At Risk of Sloth

“What are you doing in that freezer?”, I asked, trying failing to keep my tone neutral.

“I saw you had ice in your drink the other night and I want some ice!”  Michael is rummaging around in the freezer in a way that is setting my teeth on edge since the freezer is packed completely full and only I know how everything fits together in the one square foot of space we have for frozen foods.  I am not amused, although I am not averse to his getting ice for his well-deserved drink. I begin to think about how I can get the ice to be on the top of everything so he won’t have to dig next time. My teeth can’t take the added stress right now.

Cool fountain down on the malecon.

“Well, Mister Man, be sure to put everything back exactly the way you found it because it took me an hour to tetris all that stuff just so into that little munchkin freezer and it was not easy. I had to take out frozen chicken thighs, which I am not even sure how I’m going to use at this point, to make room for all the cheese I’m storing in there. I’m prepared to be off grid here! I’m prepared to have to feed us for months without a decent grocery store! And in spite of how overly prepared I am,  now we have been here at this  (creative swear words here) dock so flipping long that I am beginning to have anxiety about leaving. I tell you I am prepared! All cabinets, the fridge, the freezer..all possible stowage is packed tighter than a church pew on Christmas.  So just get everything back in the freezer the way I had it. K?”

Michael, accustomed as he is to my unfounded anxieties, retorted as his plastic ice cubes clinked noisily into his glass: “Well, we’ll just put your anxieties about leaving along with all the other anxieties we have about life in general right about now. How about that?”.

I guess he’s not wrong. We’re both getting a little antsy here at the dock in Ensenada. It’s been too long since we have anchored this boat. Too long since we have sailed this boat or even motored this boat. We have been here at this dock TOO LONG. When I start knowing my way around town, then we have been in a place too long. The security guard knows me now. Oh, hell no!

This post is going to degrade rapidly into a bit of a ramble, but I won’t even apologize for that.

Honestly, I have just about reached a tipping point with this whole ‘we live here now’ dock living we have been doing since our belated return from the homeland in Washington State; somewhere on or around January 17. This is a weird thing, this tipping point. When we have to be on a dock, at first I feel  like that’s going to be a nice break from the stress of always living at anchor at the whim of mother nature. We can walk into town. Going for groceries is easy. We can buy boat parts we didn’t know we needed. What’s not to like?

But soon I begin to feel like I’m getting ‘soft’; like if I don’t get back out there away from the easy life of land I’m not going to want this life of ease to end. I’m going to start leaning into being lazy. I’m going to be at risk of embracing the sloth. Days and weeks are going to pass with absolutely nothing to show for it.  I’ll end up doing nothing with my life besides watching Instagram videos and sitting on my ass in the evening eating things that are surely shortening my very existence, dreaming of the day I can get back to refinishing furniture in the basement and planting seeds in the land dirt. Maybe I am the only person who feels this way about dock living. Most people seem to love it and it’s fine with them that they don’t have to worry about anchors holding or being on a lee shore.

When I begin to be this accustomed to easy street, I begin to get anxious once again about the day when we have to leave the dock.  I’ll start planning how to get out of the slip and begin looking at tide and current charts well in advance so I have a concrete plan on how we will do this without messing up other boats. Even though we have literally NEVER MESSED UP ANOTHER BOAT when leaving our slip. Literally never. Does this mean I am finished with the cruising life? It does not. What it means is that I don’t have enough to keep my brain occupied in a positive direction so it has begun to entertain itself.   Don’t try to understand me. I’m complicated.

I’d like to say we enjoy seeing these big boys right next to our boat. Alas. They blow black soot all over everything.

Anyway.  We are still in Ensenada at Cruiseport Marina. Why? Because this trip, destination Banderas Bay to an eventual Pacific Crossing, has taken way too long overall and it continues to do so. Let’s recap this trip so far:

Return to land life in Olympia, Washington during covid times. Get jobs. Sell house. Buy different house. Remodel house. Move into house for the briefest of moments in time. Continue working on boat during all of this, including pulling and replacing all chainplates, re-rigging, modifying the settees in the salon, replacing mattresses in aft cabin, among many other expensive and time consuming projects. Prepare to leave the dock in April 2023. Everything is seemingly falling into place until then. Full. Stop.

