Moisture

Until my departure from Port Townsend I had been under the impression that all of Pachuca's moisture problems were due to leaks. After arriving in SF we discovered that a lot of the well packed and protected clothes were moist. Then last week Brenda detected a lot of moisture in the upper shelves in the head. I investigated, worried that there was a leak from the recent rain, but could not find one leak source - the entire ceiling area of the head was dripping with water. We emptied the shelves and dried the head with a towel and electric fan heater. The next morning the head ceiling was dripping again, even though there had been no rain. The top deck was saturated from heavy dew. I dried out the area and following morning it was dry - but so was the top deck probably because there was a wind blowing.

The point of this is that I am resigned to living in a damp boat during my run around the Horn. I'll take measures such as wearing wool clothing and storing clothes in seal bags, but basically I expect a damp boat. Until recently I had thought that all of those heaters fitted to boats in the NW were to provide human comfort, but now I realized that they are also for moisture control. I am not prepared to install a heater on Pachuca because this problem does not seem to be as serious in Western Australia, where heaters on boats are rare.