The first ground anchor hit rock about ten inches down. Rafael had warned me. He has dug holes in Miami yards most of his life, and the week before he told me to buy the shorter anchors, because there's limestone a few inches under most lawns around here. I bought the long ones anyway. So on Saturday at 7:30 a.m. I was in the side yard with sweat running into my eyes, cranking a steel auger into solid rock and getting nowhere.
I moved over a foot and found a deeper pocket. The second anchor went in on the first try. That's the newest piece of our storm plan for the camper, and with nothing in particular out there in the busiest stretch of hurricane season, this felt like the week to write it all down.
Why a small camper worries me
Folded down, our 2009 Jayco is a low box about ten feet long. It sits between the house and the chain-link fence, with the old Haden mango tree hanging over one corner. Low is good. But that gap is exactly where the wind funnels on a breezy afternoon, and a flat-sided box on two wheels is a big sail. I don't want to find it on its side or wearing a mango branch.
The house plan hasn't changed since last August: concrete block, accordion shutters in front, aluminum panels in back, not in an evacuation zone. If a storm comes, we stay, and so does the camper. We talked about towing it to Ron and Linda's in Ocala ahead of time and decided against it. If the Turnpike is full of people heading north, I don't want to be in that traffic with a trailer behind the Pilot, and Ocala gets weather too.
Photos first, on a calm day
The part I think matters most happened before any anchors. On a quiet Sunday we cranked the camper all the way up, pulled out both bed ends and photographed everything, slowly, while the canvas warmed in the sun and started to smell like hot vinyl:
- All four sides and all four corners, from far back and then close up.
- The roof from a stepladder, including the AC unit and the seams.
- Both bed ends, the dinette, the stove, the fridge and the floor.
- The tires, the tag and the VIN plate on the front of the frame.
- A slow video walk-around, with me saying the date out loud at the start. Maya says I sounded like a nature documentary.
The title, registration, bill of sale and our Progressive card got photographed too, and the paper copies went into a zip bag with the house documents. When we added the camper to our policy in February, I asked what they'd want to see if we ever filed a claim, and the short answer was proof of what it looked like before. Policies differ, so that's a question for your own agent, not for a PE teacher. We'll redo the photos every August.
Where it goes and how we strap it
It stays in the side yard, but it moves about three feet. Normally it sits partly under the mango tree, which is welcome shade in July and a liability in high wind. Dana and I roll it forward on the tongue wheel so no big limb hangs over the roof, and in July I took two low branches off with a pole saw for the same reason.
Then the straps. The two anchors sit on either side near the axle, and a heavy ratchet strap runs from each one to the steel frame, not to the body and not over the roof. Snug, not cranked. The tongue goes down on a scrap of board, both wheels get chocked, the stabilizer jacks go down and the hitch lock goes on. Anchors and straps were about $60 at Home Depot. I filed that receipt in the house storm folder next to the shutter hardware, which Dana calls creative accounting.
I'm not an engineer, and this won't save the camper from a direct hit by a big storm. Nothing in a side yard would. It's meant to keep it from moving in the kind of wind we see more often.
The list on the storage room door
- Something in the outlook pointed our way, about five days out: check the anchors and straps, empty the camper fridge, bring the gear bins inside.
- The day the house panels go up: the ADCO cover comes off and gets folded into the storage room, because in real wind it's a sail of its own and would whip the roof all night. Propane valve closed, battery disconnected, crank handle inside, roof latches checked twice, straps ratcheted.
- After: another walk-around with the phone before anyone touches anything.
Taking the cover off bothers me a little. We paid $149 for it this month. But a cover flapping loose in 50-mile-an-hour gusts is worse than no cover, and putting it back takes the two of us ten minutes.
Nico, who turned seven last week, watched the anchor operation from the patio steps with a popsicle and asked one question at the end: "Does the camper get shutters too?" No, buddy. It gets straps and a lot of photos. He thought about it and decided that sounded like enough. I hope we never find out whether he's right.