Our delays begin when, during the final countdown to leaving Olympia aboard our beloved Galapagos,  we are faced with an unplanned remodel of the apartment at our house. We had always planned to remodel that hovel of an apartment SOMEDAY,  after the current renter left. But we didn’t know he was leaving until two weeks before he did. This was a curveball that, while welcome in many ways, would have been better thrown like 3 months before it landed on us. Wait.

That’s only partly true. The delays began when we could not, in a timely way,  get on the schedule of the guy who did our fiberglass work. Those two delays together, the refit and the apartment remodel, started us off in what was a delay that would have a trickle down effect.

It was August 1 before we were able to leave.  Our plans for Alaska were cancelled once again; our plans to circumnavigate Vancouver Island gone, once again.  Between one thing and another it took us way too long to get the heck out of the Pacific Northwest. By June we had planned to be sailing down the coast. Once we made the big left turn outside of Neah Bay it was already September. And it took even longer than we could have foretold to make it down to southern California. Leaving in this late, we chose to stick close to the coast rather than sail offshore and risk being in one gale after another.  While it seemed like our weather window was a good one, it turned out that we either had zero wind with sloppy and uncomfortable seas or gales. So we spent a lot of time gnashing our teeth tied to a dock or at anchor somewhere waiting for weather systems to pass. So one thing leads to another.  This, we know.

Still, no sense getting down into Mexico before November  (due to hurricane season and all) so we spent time in the Channel Islands, which is always a good idea. Honestly, this was the best, most enjoyable part of the entire trip so far.  By the time we got to San Diego, it was clear our batteries were dying so we had to replace those. Another delay. If I didn’t know that this is sometimes how it goes, I’d think someone ‘up there’ had something against us.

We were honestly sad to leave the Channel Islands. We could easily have spent a much longer time there.

And let’s not forget that when we finally did leave San Diego, we ran afoul of some kelp in the channel that actually wrapped itself around our prop, leading us to call it quits and go back to the anchorage for another night. That was not a long delay, but it did just feel like more of the same. By the time we got to Ensenada, it was time to go home for the holidays. I guess we could have skipped that and gone directly to La Cruz, but it’s a good thing we didn’t.  Family issues back home meant we had to reschedule our flight back and didn’t get back to Mexico until the middle of January.

Back in Mexico, we didn’t want to leave Ensenada until I had been able to get an overdue physical exam (so much easier to schedule that here, and cheaper, too), had my teeth cleaned, and had a couple of retainers made for my teeth since apparently I tend to gnash them on the regular. This had always been part of the plan. Those are checked off the list, finally. (An hour consultation with an Internal Medicine doctor for $58. Complete lab profile, including test for parasites and checking electrolyte levels for 60$. That’s 6 pages of lab results. Teeth cleaned for $50. Two retainers for 150$. Thanks, Mexico.)

Walking down the tourist district. This little girl is learning how to charm the potential buyers!

While I was busy with medical and dental, and catching up with clients, Michael needed to fix the outboard engine that seemed to hate going at low speeds. It expressed its disdain by misfiring and sometimes outright stalling. Mike finally got traction on that today thanks to an older gentleman who works at a local shop specializing in outboard engines. Michael showed him a video he took of what the engine was doing and the guy, correctly, diagnosed the issue and sold him the part for it. It was some kind of rubber covering for the spark plug. It needed replacing. Ten dollars later the engine is finally ready. This is great because it means we can putt putt along close to shore, staring down into the water like we do.  And Michael will be able to enjoy the scenery without staring at the outboard, a puzzled frown on his face.

I’m still working for a living, so it was hard to leave Monday, Tuesday, or Wednesday of this week, and we could leave tomorrow but another big rainstorm is coming through with pretty big swells coming directly from the west, so they’d be right on our beam as we head south. That sounds like fun, doesn’t it? No. It does not.

Maybe…Sunday? There isn’t supposed to be wind that day but I don’t care if we have to motor for 100 miles. It’s time to go before I become ossified into this slip and attached to a life whose biggest challenge is whether my Google Translate app is up to date. So for now, barring any other delays, we are leaving on Sunday.  I’ll make some sort of sacrifice to the Gods of Leaving the Dock Safely. We have given notice to the marina. They will have our paperwork ready for us. We have listed our next port as La Cruz in Banderas Bay. That’s where so many people stage to prepare for crossing to French Polynesia. We wish. We hope and we plan. We envision warm water and beautiful fish.

