles when I made the reservation, and they were twice as much as the intermediate we reserved. But, he set us up in a silver Camaro for the original price we reserved at. Sweet. Nothing better than driving to the Keys in a convertible when the weather is perfect.
The five days of partying and listening to Trop Rock music were great. There turned out to be two special events. One, wasn't the one we had based our decision to come on. Even though MOTM is the national Parrothead convention, Jimmy Buffett has only showed up at it a handful of times. Parrotheads In Paradise, the national Parrothead club parent organization, is not sponsored by Buffet in any way. It is totally a volunteer organization, and the annual event is not financially supported by Buffett. Every year there are rumors that Buffett will show up, and most years he doesn't. A Trop Rock songwriter named Rob Mehl even wrote a song last year called Waiting For Buffett, that is about everybody coming to MOTM hoping he will show. It has been seven years since he did show, but since this was the 20th year of MOTM, he apparently felt this was a good year to come. There is a street party on Duval Street on Friday afternoon, where several bands play, and Buffett showed up there with most of the Coral Reefer Band and played in place of the last scheduled band. By Friday, it had been pretty much confirmed he was coming, so the street was packed hours before his appearance. We had a spot where we were in the shade and on a cross street where we had a good breeze, but our view of the stage was impaired by a stack of speakers. It looked to me like the spot we wouldn't be able to see was exactly where Jimmy would be. Sure enough I was right. When he came on stage, we were blocked from any view of him at all. There was another problem with this appearance, and that was that we had tickets to go on a sunset cruise where our friend Jerry was playing the music. Buffett started playing about 4:15, and we were supposed to board the boat at 5:00. So, we only got to hear five songs before we had to start walking to the dock. In all honesty, while it was cool he showed up, most people would rather that he came to the Saturday show at the host hotel, where only people who paid to come to the event would see him, instead of playing the street party which is open to the public and a smaller space to pack everybody into.
The cruise was cool, and we even got to sail most of it. Lots of the time, tourist sailing cruises are really motoring around with the sail up. The boat we were on was a large party catamaran, with about 125 people. There was plenty of wind, and as soon as we were clear of the inner harbor, we hoisted the sail. It takes four people to hoist the big mainsail, and I was one of the volunteers to haul on the line. It was good to get back on the water, even though there is no comparison between a huge party cat and MoonSail.
Saturday was the day we had come for. The "main event" was performances on the big stage at Casa Marina, the host hotel, by several bands, culminating with the whole Coral Reefer Band (minus Jimmy). The specific part of this that brought us to MOTM though was a special presentation that was given at 6:00 PM between two of the bands. Our dear friend Jerry Diaz, together with Scott Nickerson, started Meeting of the Minds 20 years ago in New Orleans. It came from an off-the-wall comment Jerry made about getting a group of those who liked Buffett-style music together for a meeting of like-mined folks. Jerry and his family have always loved New Orleans, so the first party happened there. After a few years, Jerry's direct role in the event lessened and it moved to Key West, where it has been held ever since. Jerry has continued an event in New Orleans each year, now called Pardi Gras, which we try to always attend. But, the special event held at 6:00 was a surprise presentation of a silver chalice (which has special meaning to Buffett lyrics and a similar chalice Jerry gave the New Orleans Margaritaville at the second MOTM) to Jerry. Somehow, the whole thing had been successfully kept secret from Jerry. He was lured to the stage under the pretense of him presenting an award to somebody else. He didn't start putting two and two together until the emcee started talking. It was very cool and well deserved.
Sunday we started the day by attending "One Particular Breakfast", (another nod to Buffett lyrics) which is put on by several of our good friends. Nothing like starting the day with good Bloody Marys, good breakfast tacos, and good music provided by several of our Trop Rock friends who stop by.
Monday was time to head north again. We left Key West with great weather for a convertible again. We hadn't planed it, but while driving we got a text from Jerry's daughter Danielle, asking where we were. They were a little ahead of us and were planning on stopping at Alabama Jack's near Key Largo for lunch. We caught up to them and joined them for lunch on the edge of a canal where we watched a couple of manatees swimming around. A perfect ending to the trip.
It turned out that we were on the same flight back to Houston with Jerry and his family, and at least six or eight other people we knew, four of them (including Jerry) who were musicians. There was talk of a jam session breaking out, but I think we were all winding down enough by then that it didn't happen.
