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Hope your luck continues and that you have a good break.

There is no easy solution. You either go ahead and get wet wet putting the essentials up as quickly as possible, or wait and hope that the rain stops.

Your cabin should be fine as long as you get the sides down as soon as you open it up. However the awning is more difficult...if you get both sides of it wet, it will leak until it gets a chance to dry out. How much it leaks depends on how wet it gets...a few spots is normal, but if it gets really soaked it will leak like a sieve.

The secret, of course, is speed. The kitchen won`t come to any harm in the rain, so take it off and put it to one side. Get the awning poles sorted out and lying in their correct places in the grass before you even take the trailer cover off fully. Lay out your main pegs ready at the corners as well, have the wooden plates for under the legs ready and have two mallets.

Next steps depend really on whether you leave the awning zipped on when folding up(I do) or seperate. If it`s seperate, you`ve got plenty of time to put the cabin up..just flip down the sides and get the poles tensioned up, turn the bedboards into position and put the four corner pegs in. Keep the awning section under cover until you get the frame assembled, then get every pair of hands out the car to get the awning up and over the frame quickly without it trailing on the grass. Zip it on (my absolute least favorite part, which is why I never do it) get the top bars tensioned out, peg the corners and unless you`re pitching in a monsoon, you should be fine. Plenty of time to finish off.

If you leave the awning zipped on, then ensure when you folded it away that you finished with the outside uppermost and fully over the underlayers. Take a minute to adjust this once you unfold the cabin canvas...pull the trailing edge down over the edge of the cabin wall by six inches or so. (I forgot to do this last trip out and I ended up with a strip of awning along the edge of the cabin that dripped a bit till the canvas dried out the next day.) You don`t want the inside facing up. When the cabin is square and held down by the corner pegs, then get the awning poles up and pull the awning over as above.

After that you yourselves are probably as wet as you`re going to get anyway, so take your time and peg out neatly. (This is where two mallets come in handy...I do the inside and underbed tents, Hubby does the outside.)

Oh...one last and very important thought. If this is a brand new trailer tent, have you weathered the canvas yet?

How many times does the tent need to get wet and then dry before it's weathered?  We took ours away this week end and it was its first trip.  We didn't weather it but while we were away it rained once quite hard in the night and they once in the morning.  It dried out in between and after the second time so that it was dry when we put it away.  Do you think this could count as weathering it?

Thanks for your advice!

Quote: Originally posted by beetle68 on 14/8/2006

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How many times does the tent need to get wet and then dry before it's weathered?  !

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Once is fine with some decent rain ie more than half an hour of drizzle. It`s just to give the fibres that first chance to swell up and mesh together properly after the factory processing. If you get an absolute monsoon for several hours first time, though, the fibres won`t be able to swell fast enough before the rain penetrate and you`ll get drips. This is pretty rare though!

Incidentally, if a canvas tent has been packed away for several years it`s a good idea to weather it again, just to check.

Quote: Originally posted by tentpegjenny on 14/8/2006

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Have a Dandy, they are designed for English weather.... No problem!  Packing away also you do no differently in the wet.....  Even better you do not have to dry it out when you get it home.....

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Never a problem for me either

THUMPER.