Where are we going next? Who knows? At this point we will let the sea decide where we land to stay at anchor and catch our breath and remember how to sleep on a boat that is moving,  Overall it will be south-ish. We still plan to cross to French Polynesia this year but will we make it? We still need to apply for a long stay visa and to find liability insurance.  It just feels, I don’t know how to say it, but like the wave of energy we’d need to ride to make that happen for sure has not appeared for us yet this year; like we have just started “raising the sails” when the wind suddenly dies. That kind of thing.  Maybe the energy of La Cruz will change all of that. We are trying to practice the “non attachment to outcomes” that is necessary when cruising. We are not always successful with that. But we try.

Getting this blog post up is the first step toward re-engaging with this cruising life. Let it be written. Let it be done.

S/V Galapagos, out. Not even standing by. No one keeps their radio on in this marina.

 

 

It’s That Time of Year, Again

Based on the fact that Thanksgiving is barely over, I imagine your thoughts have turned to the obvious question: What should I give the cruisers on my holiday gift giving list? Don’t worry, capitalist friends. Little Cunning Plan has you covered. This year, in an absolute spree of money-spending glee, we added a bunch of smallish items to beloved Galapagos that have turned out to be money well spent, indeed. Not to be proprietary about this kind of intel, we’re sharing the details with readers so they can get ahead of the gift-buying and enjoy the season stress free. No need to thank us. We live to serve.

Inside Hotel del Coronado they are already pushing the holiday theme. This gorgeous Christmas tree is simply breathtaking.

You’ll want to hop on these gifts asap since the economy is waiting for your cash, so I won’t spent much time waxing on about the weather here in San Diego. (Coolish with a chance of sunshine.) We won’t yet discuss our dying bank of batteries and the choice we’ve made to power our daily life on board. (Hint: it starts with an L.) I won’t bore you with all the details about all the social functions we have attended;  aboard Galapagos, at a local yacht club,  and also on the boats of new friends. If you’re the social media type you can follow Sea Dream of Clyde, and Sailing Sphynx and their hilarious cats as they adventure forth. We are pleased to count these worthy folks among our new friends. They’re both here in San Diego enroute to Ensenada. Meanwhile, here’s our list of goodies. Full disclosure: we are not Amazon affiliates, or any kind of affiliates at all.

  1. It’s hard to overstate the convenience of being able to serve a cold beverage without watering down your guest’s drinks. These reusable ice cubes have served their purpose very well. I even put them in wine because I like mine cold and crisp. They don’t take up as much room in the freezer as ice trays do, but also you can’t make a blended margarita with them. We all have our challenges.
  2. Entertaining with bubbly wine and you’ve already had as much as you should have? Save the rest with this fabulous bubble wine saver cork. Yes, it really works. Not only that, but it is a lot less money than the expensive Le Creuset one that only works on REAL Champagne bottles, which apparently are made a special way. I know this because I bought the expensive one and had to return it because it didn’t fit the cheap wine that I actually like just fine, thanks. I have kept bottles of Prosecco in the fridge for as many as 5 days (only because I forgot I had it) and the cork still popped aggressively when I took it off the bottle. Well recommended.
  3. Partied too hard and need a latte’ but you are at anchor and nowhere near a good coffee shop? I’ve got you covered, especially if your batteries are not dying. Even if they are. Just turn on the engine for about 60 seconds, pay no attention to the battery police,  and whip your milk into a heated froth. I actually bought this Secura milk frother in 2016 and it has continued to work seamlessly and yummily. Not only that, but the price is still about where it was back then. WHAT?? There is no 12 volt version, so you’re gonna have to have DC outlets on the boat. But if this is you, this is worth the money. You, too, can practice your foamed milk latte’ art while at anchor.

    Yes, that is the same Copco coffee mug I have been using since 2015 when I wrote this post. I notice back in 2015 when I wrote that one, I was using a rechargeable Bodum frother. I replaced that frother with this one and am much happier. I am also falling over myself laughing at the portable stepper I bought way back then thinking I would use it. Maybe I did. But not for long. Still have the Turkish towels, though. And the hammock, the food sealer, and the Dry Case backpacks, which Mike uses but I find to be too heavy and hot.