Nov 8 - Nov 10
After getting home from Key West yesterday evening, there is no rest for us. At 08:30, I was at the Penske place picking up the truck and trailer we are renting. Barb's son AJ had come down to see us off, and he took me to get the truck. Our original plan, since we live literally right next to a Home Depot, was to pick up a couple day laborers for an hour to load the furniture. But, AJ offered to help, so he and I did it ourselves. We only had a 16 foot truck, but not that much stuff, so we were loaded in about an hour. We left the trailer at the rental place until after we were loaded. Once we were loaded, we turned in our keys to the apartment, drove to the rental place again, where we hooked up the trailer and loaded the car. One last stop in League City to pick up our mail one last time and off we went.
We were on the road by about 2:30 and figured we would just see how far we got. It is important to note that the temp was in the 80's, and we were wearing shorts and t-shirts. The first thing we noticed was that when a little rain shower came through just as we left the rental place, the windshield wipers on the truck were crap. So we stopped at a parts store and bought new blades. I know Penske probably won't reimburse me for them, but they are the same size as the Cruiser uses, so I'll just put the crap ones back on when we get to Ohio. As we were passing through Louisiana north of New Orleans, we got held up by an accident. We sat still for almost half an hour, then finally started moving again very slowly and merging into one lane on the left shoulder. When we got to the problem, it was an SUV that rear-ended an 18wheeler apparently at great speed. The SUV had broken the under-ride bumper off the trailer and gone under it up to the trailer's axles. The roof of the SUV was peeled back to the rear seat, and there was a tarp over it, which usually means there was a fatality. Indeed, I did a Google search the next day and the driver had been killed. We ended up driving to Hattiesburg, MS the first day, stopping around 8PM. It had rained a lot during the day as a cold front was coming through overnight.
Day two had us driving from Hattiesburg, MS to just east of Louisville, KY. There was frost on the truck windshield when we left. We did have long pants and long-sleeve t-shirts to wear, and Barb had a light jacket, but my coat was packed in the car somewhere. Brrr. The truck is governed at 75 mph top speed, but that was rarely a problem. Uphill, I was lucky to maintain 60-65, and the only time we maxed out was on the occasional long downhill. On the second day, late in the afternoon, we came to a stop again. I hoped it was not another accident. This time we started poking along again after a few minutes, and after about 20 minutes, we came to the problem, which was simply a merging into one lane due to construction.
On day two, we started the day with breakfast at Cracker Barrel, and ended it with dinner at Cracker Barrel. The funny thing was that we could have been in the same Cracker Barrel. We noticed as we walked in the store part of the second one that the displays were exactly the same and in the same place on the floor. The restaurant part was laid out exactly the same but there was different stuff on the walls. I commented to the cashier when we left, and she told us that they are exactly the same by design. When new merchandise comes to the store, it comes with an exact layout plan so they are all the same.
Another thing we noticed all along the route was an extraordinary number of dead deer on the side of the road. I know that the deer population in many places has become a problem, but this really made it obvious.
Day three got us to Barb's folks about 2PM. Within an hour of getting there a storm passed through that was rain mixed with sleet. The temperature was only about 40, so there was no sticking, but I thought it was a rude welcome for us.
Nov 11 - Nov 15
We spent several days in Ohio. I fixed a few things around the house. With the help of Barb's sister's friend, we got almost all our furniture moved to the basement of the house. Our couch would not fit down the stairs to the basement, so we stored it in the shed behind the house. Hopefully it won't become a nice home to any mice. (I also put mouse deterrents in the shed.) I ran a new coax for the cable TV to the large room in the basement where we setup the TV, so I was able to watch the next-to-last NASCAR race without subjecting the folks to it.
On Friday evening we went to a local winery with Barb's sister to see a musician friend of hers perform. The winery has a neat space in an old house where they do their tastings, serve wine a light snacks, and have entertainment. Their current seasonal wine was actually a hard cider that was very tasty. We had several glasses and bought a bottle to go. When I mentioned how much I like cider, Barb's sister said there was a place she knew that sold fresh cider in season. The next day, she bought me a half gallon and it was delicious.
