Monthly Archives: November 2023

It’s That Time of Year, Again

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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.

Catalina Island Rocks

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That’s right. We’re still here. After anchoring at Cat Harbor for, what, a week? Longer?, we moved on and found this sweet anchorage at Goat Harbor on the other side of the island. We have had it all to ourselves for four days, maybe five. Who’s counting?  We have good holding, reasonable protection from the winds we have had so far, peaceful nights of sleep and, most importantly, beaches with rocks. Three of them. I have spent many happy hours loitering around looking at the rocks on exhibit here and rooting around in the little arroyos. Our next stop will be somewhere more “civilized”, so why hurry away? This is why we are out here cruising.

Our next stop will be somewhere San Diego-ish and we will be looking for a place to leave the boat while we go home for the holidays. We had planned to leave the boat in Mexico, but, turns out, we need to replace our batteries and this time we will be going with Lithium and considerably increasing the number of amp hours we have available. That’s a project most easily accomplished in the states, so leaving the boat here is on the table right now if we can find a place that is even mildly reasonably priced.

Would Mexico be cheaper? A bit, especially if we forgo staying in the resort marina. But we would also either have to bring the boat back to San Diego to do the work or take a chance that we have everything we need to do the project in Mexico. Although we likely could find what we might need in Mexico, that can become an ‘adventure’ in product sourcing. In addition, we’d need to negotiate getting back to the US to fly home and while it’s pretty easy to do that, it’s just another logistical piece we wouldn’t have to deal with if we stay here a bit longer.  Once we make a decision about batteries and who we are buying from, we will know about the timeline for ordering, and then everything else should fall into place. Either move on down Mexico way or stay stateside. Crossing fingers on that.

 

Does it not seem like goats would enjoy all that sweet green grass on the hills? We saw a deer way up at the top, but no goats yet.

Although we have not seen any goats here, Goat Harbor is one of the sweetest anchorages we’ve ever enjoyed. Here are a number of photos, just taken with my phone, of the wonders of rocks that abound here.

That beautiful Catalina Blue Schist, and some sandstone. The blue of this schist is like the blue of the deep ocean. I’ve never seen rocks this beautiful shade of blue. Also, this sandstone! Wow!

Blue and green schist, formed at different temperatures, and therefore different colors, and again with this unspeakably lovely sandstone.

This sandstone! Am I right?

Yes, it’s really these colors of purple, yellow, cool white. I just get a little gaga over this stuff.

A close up of this area that I swear someone with consciousness had a hand in designing. Unreal.

But wait! There’s more. You are lucky I did not photograph literally every single rock on the beach or in the arroyo because I’m telling you there were no losers here. None. They were all beautiful.

How’d this little guy get in there? Ok, he can stay.

The metamorphic folding on this guy! This was the entire side of one area of the beach. I would take a class in Geology if they didn’t use so many big words that I literally would not remember. I wonder if I could find one where they just explain things to me like I am 5 years old listening to storytime. I would remember it that way.

I love that there are three different beaches all easy rowing distance from our boat. I would like to stay longer, but we are running out of fuel for the generator. Stupid dying batteries.

Ok I won’t make you look at more. S/V Galapagos standing by on channel 16. (Lying. We have it turned off for now. So peaceful.)

 

 

Catalina Island: Four Wheel Drive Edition

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The last time I checked in on the blog, we were cooling our heels in Morro Bay. Since then we’ve spent a wonderful week at San Miguel Island and then did an overnight passage to Catalina Island in advance of yet another gale. It was really too bad. We didn’t want to leave San Miguel Island. We’ve been lucky there twice with extended beautiful weather and we had the island to ourselves for several days this time around after all our friends left the anchorage. We got in some lovely snorkeling and also spent a night at anchor on the west side of the island so we could visit with even more seals. I wish we’d been able to stay a few more days.

Approaching the back side of Catalina Island in the early morning.

We arrived here last Sunday morning after a peaceful night passage and due to my work schedule, today was our first day to have the entire day to do some hiking. This island is lousy with hiking opportunities. And thus it came to pass. We took the dinghy to the beach in our anchorage at Catalina Harbor and decided to hike to the top of the hill for the view.

The last time we were here, Kevin and Cressie Baerg were also here on their boat S/V Blue. Back then we took the main trail, which is actually a road, from Two Harbors up, up, up the hill and into the desert. Mexico has nothing on Catalina Island when it comes to scrublands. What I remember about that hike is that the road went pretty much straight up into the heat for infinity miles. No one can keep up with Kevin as he flits from one rise of the road to the next like a hummingbird goes from flower to flower. It seemed effortless for him. It was…not…effortless for me and although that was 5 years ago, my memory of how punishing the road was is still strong. I did not want to do that again. It did not sound like the kind of fun I was after.

Michael observes that Galapagos is where we left her. She is the furthest to the left in the photo.

It seemed to me the best choice, since our destination was pretty much right above the anchorage, was to take what I call the ‘goat trail’ up the side of the small but mighty mountain. This way, I would have switchbacks to follow and could enjoy looking at rocks in the dried mud on the way up. I will do a lot to observe rocks in their natural habitat.