    What did I tell you? I’m not lying. I never lie about coffee. Yes, I still drink the instant coffee I learned to love in Scotland.

    4.  This fairly inexpensive solar cooker. Yes, there are more expensive solar cookers out there that look almost the same. However, I’m just not going to spend over 400$ on a solar cooker because, technically, I already have one and, well, just no. I have this one, the price of which has gone up CONSIDERABLY since I bought it in 2019. I rarely have used this because if you are not on board to keep it turned facing the sun, it doesn’t work that well. On the other hand, you can put a big pot inside this and if you tend to the unit, it works great. For the recent price, though, I would not buy it. Basically it’s plasticized cardboard and you have to put it together each time you use it. I’m kind of hoping that our new lithium batteries (shhhhh! Michael will talk about those in the future.) will make this unit obsolete and I can find someone else who will use it.
    I’ve used the new, sleek cooker once already and have been pleased with the result. I baked potatoes. While that is not exactly rocket science, the truth is that I put the potatoes in the oven and walked away and went snorkeling. I didn’t stay on board to baby the thing. When I came back the potatoes were done perfectly and I was dead pleased with myself and with this cooker. It is pretty well made. I mean, how hard can it be to make what is, in effect, a sort of vacuumish tube with reflectors? The case is heavy duty and the unit is really easy to set up and get going. I like it and will be using it to bake things when I don’t want to heat up my salon with the propane oven.

    This unit is Patrick-approved.

    5.  Z Block lip protective balm in a stick. Reef safe lip protection. We are always looking for safe ways to protect our skin from UV rays and Michael’s lips are particularly sensitive to certain chemicals that are found in many cosmetic products. I ordered this stuff with hope in my heart and I am pleased to say that not only does it work, but it doesn’t hurt him or the precious fish we love to watch in their watery homes. We’ve stocked up. They also make an overall sunscreen, although I have not looked at the ingredients on that yet. 6.  Up all night because the winds piped up and you couldn’t sleep due to fear? Diligence? You be the judge. This Bucky Ultralight sleep mask will block the dreadful sunlight and allow you to get some well deserved shut eye. I like this mask in particular because it doesn’t press down on my face and it has cupped eye covers. It’s inexpensive enough you can stock some for guests as well. This is my second one. I wore out the first one but it took well over a year of nightly wear due to streetlights being right outside my window back at the house. Yes, I do have light blocking shades, thanks. I just need it to be really dark to actually sleep well. This does the trick. 7.  Maybe you are someone whose body chemistry is attractive to mosquitos. Or maybe you like to go barefoot and, like me, you step on a dying honeybee camouflaged against the rug on your boat and the bee stings you with its last dying gasp. Either way this device has you covered. The Buerer Insect Bite Healer is an important piece of medical kit on our boat. It works with heat. You turn on the unit and gently press its wee circular ceramic plate over the bite or sting and it uses heat to neutralize the venom. It works. Goodbye sleepless nights scratching the itchy mosquito bites and the secondary infection you could get by clawing your skin to bleeding. Same with the bee sting. I rushed to use this on the sting on the bottom of my foot. For good measure, I did it twice. I’m not sure that was necessary, but what I AM sure about is that I suffered no more. No swelling, no tenderness. Two days later it began to itch a little bit. I used the Buerer and then the itching stopped. That’s all the treatment I needed. 8.  Lower your chances of being bitten by mosquitos aboard by using this rechargeable Thermacell unit. We have found this works very well when we are in areas rife with mosquitos. While the unit itself is not overly pricey, the refills are a bit steep. But we still recommend it because it works and it’s easy. We ordered some refills that will last us 120 hours. There is another kind of unit you can get that also works but uses these little pads filled with repellant. You can find instructions on the internet about how to recharge those yourself. We have a supply of the chemical on board and also one of those kinds of units. I find that the pads do not last very long, but they do work. Overall I prefer this rechargeable unit. The downside is that the refills are really expensive and not reusable (unless you are a lifestyle hacker like me and you won’t rest until you figure out a way to reuse that stupid plastic insert). 9.  Maybe, like we aboard Galapagos, you still have to wash clothes by hand. Perhaps, like us, you have not yet remodeled a space to fit one of those nifty Splendide washing machines like they use over on S/V Paragon. After watching this video over a hot tin of early Christmas Cookies last night, I’m not exactly bitter, but I did fall asleep wondering if the forward cabin is being put to enough use. Until I can convince Michael that our small amount of clothing warrants an actual washing machine and the overhaul that cabin would need in order to store one, I am relegated to doing the laundry by hand unless I pay someone else to do it for me (I’m looking at you, Mexico).
    And this is where the Free Pile at Swantown Marina came through for me. One day I happened upon a brand new Breathing Mobile Washer just sitting at the top of the ramp waiting to be adopted by a new home.  This thing takes the ‘plunger and a bucket’ concept to an entirely new level. When you push this device up and down in your bucket of laundry and soapy water, the suction it creates agitates the laundry most satisfyingly. It really pulls and pushes those clothes through the suds! To go with this treasure, I ordered a collapsible fish bucket. Why this fish bucket? Because it has a zippered top with a hole through which I could plunge my new washer, keeping most of the water IN the bucket. In addition, I figured I could load the thing with laundry and let it agitate gently as the boat sailed along, then use the hand washer to finish the load. While smaller than it looks on paper, it holds quite a lot of laundry. This system is working pretty well for me, but it’s not as nice as a Spendide washing machine would be. Still, it’s a lot cheaper. And, after all, we don’t have a lot of clothes and tend to wear the same thing for weeks at a time or until we begin to smell. 10.  Nothing says “I love you, baby” better than giving someone his own personal table for laptop, drink, or the occasional small collection of beach pebbles. As a 1970’s boat, everything on Galapagos seems overly beefy and heavy, which translates into hard-to-deploy. That’s why we took out the huge and heavy teak table in the salon and replaced it with a sleek and easy to maneuver around oval table. On the starboard side, if we wanted a table we’d be giving up a ready-to-nap settee by removing the center cushion and turning over what it rests upon, which is basically a nice coffee table. That’s too much work for us. We’re pretty lazy. Instead we bought this nice, lightweight aluminum table leg system from Lagun USA.  The beauty of this system is that it is completely removable. It also swings out of the way if someone wants to nap on that side of the salon. We like naps on Galapagos. We were in a hurry to leave the dock in Washington, so I found this second hand wooden tray at some thrift shop somewhere and it serves as a nice enough table top until we find something we like better. It’s a great addition. You’re welcome.