Nov 16
We left Ohio this morning and drove to my brother's house in NY. It was about an eight hour drive with no unexpected excitement. My brother and his wife are not home however. They have already left to spend three weeks at their timeshare in St. Maarten. What's wrong with this picture? We're the ones that are supposed to be going to the Islands. We left a box of stuff at my brother's that we will collect in January when we return to the boat the second time. This was stuff that was too much to bring this time and isn't critical to our first week back and re-launching.
Nov 17
We spent the morning relaxing at my brother's, then headed to Long Island to visit my daughter and grandkids. We are flying out of JFK airport in the morning, so we are spending the night at a hotel near the airport. My daughter lives about half an hour from JFK, so was an easy stop. We got there late in the afternoon after the kids got home from school, and had dinner with them and a nice visit. We then went on to find our hotel.
Nov 18
We were up at 05:00 to catch the 06:00 hotel shuttle to the airport. The hotel offers parking to guests while they are gone on their trip for the same price as the other nearby offsite parking lots, so we are leaving the car here. When we got to the lobby, we found caution tape across the doors. I checked out and was directed to an emergency exit at the end of the hall. Once outside I brought the car to where they said they would load the shuttle van, and unloaded our bags that are going to the boat. Once I had unloaded them, one of the employees indicated that they were now going to load up by the regular lobby doors after all, so I had to drag everything down the sidewalk to the main entrance. Once there, we saw what the caution tape had been about. One of the hotel shuttle vans had caught fire just outside the main entrance. They apparently had extinguished it with several fire extinguishers that were now sitting by the doors. Lucky it didn't get going enough to actually catch the overhead on fire, but the van was totaled.
At 06:00, after standing outside for at least 15 minutes, the van that was going to take us to the airport arrived. About a dozen of us loaded up and got in. The hotel is undergoing a renovation, so a lot of the parking lot is taken up with containers of stuff. Because of this, the shuttle van had to go to the end of the first lane and then turn around and go back out the main entrance. As we passed the front doors, a guy was standing there waving at the driver. The driver ignored him and left the parking lot. As we went around the corner to get on the freeway, the driver got a call on his radio to come back and get the guy. So now we had to go around a large block and return to the hotel. This wasted about 10 minutes whereas if the driver had just stopped in the first place, it would have wasted 30 seconds. Once we got headed to the airport again, our driver's driving had me nervous. JFK is a huge airport, and the traffic patterns don't look very efficient to me. I don't think I have ever been there before, and even this early in the morning, traffic sucked. We are flying American Airlines, and they are the last of six terminals the shuttle stopped at. We were both a little tense, even though we had plenty of time, by the time we got out of that van. As I was dragging three bags, carrying another, and Barb was dragging one and carrying two, a curbside check-in guy saw us coming and met us with a cart. He was the most pleasant guy we could have asked for. He loaded our stuff on the cart, took us inside where it was warm, then went back out to his curbside station to check the bags. He printed our boarding passes, checked the four bags, and pointed us in the right direction to get through security. He definitely turned our day around from the shuttle experience.
Security was our next hurdle. Most of the odd stuff is in our checked bags, but the one thing we are carrying on that may raise eyebrows is a new VHF antenna. It is in a cardboard tube, and it was too long to fit in our longest checked bag. I researched it on the TSA website, and of course there was nothing specific about antennas. But there was stuff about fishing rods in tubes, so I figured that was close enough. We put the tube on top of three of the bins of shoes, laptop, and jackets to go through the x-ray machine. Before I got through the scanner, I saw an agent carrying the tube back to scan it again. I was worried, but the problem was just having put it on top of the other stuff. Once it went through, I started through the people scanner. Once I was through, I saw an agent with the tube in his hand again. Again I worried, but this time they just wanted to do the explosives test on it. Of course it passed fine and we were in. I always heave a sigh of relief once through airport security even though I'm not trying to get away with anything.
