If I’m going to have posts, plural,  named Afternoon Gin, I suppose I need to write more than one.  Lately I’ve been monitoring my gin intake and have decided that I need to cut back. This is a sentence I never thought I would need to write. But the delicious nature of the gin and tonic as a beverage, and the subtle yet real pain relief I get in my upper back from having one at the end of the day conspire to make me understand, for the first time ever, how a person might become accustomed to a drink every day. Not to worry. I will not be sliding into the unconscious medicinal use of alcohol. I’m just saying that for the first time ever I understand how such a thing might be possible for people.

I’ve been doing a lot of walking lately. We have only one car, and we like it that way. Overall, cars are not only expensive, they’re a pain in the ass. In fact, the car we have is the same old Mazda van we drove down to Mexico a few years ago and left to languish in a field during the hot Mexican summer one year. That may have been an unfortunate choice for the car, which has always felt delicate since then. Lately we have been planning a road trip of some length and the car needs some work, so I have been carless while it is in the shop.

Did you know that the average car payment is now over 700$? I read that on NPR so it must be true. All I can think is, “Oh, hell no.”

Here’s an interesting result of being carless: when I dropped the car off a couple of days ago, I locked the door and handed over the keys to the mechanic, put on my hat and sunglasses, and set off to walk the 3 miles back to the boat, doing errands along the way. I felt positively free. That’s right. In a city of cars, in a culture where one is actually judged by the type of car they drive, I felt free as I walked away from our old Mazda van with the “You are a God Damn Magical Unicorn” sticker on the bumper and the plastic dashboard Jesus in the cabin. It occurred to me to wonder if I would still feel that way if it were over 100 degrees outside. Probably not. Walking three miles in 65 degrees is easy. In the heat, it’s a long way. I may enjoy walking, but I’m not unAmerican about it.

You do see a lot more of city life when you walk places. This is a mixed blessing. I avoid grown looking men on tiny bicycles. Sometimes this means I cross the street more often than is strictly necessary.

Also, there are three excellent bakeries within two miles of Galapagos. Three. One of them French. Two of them are uphill on the way, but downhill as you are eating your fattening (I mean flakey..) pastry.

Then there are people in cars doing questionable things. No, not that kind of questionable thing, although once in California I saw something going on in a car that I absolutely wish I had not seen. I mean, could they not have waited? Was having middle aged people walking close by the car part of their excitement? Was it a shock value thing? Or were they just so narcissistic that they thought people would enjoy watching them exhibit themselves? Maybe they thought we were too old to know what they were doing. We weren’t, more’s the pity. Or maybe they were just so, again, narcissistic that they felt like their exhibitionism was their right.  These were people I did not wish to know. I am glad to have left them in California.

And that makes me think about the time I was in another grocery store parking lot and came upon a man quite thoroughly enjoying himself with his pants down and his car door wide open. I’m pretty sure he was not targeting me with his need to have people witness his pathetic self. But I happened to be there. It’s one of those times I thought, later of course, of all the cutting things I wanted to say to him right in the moment. But the moment passed, fragile with shock, filled with disgust,  and I went away wishing I had passed by 5 minutes later. Or maybe 20 minutes. He seemed to be having trouble.

No, this was a different kind of questionable thing. I was standing at the crosswalk outside the Thriftway and yacht club down by the water, waiting to cross the street. I noticed the traffic coming out of the parking lot was stopped, even though the light was green. Then I noticed why. The first car in line, a white 4 door Jeep of late-ish vintage, was being driven by a man in his early 40’s or so. He had dark hair, looked like he was well groomed, kind of sporty looking, and had a big golden retriever, or maybe it was a yellow lab. I got confused about the dog because I was distracted by the fact that he was pointing his phone directly at me and taking my photo. WTF, dude? Why are you taking a photo of an older woman in a blue hat and sunglasses,  pulling a little grocery cart packed with the gleanings of her errands, and walking back to her boat? I am not a tourist attraction, mister. It was…unsettling. I mean, why? What’s he going to do with that photo? Do I want to know? And if he makes money off it, should I not be offered my cut? Is he a fricking weirdo? I gestured wildly at him as he put his foot on the pedal and turned left. I hope he saw me. Or maybe I hope he didn’t. I’m not sure, actually. I don’t carry a gun. Maybe I should. No. I definitely should not.

