Category Archives: Boat Living

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.

Adventures in Morro Bay: Well Heeled

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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.

Galley On the Go

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Tonight Michael is sitting across from me on our deep settee, brow furrowed over the decision that is before him: which bottom paint shall we use this time? That’s right, it’s time to haul the boat for a new paint job. In fact, it’s well overdue, much to our shame. So haul the boat we will. This month. That will begin on October 17, Gods willing and weather cooperating.

One day of fun actually SWIMMING in Puget Sound. Actually. Swimming. Weird. Look Ma! No wetsuit.

But wait! There’s more! Tomorrow we leave the slip for the first time in 2 years! Huzzah! Are we going cruising? No we are not. Are we anchoring out for a night, just to remember what that feels like? Nope. Will we raise a sail? HAHAHA! You jest. Those sails are stored at the house. No, we will leave the dock and drift over to the boatyard to have the masts pulled. The sad thing is that this makes us all kinds of excited. The bar for excitement for us, after two years of land life, is so terribly low. Nobody warns you about this when you return to land; that your life will feel so mundane that taking your boat to the yard will be dead exciting. Let me be the first to inform you.

See those wooden shims? Those drove us insane on our voyage to Hawaii. Having dried out when the boat was in Mexico, they squeaked constantly and loudly. Squirting soapy water up into that space about hourly helped loads. Those will be replaced with something else. Something that doesn’t make noise.

Anyhow, here we are excited to get some work done. Making sure our hydraulic steering pump is in good shape and having brand new lines for the fluid was on the lengthy ‘to do’ list and so we had Summers Marine come and pull the steering pump out and send it off to be rebuilt. When the refurbished pump was put back, Mike and Jonathan, our steering guy, bled the air from the system. They bled and bled and bled the lines, getting all the little air bubbles out. Then the system sat for a couple of weeks until Mike turned the engine on tonight and tested out the transmission to reassure ourselves it had not forgotten how to go into reverse and then back into forward gear.

He gave the wheel a few turns. My ears pricked up. He turned the wheel a few more times. Yes, I definitely heard a growling sound that I didn’t like. If my ears can hear it, by definition the noise is loud. More and more turning, a lot more loud growling from the steering mechanism, and pretty soon Michael was in the aft cabin ripping the place apart so he could get to the steering ram and see what was up. Ah, the sweet sound of cushions being tossed around and boards being moved aside! It sure took me back to all those good times where we  (And by ‘we’, I mean ‘Mike’)  were fixing boat things in picturesque anchorages.

Our pump is so old that it can actually be rebuilt. So while the casing looks worn, the innards are new. Shiny new lines!

It sounds like after sitting for awhile, some residual air bubbles have found each other and they are making a hell of a racket while also possibly making the steering a bit stiff. Tomorrow we will pull the masts. And then we will sit at the work dock and bleed that damn system some more. I hope that solves the problem. Otherwise, Jonathan is on standby in case we need him to come on down for a visit. Are we cruising yet? Because it’s starting to feel like we are.

Anyway, I want to get back into the habit of writing this stuff down, now that we are approaching things like mast pullings and boat haul outs. Finally, it feels like we have a lot to report on. Mike has been on a veritable shopping spree for gear and boat parts. New radar (Garmin, to play with our chart plotter), new halyards, a new shaft seal, wind instruments, AIS transceiver, two hatches… and that’s just as of today. We will be making major changes to certain parts of the boat and will write more about those as they happen. We’re are hiring out some fiberglass work to give us proper scuppers to clear water off the decks more easily and to add a radar pole with an outboard engine davit to the aft deck of the boat. We are even working with our rigger to re-work the way the boat is rigged and make sailing her easier for aging sailors who want to stay aboard for as long as possible. The month of October will be interesting and expensive.

As summer is giving way to shorter days and cooler nights, the galley aboard Galapagos is cooking more than usual and frankly it’s easier for me to get my head around the goings on in that space than it is for me to think about the huge number of projects we need to accomplish in the next month and all the big decisions that are waiting to be made.

So I’m easing myself back into the habit of writing by putting together a list of my favorite and most relied upon galley gadgets and tools. These are things I reach for regularly; things that really do make life in a tiny kitchen easier. We are planning to leave the dock next spring. I look forward to using all of these while lying at anchor in a nice cove somewhere; probably while Michael rips cabins apart with his bare hands, chasing down the inevitable puzzling noises that might indicate trouble. I’m ready! Let’s go!

So here are my top ten most-loved galley gadets and gear:

  1. Number one on my list lately is my nifty jumbo sized silicone baking cups. Who knew what a game changer these would be? These are sturdy and hold their shape well, even when filled with batter. Easy to clean, they save me the much-loathed task of cleaning muffin tins. I hate cleaning muffin tins, and I also dislike those little paper inserts, which make more trash anyhow. Dirty muffin tins always seem to sit in the sink, filled with water, in the vain hope that a dishwashing fairy might come and allow me to avoid dealing with them. Alas; the disappointment is always real. Honestly, whenever the mood for muffins arises, I always have to weigh the desire for a tasty morsel with the dreaded dirty muffin tin left behind. No more! These are sturdy enough to stand up to meatloaf or my special egg/sausage/cheese/onion handheld breakfast “muffins” I make for passages. I could probably even bake yeast rolls in them. I like them so much I am tempted to buy them in the smaller size as well. These get bonus points for taking up a lot less room than muffin tins. 
  2. Our new 10.25″ cast iron skillet with lid (sold separately); made in the USA. We have been cooking with a cast iron skillet at home for 40 years. A little thing like moving aboard a boat was unlikely to change that. In fact, when we first moved aboard we brought along our 12″ skillet, a well seasoned cooking tool that we literally used every single day. That skillet had been aboard since we first moved onto the boat and was still in perfect condition. No, it did not rust. (Too much oil on it!) Why did I take that skillet home, ignoring Michael’s tears of grief as he watched me stow it in the cart to carry up to the car? Because it was too big. We have a 4 burner Force 10 stove. That skillet took up 1.5 burners and every time we wanted to do anything OTHER than cook with the skillet, it had to find another place to stay for awhile. I was tired of it. I was tired of putting it on the floor of the shop so I could have a saucepan instead.  Forget about using my pressure cooker if the skillet was at home.  I could not use three burners at a time because that skillet was taking up more than its fair share of burner space. So, after carefully measuring our space, I determined that this  10-ish inch skillet would fit better and would still be more than large enough for us. Only thing was that Michael would have to spend a few years scraping the iron down to a perfectly flat surface for his everyday omelettes. He is learning to live with it. Don’t be afraid to bring your cast iron skillet on board. Nothing cooks better eggs.
  3. Our crock pot. I use this a lot, even underway. Sure, I’ve learned that I cannot overfill it, and it’s best to put it in the sink if we are sailing. Sure, I learned that the hard way. And I actually DO wish that it had a locking lid. But it’s small enough that I can store it and it doesn’t heat up the galley like using the stove; at least not as badly. I use it frequently. It draws little power so our inverter hardly feels a thing as it bubbles along. And it’s great to have a hot dinner ready when we pull into an anchorage after a long day.
  4. Our insulated wine tumblers with lids, made by Rabbit and found at Costco for literally 10$ less than the Amazon price. An impulse purchase, they are proof that my impulses are sometimes good. They keep the beverage cold. Ice keeps overnight in these little tumblers, at least in the Pacific Northwest Summer. Highly recommended. Plus they are really cute and the perfect size for not only my hands, but for the cup holders at the steering pedestal!

    Image absolutely stolen from Amazon. But this is the set we have.

  5. And speaking of ice, these Komax ice cube trays with locking lids have solved the problem of safely making ice aboard a moving boat. We love them. They do not leak and they stack easily in our freezer. We tried a couple of other varieties of locking ice cube trays but were not happy with any of them because the lids leaked. These cubes are small, but that’s ok.

    Ack! Another stolen image from Amazon! Go buy these so they don’t get their knickers in a twist.

  6. The Omnia Stovetop Oven. Honestly, if this had not been a gift, I’m not sure I would have sprung for it. The cost seemed excessive to me for what you get: an aluminum pan and lid, sitting on a steel ring. The gift package I was given also included a silicone insert and a storage bag.  Turns out, this is a great galley addition! My first foray into Omnia cooking was roasting stuffed peppers. Instead of using the silicone insert, I lined the little oven with foil for ease of cleaning and so that the peppers would crisp up. They turned out perfectly! I then tried a brownie mix and that, too, was good. The silicone insert made cleanup very easy with the brownies. I’m excited to weave this into our repertoire as we get going again. And I’m thinking next up will be some kind of muffins using the jumbo silicone muffin cups listed above.

    This image could be from anywhere. But this is what the oven looks like.

  7. Under the category of ‘has stood the test of time’, my little Briefton’s manual food processor is the decided winner.  I bought this before the first big trip, in 2017, and it whips up delicious pico de gallo fast and easy. This was before we added a larger inverter to the boat. I could probably use my Cuisinart now, a real food processor. But I prefer to save the space once we have left the dock and leave the Cuisinart at home.

    I took this photo myself.

    8.  Our Fagor “Elegant Belly” design pressure cooker. Yes, that’s right. This shape is referred to as the ‘elegant belly’ and I actually find this very satisfying. This is an old school manual pressure cooker and is the perfect size for making soups and rice, or beans, or whatever. I never thought I would use it much, but I actually do. I have a fancy Instant Pot, and that’s a nice tool, but it’s too big for my kitchen so I left that at the house. I can make rice in about 3 minutes in this pot. Mine does not have that big handle that is shown in the photo from Amazon below. I’m glad. That looks like it takes up too much space.

    Amazon’s photo show the lovely shape of this pot.

    9.  Our set of nesting Magma non-stick pots. These have really held up over time. We bought these when we had our Cal 34, Moonrise, so about 15 years ago. While I don’t use the skillet (because…cast iron is better) or the soup pot (because my Fagor Elegant Belly has a locking lid), the saucepans are used regularly. They heat up evenly and quickly, and they hold the heat for awhile when the fire is turned off. The finish can still be wiped clean or just given a quick rinse. They seemed expensive to us back then, but I’m glad we spent the money on them.

    10.  This useful collapsing silicone bowl with a handle. I have no idea who made this, or where or even when I bought it. The silicone is yellowing with age and use. Mike uses this literally every day to whip up the eggs for his breakfast. I use this on the occasions when I want to mix up a small amount of a batter. I expect it to crack at a fold pretty much any day now and I’ve been scouring the interweb for a replacement to no avail. This bowl is used so frequently that I generally do not even bother putting it away in the cabinet. If you ever see one of these bowls, let me know right away! And if, early one morning, you hear a high, long, piercing wail of despair coming from the west, it could be that Michael has discovered the death of his beloved silicone mixing bowl.

    WANTED: A 2 cup measuring bowl like this. The handle has multiple positions, it collapses flat to store. Might come in different colors.