We boarded on time and left the gate on time, but then sat on the taxiway for several minutes. (It counts as an on-time departure when you push back from the gate on time.) Finally the pilot came on and said they were trying to figure out if a warning light that was on was important. We sat there for almost 30 minutes while they talked to their maintenance department on the radio, shut down one engine, reset some stuff, and finally resolved the problem. Our only concern is that we have a taxi pre-arranged to pick us up, so we hope he is patient. The four hour flight went fine. When we started descending and I caught sight of Barbuda, I started to grin. We were back. We landed and taxied to the "gate". As with most Caribbean airports, there is no gate. You disembark down stairs to the tarmac and go in a single door to Immigration. We were seated about midway in the plane, and they unloaded from the front and the back. So we ended up last in the line for international arrivals. It took a little over an hour us to get through Immigration. Another flight had come in after us, so there were lots of people to check in still, but we were the last from our flight. Once through immigration, we collected our four checked bags. One last hurdle to overcome. A porter loaded our bags on a cart along with the stuff we were carrying and we headed for the Customs man. I handed our forms to the man with the "nothing to declare" boxes checked, and he asked what was in our luggage. I said we were moving back aboard our boat after two years and it was all our stuff. He asked it any of it was boat parts, and I said just the antenna in the obvious tube. He looked at me suspiciously and waved us through. We're in!
As we stepped out the doors to where people greet flights, there was a guy holding a paper with my name on it. Thanks for Gene the patient driver. He went to get his van, and the porter unloaded our stuff at the curb. We loaded up and headed for Jolly Harbor, which is about a 20 or 30 minute ride from the airport. Along the way, Gene turned in a driveway we weren't expecting. Down the driveway was a machine shop where he had to give a message to a guy working on another van he has. Typical Island stuff. We got to our apartment in the Jolly Harbor and found Amy from Typically Tropical waiting for us. She welcomed us and gave Barb a tour of the place while I schlepped the bags up the stairs. She also arranged for a golf cart to be delivered to us in the morning, since now that we know where the apartment is relative to the boat, we don't want to be walking back and forth. Once we had everything inside, we walked over to the marina. We had spotted a friends boat, Shian, in the marina as we drove in, and we know they should be here. We walked by Shian and Paul and Janie were not aboard. So, we went to the little bar at the head of the dock for our first beer. We found that the bar is no longer owned by Angie, the girl who ran it when we were here in 2009. It is now owned by a guy named George, who was there and seems like a congenial guy. We had two beers and then went to one of the restaurants in the marina complex for dinner. We went to Peter's where we have eaten many times before. As we were eating our dinner, Paul & Janie came walking up. They took the table next to us and we enjoyed catching up with them while we ate and then they ate. They re-launched Shian a few days ago and similar to us have been staying in an apartment while getting the boat put back together.
We walked back to the marina and enjoyed the bottle of wine that was part of our welcome package.
Nov 19
The golf cart was supposed to be delivered at 08:00, so we actually set an alarm to be up at 07:00 and ready for him. 08:00 came and went, and we chalked it up to Island time. At 09:00, we decided to walk over to the marina complex and see what was up. Since we don't have a local phone, we can't just call. We got to Jolly Rentals, and they were not open. So, we went next door to the little cafe that Amy the rental agent had recommended, and got coffee and chocolate croissants. The owner chatted us up and told us that the Jolly Rental guy runs on Island time for sure. After our breakfast, we hit two of the three ATMs in the area to get some local currency. Unfortunately neither of them liked my new ATM card from Ally Bank. (I have told Bank of America to take a hike after three specific cases of them jerking me around.) As we were about to leave a note for the rental guy and just walk to the boat, he showed up. He said he had left the cart for us early this morning. Apparently, he left it in the wrong place. We hopped in another cart and he drove us to where he left ours. It was two doors down from us at a very similar building. Close, but no cigar. Just another little part of life in the Islands to deal with. Off we went to see the boat for the first time.
As we entered the yard, we saw our mast on stands across from the boat. This was a big relief, because from our vantage point at the bar last night, we couldn't see the mast. If it had not been moved from the storage yard, it would have totally screwed our plans to work on it before launching Monday. Our first priority today is to install all the accessories on the mast, but I want to see inside the boat first. The first step of seeing inside the boat, is to get a ladder. I walked over to the fuel dock office to inquire about one and ran into Festus, the marina manager just unlocking the yard office door. Even after 2 1/2 years, he immediately recognized me and greeted me. He got security to get us a ladder from the other yard and bring it to MoonSail. I climbed aboard and opened her up. I was both pleasantly surprised and disappointed. We were hoping to find her dry and without any mold or mildew. Instead I did find a significant amount of mold, but not as bad as some other boats I've seen after storage in Grenada. So, we'll have our work cut out for us cleaning everything.