S/V Galapagos, standing by on Channel 16.

Adventures in Morro Bay: Well Heeled

And on the fifth day in Morro Bay, the adventure began. The word ‘adventure’ as used here means an event that will make a good story some day but while you are living it, the suck outweighs the fun in a dramatic fashion. This word, adventure, also means ‘things you already knew but somehow forgot and now they’ve made you feel like a chump’. But so it goes out here. As Captain Ron so famously said,  “Anythings gonna happen, it’ll happen out there.”  Or, in our case,  in nice little Morro Bay.

We awoke to a wonderful sunny day, bright with the promise of a long and leisurely walk in town; perhaps an espresso somewhere; or lunch. It was about 10:30 in the blessed AM when I hear Michael up in the cockpit turning on the chart plotter. “Hey, Melissa! I think we have a problem here.”.  Great. Those are just the very words I was longing to hear. I was not even dressed yet.  What was up?

“Our depth sounder is showing only 1.5 feet under the keel. We need to reset the anchor.”.

Oh. Ok. Well that’s not so bad. I mean, sure, a stiff wind had piped up from the east, which was a little strange. The other boats in the anchorage were sashaying around in a disorganized fashion. I noted S/V Copacetic was pulling up anchor. Maybe they were leaving. I wondered if they had checked weather as there was going to be a gale tomorrow. We got our headsets on and Michael went to the the windlass to prepare to pull the anchor up. I put the engine in gear and gave her some gas to move the boat forward, as we do when pulling up anchor. We like to baby the windlass when we can.

This time, the boat did not move. What the what? With 1.5 feet below the keel, we should have 7.5 feet of water under us. Not great, but enough to move out to deeper water. I push the engine to 2500 RPM. Nothing. She was definitely not moving. Shit “She’s not moving.” , I speak, without yelling, into the headset. Mike tries assisting with the windlass. He pops the breaker. I scurry below to reset that, my stress level rising. We are hard on the mud somewhere.