I think it’s important to note that I don’t believe for a moment that any of these experiences were targeted at me personally. I mean, walking through the fields of life, you’re bound to step in a few cow patties along the way. They’re there. You can’t always see them before you step in them. These men in cars? They are just cow pies to me. I rinse off my shoes and carry on. It’s not my job to take care of their karmic debts.

I’m continuing to work on refinishing the teak dodger. Five years from now I’m probably still going to be working on that because I can only do about an hour or so at a time before I start hurting. At this point, all the wood is at an angle, most of it above my shoulders. Part of me wonders if I can just go to sea and let the old paint and varnish  wear off naturally, sanded away by salt and wind. The outside looks good. Just don’t come aboard and we’ll both be happy.

Mike removed the windlass from the aft deck. It’s a great windlass but we have only used it twice and during one of those times we determined that it was too dangerous for us to use it regularly. We were anchored off one of the islands at the mouth of the Sea of Cortez and we engaged in what is commonly known as a ‘shit show’ with that windlass. It was dark. It was windy. It was not pretty or safe. We are having to make a lot of decisions about how this boat is outfitted so we can move forward with phase two of the cunning plan. I am glad we have some experience using the boat the way we, personally, use it. The removal of the windlass is one of those decisions I hope we don’t regret, but if we do, so be it. We have other ways of setting a stern anchor if we absolutely want one, and removing it makes way for a radar pole. You can’t have everything on any boat.

We  found a really nice radar pole set up at Longship Marine, the used marine goods chandlery in Poulsbo, WA. It cost us easily less than a third of a new aluminum pole and it came with a stout davit we can use to lift the outboard. I am thrilled that it’s made of aluminum and doesn’t require polishing.  The davit is another one of those modifications we hope will allow us to sail more gracefully into our older years. See what I did there?

We got out of Poulsbo’s Longship Marine for less than 1000$. For that we got: the aluminum pole/davit system, a set of Magma Rock and Roll stainless steel stabilizers for all those rolly anchorages where other people throw out a stern anchor, a dinghy swim ladder, a personal locator beacon, some mahogany for finishing out the hatch in the galley, a huge EasyStow inflatable fender (10$! I was so excited!), and a hefty stainless receiver piece to sit that aluminum pole into (after we isolate the two metals, or course). We felt positively smug. Then we went for celebratory ice cream.

The removal of the windlass revealed some wet core in that area, probably as a result of the time we were docking this beast down in Astoria and the transmission stuck in reverse, causing us to hit a big steel fishing boat behind us. That was a very bad day. Anyway, Mike cut the fiberglass (it’s really thick, you guys) and scraped out the rotted wood. We’ve had some gentle heat on it since then, drying everything out really well. He’s going to replace the wood with a piece of Divinycell core material and epoxy. They had some Divinycell at the local chandlery, in their new consignment section. I hope that place takes off. It’s easy walking distance to the boat.

Oh, by the way… that bid we got for replacing the whole exhaust pipe? 1700$.  Um. Yet another “Hell No!”  from Team Galapagos. We were supposed to get two bids: one for replacing the flexible coupling and one for an entire new exhaust pipe. We got one bid, for the new pipe, then had to ask for the other bid. 450$ to replace the O’Reilly coupling. We opted to replace the O’Reilly because the pipe was still in good enough condition that we don’t actually need a new one. Seriously, do we look like people who just throw money at a problem? I mean, did he SEE our van? 2002, baby! Even our plastic dashboard Jesus is showing wear.

Lately my Facebook feed has been filled with ads that include recipes for yummy looking mixed drinks. It’s like the algorithm finally, after all these years, got it right.

Michael is cursing from the shower, where he is changing out a faucet. I heard banging before the many very specific words. This doesn’t sound good. I need to run.

 

S/V Galapagos, standing by. Sort of. I mean, our radio isn’t actually hooked up right now.