One of the tasks we had done already was a new bottom job. It looks great and is complete. The same guy who did the bottom job is buffing and waxing the hull. That is not done yet, and he and a helper are working on it today, so it will be done by Monday. The other task we had done already was completely rebuilding the mast. We had all the wiring replaced, all the standing rigging and associated hardware replaced (that's the cables that hold the mast up), and all the running rigging replaced (that's all the lines). They also replaced the gooseneck on the mast where the boom attaches, as the original one was wearing out. Our first task is to put all the stuff back on the mast. Amongst the boat parts we "didn't" bring in our luggage was a new wind transducer, a new anchor light, a new Windex (which is a non-electric wind indicator), new spreader lights, a new speaker for the loud hailer, a new steaming light, and the new VHF antenna that we carried in that tube. I did a quick assessment of any parts we needed to obtain today so we could get them at the Budget Marine store on the marina property before they close at noon. I made four or five trips to Budget by noon and hopefully have everything I need.
We worked on the mast stuff for a couple hours. Everything went pretty much as expected. The only flaw in the plan was I got the wrong connector to put on the end of the new VHF cable, so I will have to make a trip up the mast later after all. Fortunately, there was some overcast, so we weren't working in the bright sun, but it still was obvious that we have to get used to the heat and humidity. We were soaked and beat after just a few hours of working. It was almost 2:30 and we hadn't had anything to eat except the croissants, so we went to Peter's for lunch. We had cheeseburgers and a couple of beers.
The yard gate closes at 16:00, so we went back over to do one more task, putting new zincs on the prop shaft. (The zincs keep galvanic corrosion from eating the propeller.)
We headed back to the apartment, with a stop at the Epicurean Market for some staples. Like beer, and rum, and Coke. Oh and a little food for dinner - cheese and crackers. While at the store, we tried my ATM card in their ATM, and it didn't work there either. Not good. Hate to let B of A get the upper hand, but Barb's B of A card worked fine and we got some EC cash.
Back at the apartment we showered and settled in for the evening.
Nov 20
We were at the yard a little after 08:00 this morning to beat the heat of the day. We have a couple other tasks that have to be done before the boat gets launched. The first is to wash the mast. Even with all the work that has been done on it, it is filthy with mildew. We took a bucket from the apartment and stopped at the store and got some bleach and sponges with Scotch-Brite. We attacked the mast with one of us on each side, scrubbing the mildew off and rinsing with a second bucket of fresh water. In just a little while the mast looked more like it was worth the money recently invested in it.
Next, we went aboard. We had taped tin foil over all the windows when we stored the boat, so I removed all that and opened all the ports. The boat had a very musty smell when we first opened it up, but thankfully after only a couple hours with everything open, it was noticeably better even though we haven't cleaned inside yet. We took the fenders and dock lines out so they are ready for tomorrow. I took the canvas that I had covered the pedestal with off and found no surprises underneath. I put the steering wheel back on so it's ready to drive, although we won't be driving anywhere tomorrow. One of the task that has to be done is service all the through hulls. Each place where a hose attaches to a hole in the hull, there is a valve. After sitting for two years, we need to make sure all those valves function. So with Barb on the outside spraying lithium grease up in the holes, and me on the inside working the valves, we lubed them all.
Next I wanted to see if there was any hope of reviving the batteries after this lay-up. First step of that was to reconnect the battery monitor. I found significant corrosion on the battery terminals, and one of the two fuse holders that I had to reconnect the monitor just fell apart when I touched it. I had a spare fuse holder and hooked up the monitor. Surprisingly, some lights came on indicating the batteries were not completely dead. Unfortunately, the lights that came on were a combination that should be impossible, so more diagnosis will be needed to see if the monitor has taken a crap.
Since the serious cleaning will be better accomplished once we are in a slip with water available, we called it a day early. We were going to get sandwiches for lunch at the Subway which has been added here since we were last here, but we found that in fact it has come and gone since we were here. So, we went to the market and got a few pieces of their great fried chicken. The rest of the afternoon and evening were spent, writing this log, watching the final race of the NASCAR season, and watching a heavy downpour that came through late in the afternoon.