Spent my Monday morning drying out the trailer after yesterday's soggy event

Been doing the trailer unpack the morning after for years now, mostly because I once skipped it after a soggy October event and paid for it all winter. Pulled out the first aid kit in March and the gauze had that musty smell you can't wash out. Whole kit went in the trash. Now it's a standing rule in my house that nothing stays closed in that trailer longer than a day if it rained. The tape brick is so real. I keep a couple of cheap paint stir sticks in the timing supplies box now and slide one under the tape roll end before packing up. Doesn't always survive a wet day but it saves the roll maybe half the time.

One thing I do differently is I don't wait for sun. I've dried cones and flags in the dark under the carport plenty of times, and honestly anything plastic doesn't care whether it's sunny or not, it just needs air moving around it. The only stuff that really needs warmth is anything with fabric, like the worker vests or the flag cloth, and those I bring inside and hang by the furnace vent overnight.

Also learned to crack the trailer doors open a few inches when I reload everything, even if it's all dry. That enclosed box still traps humidity from the driveway heat the next morning, and a little airflow fixes it.

I stopped letting the wet gear make it to the trailer at all a couple years back. Our region ends every event with a fifteen minute pack-up window, so while the course workers are pulling cones I have the same two people hit the totes with old bath towels before anything goes in. Gloves get wrung out and tossed loose on top, not packed down. It adds maybe ten minutes to teardown and saves the whole next-morning ritual. Not saying that to knock the drying day, sometimes rain catches you mid-run-group and towels aren't enough. But my knees got tired of laying out half the equipment inventory across the driveway every Sunday, so the prevention route won here. One thing I did pick up the hard way though: even with dry gear, I crack the trailer roof vent and leave a cheap humidity gauge clipped to the wall. If I see it climbing above the outside air reading while parked, something wet is hiding somewhere, usually under the timing table where nobody looks. Found a soaked poncho that way last spring that had been missing since the previous season.

Gotta push back on the cracked trailer doors thing. I tried that for a season and came out one morning to a family of mice had moved into my flag tote, plus one rain shower that soaked a stack of cones again. Now I keep the doors shut and toss one of those rechargeable dehumidifier tubs in there when I reload, pull it out a couple days later and plug it in to reset. Costs less than replacing chewed-up gear and I don't have to worry about weather or critters. Do you not get raccoons digging around in an open trailer where you're at?

I run the radios for our region, so my add to this is batteries. Got burned once when a wet event's handhelds went back in the case still clipped to thier holders, and by the next weekend one had a corroded AA terminal that took an hour with a pencil eraser to clean up. Now the chargers come home with me every event, rain or shine. Two extra trips to the truck but zero dead radios mid-heat.

One hour's optimistic if the day's muggy, that's all I'll say. Did the same spread-it-out move after a wet event last summer and by late afternoon the clipboards still had soft corners, so half the gear sat out overnight instead. Doesn't hurt anything to leave it an extra day if the air's heavy. Only other thing I'd add is check inside the timing boxes before you trust the fan. Condensation gets in the seams even when the outside feels dry, and a lid cracked open a bit on each one makes a difference.

Update: everything's dry and back in the trailer. The reply about towel-drying gear before it ever gets loaded is genius, so I'm stealing that for next event. Also grabbed a rechargeable dehumidifier tub like the one mentioned for the flag tote, since I'd rather not repeat the mouse situation somebody described. The brick of tape did not survive, RIP.