Hi everyone,

A friend of mine laughed when I mentioned the steps I take to protect my gear from water. He said “You’re going to a hot country, why bother?, it’s not going to rain!”. Well I’m pleased that I did. Two days in to our trip we got caught in what I can only describe as a monsoon in Corfu Town, the heavens opened up and the streets resembled small streams, we were wading through water in some places ankle-deep and got absolutely soaked to the skin but, unlike us, all my gear stayed bone dry. 🙂 The day had started hot and sunny with no indication of what was going to happen.

The second occasion was potentially much worse as we got very wet on a boat trip to the extent where one could brush off the salt spray from one’s skin when it dried and salt water is much worse than rain water for damaging one’s gear. My canvas bag got pretty wet but, thanks to my efforts to water-proof my gear, again everything stayed bone dry.  I’ve been on boat trips in Greece, Malta and Italy before and had previous experience of this so was forearmed!. 🙂

My first layer of protection is the bag itself which will keep off light showers and inside that a “water-proof” padded insert inside which I carry my camera gear and for added protection when I deem it required my camera and attached lens inside a neoprene case.

Equally importantly is protecting my spare batteries, memory cards and GPS data-logger as shown below. The batteries are in waterproof storage boxes inside a waterproof plastic case. The memory cards are inside a storage case protected by a neoprene case and, as with the batteries, a waterproof plastic case giving them three layers of protection and my Holux GPS data-logger is protected by a blue plastic latching waterproof case. If I’m 110% sure that the chances of rain are absolutely nil and to make battery and memory card changing a tad faster and/or to save a tiny amount of weight I can omit the two orange plastic case cases but they weigh so little it’s really not worth it.

Maybe I’m paranoid about protecting my gear from water but it’s certainly paid off on several occasions. Without the protection the thunderstorm in Corfu Town would have damaged if not ruined much of my gear and there’s always the risk of short-circuiting batteries, a risk I’m not prepared to take. Expect the unexpected!.

And my Anker 5-port USB charger, shown here simultaneously powering/charging a camera battery, my 1 Terabyte portable hard disk and mobile phone connected via a powered USB/SDHC card reader hub, GPS data-logger and spare vape battery with one charging port free once again proved invaluable. 🙂

Kind regards