Back in the cockpit I radio the Harbor Patrol and ask them if they can come assist us. They send a guy on a paddle board, which stresses me out because the tide is falling rapidly and there is no way he is going to be helpful. But he gets out to us quickly and radios for a boat to come help. They are there quickly and I begin to breathe more easily. I have full confidence that they will be able to lend enough engine power that we’ll come off with no problem.

Paddle board guy was there in 2 minutes.

My confidence turns out to be badly misplaced. They do their very best, engines churning the water fiercely,  but, after all, the tide is swooshing out and we have a heavy boat. We are not going anywhere. They wave goodbye, with apologies for their failure, but everyone is good natured about it. This happens frequently in Morro Bay.  I mean, it could be worse. It could be rocks. Or coral. (Shudder.) This is just mud. We’ll be fine, if uncomfortable for a few hours. I mean, how bad can it be?

We prepare the boat for careening. Or falling over. Whichever term you prefer. We pull in the boom to the center position. Drop the dinghy into the water and tie it off to a cleat. We begin stowing things below as though we were preparing to go offshore in heavy wind. As I go below to stow some stuff I note that we can already feel the floor tilting a bit. Not a lot, but there is a definite tilt. We sigh; collectively. I close all the hatches on the low side, just in case we fall completely over somehow. I know we won’t but I do it anyhow. It is now 11:30. Low tide is around 4:00.

Today we will be the entertainment for Morro Bay. Oh well. It could be worse. It could be raining. We settle in to wait. The tide is still screaming out of the bay. It was almost high tide when we got stuck. Almost. After 4:00 things would begin to get better.

The whale watching boat. I hope they know Galapagos was not a beached whale. I waved happily as though we meant to do this, as though we were, perhaps, European or from the UK where to careen a boat is just the thing you do. Had I gotten out there with some bottom paint and started brushing it on, people would have just thought we were thrifty and smart. Missed opportunity.

As the boat begins to list gently to starboard, helped along by the 18-20 knots of cold wind blowing from the north by this time, I am doing well. I am handling things. Mike is in good spirits. We find the humor in our situation, which, as I say, could have been worse. We could have been in a location less populated and with no one to help. On rocks. Or with big waves crashing us around.  I turn the wheel hard to one side to lift the rudder up out of the water. I don’t want pressure on the rudder. We like our rudder.

As the inclinometer begins to inch toward 30 degrees of heel, I begin to feel ansty.  Things we have not yet noticed have begun to crash down below. Drawers that were not quite closed  suddenly open. Items stored behind closed cupboards crash into the doors, making us afraid of what we might find later. Things that have never moved from their places before begin to slide off Mike’s workbench. We go below and make another pass. It’s getting hard to walk down there.

A bit later in the day Michael would practice walking at an angle. Probably should have held the camera at 40 degrees for this shot. Maybe you can turn your head a bit. to get the full effect, which is, basically, an amazing core workout, Note  red stretchy band that is hanging straight down, as gravity causes it to do.

By the time the inclinometer reads 40 degrees my brain and my body are at odds with one another. My brains says, “You know this will be fine. It’s just mud. Galapagos is a heavy boat and well built. She will be fine. My body says ‘we should have reefed 20 degrees ago. We have too much sail up! This is dangerous! The boat is probably out of control!”. I am now fighting anxiety, which is what happens when your body’s signals do not match what your logical mind knows is true. I decide I better do some doom scrolling on my phone, so I set up in the cockpit and begin.

I mean, to be clear, I did not exactly sit. Because by this time we are heeled over 45 degrees so it’s more like I am hunched down in the cockpit bracing my legs in a semi crouched position. It’s not comfortable, but I’m trying to keep my weight on the high side, as though my weight will make any kind of difference in this situation. But everyone knows that when the boat is heeling you put your weight on the high side. So there you go. I’m doing my best here. I scroll through social media and the news and play a couple of mindless games, losing them all because I can’t concentrate. Good thing I’m not really a gambler.

As an aside, note Mike is wearing his coastal life vest in the photo above. We both spent the whole day wearing our PFDs, which could not have been more useless. Had we fallen overboard, we would have just stood up, muddy and possibly covered in eel grass. Maybe it’s just that when things feel weird a life vest seems like a good idea.


