one of those days 7-29-10

No, it wasn’t one of those days. That would admit that such days happen more often than they should, that is to say, sometimes. Days like this should never happen. Never ever.

We are building the boat in open air. I think most of you know that. And that works here in Uganda since the weather is perpetually summer. The heat of summer, the humidity of summer, the thunderstorms of summer. We have figured out which way the weather comes from so we keep a weather eye out for thunderstorms. Today dawned bright and sunny. A few clouds here and there, but that’s always the case.

The goal today was to get 4 of the 2nd floors epoxied together starting from the back and the bottom beam epoxied on. we got a shipment of epoxy yesterday so we had everything we needed. my patience has waned to the point of not being able to take…well, anything going wrong really. Floors, 5, 4, and 3 went on ok. Issues with drills and Ugandan screws aside, it went swimmingly. I worked on the floors with my team while Bryce and his team worked on the beam. Bryce says something about rain. I want to get floor 3 on before we tarp the thing since I see a very small cloud above us. And it goes together, and the raindrops get bigger, then they are everywhere. I yell for everyone to get the tarp over the boat fast. Not fast enough, but when its raining, its never enough. I look up again to see how long the rain will last, and all I see is gray in every direction. I cant see very far because of all the rain. What happened to the blue sky? Bryce comes up and we just look at each other as the rain starts coming between the floors we haven’t put together yet. right thru the tarp. I go out to check the rain, its still coming. And the tarp has blown off part of the boat. So Bryce and I clamp it down. where did this rain come from?!? I go to the other section and grab the corner and pull it down. I feel like I should be sailing with the tarp catching that much wind. Did I mention im soaked by this time? Don’t think about the rain pouring down your face and down into your already soaked shoes, just catch the sail and tie it down. Ask someone for a clamp, makes sure it wont fly up again. Then turn to the sky and yell at it. Give it the finger. Sing “oh Africa”. Go down and tell the workers they are free to go eat lunch if they want to brave the rain. Here I am, soaked several times over, telling the dry students hiding underneath the boat that they can go have food. Oi. Go back up and try to consol Bryce who is feeling sick with the situation.

For those of you who haven’t ever worked with epoxy, let me explain the situation. Water does not mix will with wet epoxy. We didn’t know how bad it might be for the epoxy. It could have been enywhere from ok to useless. The team back in America assured us that as long as the epoxy attached to the wood before the water soaked it, the epoxy is fine. And that’s what happened. But we didn’t know that at the time. We thought all our work that day might have to be redone. We sat there looking at a week of extra work to fix the issues one freak rainstorm dropped on us.

I had to jump in all the puddles on the way back to the dorm. Nothing else to do when the world rains on you like that. There is no explanation, no way, no words to explain the day. and our brain power had shorted with the sheer magnitude of our situation.