Project Logistics: Keeping Dry

The monsoon has come early to India by a few weeks, and there’s a storm hitting the Bay of Bengal pretty badly right this moment. It’ll be here 15 days after Bombay gets it, and I just don’t know what to expect. It might rain every few days a little bit, or a lot, or often, or both, or there might be floods. Just don’t know. It gets unbearably hot right before the monsoon in Gujarat and it’ll be humid for sure. Tropical humid, not London in August. Everything is likely to get soaked at some point. I’ve been idly flicking through manuals for kit and noting that the maximum operating temperature for pretty much everything is 40 degrees C. I get that every day right now, so add some humidity to that and we’re talking about failure in a big way. Batteries hate heat. Electronics hate heat. I hate heat. So, assuming the monsoon gives us a few degrees of relief, what about the humidity? Silica gel to the rescue. Those little packets you find in all unsealed electronic packaging? Silica gel. But you can’t see when that’s dead, they’re generally white. Silica gel can easily be reused by heating it up in a pan until the water’s gone. If you can tell, that is. Cue Geejay Chemicals and a 1 Kg tub of Silica Gel. Goes from orange to colourless as it absorbs water. A handful in a sandwich bag, some fork holes in one side of the bag and it’s ready to throw into the bottom of the Think Tank carriers, keeping moisture away from it’s not wanted. And then tipped into a pan when it’s colourless and heated until it returns to active duty. That’s the detail, of course. The Think Tank gear is water-proof ripstop and there’s a complete cover with no seams in every carrier. As for me, I might wear a hat and some sandals.