Still a great view! And I am so close to the birds on the mudflat, just like I wanted to be. Except the wind is very cold and blowing like fierce and I am not interested in sitting outside with the wind in my face.

It’s at about 50 degrees of heel that I suddenly decide to look up the tide for that evening.  I note that the high in the evening is going to be 3.76 feet. The tide that put us on the hard was 4.38 feet and Mike was seeing 1.5 feet beneath the keel. The math was not adding up for me. By my logic, we would need at least more than 1.5 feet under us in order to power off the mud. That would be 1.5 feet of water we probably were not going to get. My usual string of curse words sprang forth as I began to stress on the idea that we would not be getting off until the next morning, when the tide would rise to 4.75 feet at 10:01AM.  We might be spending the night at 55 degrees, and I do not mean fahrenheit. I was filled with dread at the thought. Not that I felt like anything would happen to the boat. Just that it would be a sleepless night. Which I hate.

One of the saddest sights a boat owner can have. Could have been worse. There could have been damage. There was none.

Right around slack tide some new friends from the anchorage dinghied over with wine and snacks. Liam and Heather from S/V Karma had come over earlier to meet us and chat and we enjoyed them a great deal. They are a young couple making their way on a small boat and having a grand time. They have already had a lot of interesting experiences and are truly cutting their teeth on the cruising lifestyle; solving issues, replacing an engine in Uclulet, British Columbia, and generally living their best lives. We could not be more pleased for them. Liam’s parents were here to visit and they came over as well. We were quickly joined by Zack and Lisa from S/V Copacetic (one of the greatest boat names ever). They are a young couple from Victoria, also cruising down to Mexico, and also embracing the kind of problem solving that will make them wildly successful as cruisers. These folks figured out how to make an auto pilot meant for tiller steering work on their wheel steering boat. I am in awe. We all yucked it up and toasted to the cruising life, even with ‘interesting’ experiences. We loved it. It was a very much needed respite from the stress of the day.

We were reminded of the time we were anchored somewhere in the northern Gulf Islands of British Columbia and we awoke to a sailboat in the anchorage; hard aground at low tide. We rowed over to talk to the couple, who were pretty stressed out. They had anchored many times in that same place and never had an issue. But something was different this time and when they awoke, they were aground on rocks. We climbed aboard with coffee and snacks and kept them company waiting for the tide to rise, which it always does. Now these new friends in Morro Bay had done the same for us. It was truly a bright spot in an otherwise fairly stressful day.

As we chatted and snacked, the tide turned and soon our toe rail was no longer under water. Not long after, the lower port in the midship cabin peeked above the water line. As the tide began to come in we started being hopeful, but I reminded Mike that this was not the ‘high’ high tide of the day. If we got off, we would be lucky. Mike noted that the bow had shifted a few degrees to starboard due to wind and current. He considered this an auspicious sign and who was I to argue?

Heather and Liam look over our hull and give us a barnacle report. Result: only a few small hangers on.

Once we were heeled only 20 degrees or so and things were feeling more normal, Mike got in the dinghy and took soundings around the boat with our portable depth sounder. It was clear that forward of midship, the water was deep enough. It was the rear of the boat that seem like it got over a small hill in the mud. As he climbed back aboard he said, ‘Too bad we have all that chain in the aft lazarette. ‘.

What?? I had completely forgotten about that. We added 200 feet of chain to that aft lazarette to add weight to the back of the boat when we took off the mizzen. I suggested we just take that to the bow, and he added that we should also take everything of weight to the bow. The fuel cans? To the bow. The generator? To the bow. The stainless steel swell damperner? The bow. Even the stern anchor and rode. We carried it all to the bow and crossed our fingers.

As the water crept up and the depth sounder approached 0.00, which would give us 6 feet, the amount of water we draw, we turned on the deck lights fore and aft so we could see better in the darkness. Mike cleared as much of the floating eel grass and kelp from the anchor chain as he could reach with the boathook. We turned on the engine, Mike put her in gear, and …..she budged. “She moved!” he shouted in my ear. I love our Sena headsets, but sometimes…Our hopes were rising with the tide.