I am never more wrong than when I am trying to keep a good thought.

We view the peak from the aft deck. It beckons the way a demon whispers in your ear.

We started out strong. Although the path was steep, it was not difficult and I was feeling chuffed about choosing this route. I stepped in a lively fashion, avoiding ankle-breaking holes, knee-twisting loose gravel,  and sticker bushes. I figured the switchbacks would begin right about where I thought I could see a level place in the terrain further up the hill. Turning around I could see Galapagos below us in the blue of the sea. I thought I could hear her laughing but figured it was probably just my imagination. Maybe altitude sickness was beginning early. I hear it’s a problem for the aged and infirm.

Soon I was in a sort of trance with my steps beating out a regular cadence as we climbed up further. Michael was behind me and that fact encouraged me to keep moving smartly because if I let him lead he would surely just leave me behind. To get around me he would have to get off the trail and considering the slope and the precipitous drop on one side, that would probably not be a good idea. The wind was blowing maybe 10 knots; just enough to make me worry about being blown over. I put my head down and carried on.

I stopped to take a couple of photos and slow the heart rate down. Looking up, it seemed maybe we were about halfway there but I could not be sure. I noticed some wild dill growing and decided it would be nice to have a few leaves to put in a chicken salad later on. This excuse to tarry gave Michael the chance to get around me; a mixed blessing as now I would take my time but also he would quickly outpace me. Oh well. I sort of trusted him not to leave me to die alone on that hill so I told him to yell when he found the switchbacks. This was a good time to reapply my lip sunscreen. Maybe have a drink of water.  Alas, this hill would not climb itself. I recommenced.

After a good while, who knows how long, I came to an awareness of Michael standing on the hill above me and shouted, “Did you find the switchbacks? Are you at the top now?”. It was not to be. He just wanted to warn me that the goats had deserted us, taking their clear path with them,  and that this part of the ‘trail’ had been washed out, leaving a large and irregular gully of dirt and rock and, if humanly possible, an even steeper incline. He turned and continued on, leaving me to it.

I observed the terrain in front of me, craning my neck and holding onto my battered sombrero as I looked at Michael’s tiny figure above me. I turned and observed the terrain behind me, wee Galapagos winking in the sun on the water below. I was not going back down the way I came. No way. There was nothing for it but to continue on. Had I not promised myself that I would make better life choices, that I would consider my actions before taking them?  Had I not begun to realize that with the passage of time came the responsibility to be more careful with this body of mine so as to avoid injury? The answers are yes and yes, and yet, there I was on the side of this steep hell. But hey, I’m no quitter and besides, I brought water and a snack due to thinking ahead. I might roll down the hill to my death, blown over by the infernal wind,  but by God I would not starve out here or die of thirst.

Michael trudges in an upright position. I feel unstable just watching. Do you see the top of that rise ahead of him? Don’t be tempted to think that’s the top of the hill. It isn’t. It’s just this hill’s version of a mean prank.

Taking the measure, once more of the angle of heel of this slope, as well as what I strongly believed was loose gravel/rocks, I felt there was little choice about my next move.  I dropped to all fours and began a small meditation, if not prayer, as I scrambled. “Watch where you place your hand. Be aware of snakes. Watch where you place your foot. Check to see the rock is stable before putting your weight on it. Do not look up or down, just keep going. Watch out for those dratted sticker bushes because they hurt like hell. One hand for you, one hand for the hill. ” Simian-like, I crept up this part of the hill, Michael way above me somewhere in the distance, having trudged upright like other human beings. Time ceased to exist as I meditated my way toward the light.

These are dreadful and remind me of the kinds of stickers we used to have in the grass in Texas. Vile things.

I have no idea how far that part of the “trail” was. The change in elevation is about 1000 feet total. But I do know this: those step trackers that tell you how many steps you walked that day are complete and utter bullshit under these conditions. A person should get credit for at least double the steps if they have been using all four limbs in order to propel their body through time and space. Anyone who does not believe we share common ancestors with the great apes has never scaled a vertical rocky wash on all fours.

As I breached the top of the four-wheel-drive portion of the climb, I saw Michael standing on the road at the top. He had found the switchback. There was only one. It was almost at the very top and it had a large sticker bush smack in the middle of it. I feel like that was really unfair and that we deserved better at that point.

At the little picnic table on the landing we had our snacks and remembered being there before with Kevin and Cressie. That had been a grand day in spite of the grueling uphill climb on the road. This would be the road we would take back to the boat. As it turned out, my memory of that road was 100% correct. It was very steep, and very long. For us that meant downhill almost the whole way.

Almost back to the dinghy. Nice and flat. My knees tried to recover from the long downhill walk.

For the rock lovers, Catalina Island is home to this beautiful Blue Schist. It’s really, truly that lovely shade of blue. Magnificent.

 

We will be here a while longer as some good snorkeling weather is coming up. We’ll be taking advantage of that while we allow the sea to support our weary legs and heal the toll gravity has taken on them.

S/V Galapagos, standing by on channel 16