It’s possible he took only two strides to reach the windlass. I was already in the cockpit and at the wheel, making sure our course was straight out, the rudder perfectly centered; this after examining the chart, the boat’s heading, the wind, and all the depths around us. It seemed like our best chance. I put her in gear and she moved enough for him to get the anchor bridle off. Then I gunned it quite suddenly, without even any drama,  we were free and floating in 16 feet of glorious water. I literally just gave her a quick burst of power and she drove right off like she was never stuck in the first place, like she was just joking around with us.

“You’re off! You’re off!” Mike shouted from the bow as cheers erupted from the crowded cockpit on S/V Karma.

Still clearing weed from the anchor rode, we tarried a few minutes in the anchorage, then went further in and got anchored for the night. We were both pretty stressed and tired, mostly from trying to move around a boat heeled that far over. There is no place to walk when the floor is at 55 degrees. We got full body workouts all day long.

This morning we upped anchor, got pumped out, and then picked up the last mooring ball, close to our personal friends the sea lions. A gale has been blowing outside the harbor and we’ve been glad to just have a day of rest. Galapagos got through her ordeal in fine form; no harm, no foul. The fuel filters are fine (we worried about muddy water in the intake). We learned that roofing tape is, indeed, very water tight as the midship viewing port did not leak a drop.

Last night we had a celebration party aboard Galapagos, our first real social time since we left the dock in Olympia way back in August. We had Lisa and Zack from S/V Copacetic out of Victoria, Mark from S/V Eva G from Seattle, Heather and Liam from S/V Karma from Seattle and Liams parents, Grant and Kate, who are here visiting. It was a real party and we stayed up well past our bedtimes without even realizing it. It was worth being on the mud for a day just to bring all these fine people together aboard Galapagos, swapping stories, sharing resources, talking books and boats.

No post with dramatic photos of a boat on its side would be complete without examining the mistakes we made that resulted in this fiasco. So what did we forget, that we absolutely already knew? Here’s the low down:

1). We’d been in this anchorage for 4 days. It was time to reset the anchor, just like in Mexico in La Paz. Just like in La Cruz. There is a lot of current running through here, so the boat swings 180 degrees twice daily. In addition, winds had clocked around from several different directions. Reset the damn anchor, Team Galapagos. Reset the damn anchor.

2). There is a ton of free floating eel grass and some kelp. The anchor chain is quickly wrapped in it. All the more reason to pull anchor, clear the chain, and reset. It is hard to overstate how much weed floats through here.

3). Did we drag? No. We did not. What we did, though, is fail to realize how the low tides were changing day to day with the waxing of the moon. Even 4 days made a big difference in how close we were to the mudflat, and it gets shallow really quickly. Had the wind not been blowing like stink from the east, we would have been fine. But when that wind shifted it basically put us on a lee shore. The back of the boat floated over a hump, and the rest is history. It took a very short amount of time for this to happen.  We also learned, from a local boat captain, that during the big storm of January 2023, winds and rains were so intense that the depth charts are no longer accurate in parts of the bay. That jives with what some other cruisers were seeing, and with our experience in places. The sands do shift.

4) This is a small anchorage. When we pulled in, we had no choice about where to put the anchor. It was either put it down where we did, or go to a mooring. At that time we  had plenty of water under the keel (see #4). The first 5 days of anchoring are free here. After that it’s about 18$/day, more or less. We put down the anchor. Harbor patrol thought we were fine where we were and also gave us the option of anchoring just outside the channel, since there were other boats that may have been too close otherwise. As the low tides get lower with the waxing of the moon, the useable part of the anchorage gets smaller. When a 4th boat showed up,  that would have been a good time to take stock of where we were and get to the mooring ball.

Ouch. Nothing bruised but our egos. We could have cleaned the hull but it was too cold and windy. Also the hull is pretty clean anyhow. Good to know.

We’ve taken our lumps and kept our sense of humor with this. Harbor patrol was out today and I hailed them to motor over to the boat so I could thank them for trying to help us out yesterday. They were glad to see we had got off and had no damage. As they said, in parting, “If you haven’t been aground, you haven’t been around!”. True words. This was a first for us, and we hope it will be the last. But if not, I know which drawers to check to see they are firmly closed.

The neighbors on the mooring ball.

S/V Galapagos, floating and standing by on Channel 16. We made it to San Miguel Island and are now technically in Southern California and wearing shorts.