Category Archives: Cruising Life

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.

In Search of Sharks

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We’ve made it all the way to Monterey, where we sit at anchor in the bay thinking about our life choices of the last couple of weeks. Overall things have been pretty good, with the exception of a number of nights rolling around in swells and getting no sleep. We generally hope for the best when at an anchorage we know is going to be a bit rolly, but expect the worst. That way we are not disappointed when laying awake at 2 in the blessed AM. Our last such anchorage was near Capitola, California, in a part of the bay known to locals as “Shark Park”. If only the sacrifice had been worth the effort.

Cute beach places in Capitola. We were warned about the anchorage there. The warnings were absolutely wrong and it was lovely.

As the name implies, this part of the bay is known to be home to many young white sharks, or, as I like to refer to them, Toddler Sharks. Not yet weaned to eating mammals, they gravitate to warmer waters because their natural ability to maintain a warmer body temperature has not yet fully developed. White Sharks are endothermic, meaning they are not really the “cold blooded” killers they are reputed to be. Here in the bay they grow big and strong on a diet of small fish and rays and such, leaving the local surfers alone, before heading to Hollywood to star in horror films that will terrorize generations of people and lead them to misunderstand an entire genus.  This part of the bay has water that is warm enough for baby sharks,  and apparently, due to climate change, this temperature is increasing.  We learned of this from a couple of local folks, blog readers even, who paddled out to Galapagos to say howdy and view our messy boat. They told us where the sharks congregated and thus a plan was hatched in my brain.

Pomarine jaegar chases Elegant Tern. The Capitola anchorage has great bird watching.

Here’s a Common Tern going for the kill. There were at least three types of Terns at Capitola. Nice!

We pulled up anchor at comfortable Capitola and toodled a mile or so further into the bay to see us some sharks. I charged the batteries for my camera. Not to put too fine a point on it, in the end I was extremely disappointed in the lack of sharks. I’m sure they were under the water somewhere, but we never saw even a fin, much less a tooth. I mention this because we had spent a very uncomfortable night rolling around in the swells in Shark Park just so we might get a peek at a fishy fin and we could check that off the old bucket list. I even got up early in the morning; something just unheard of unless it is ABSOLUTELY necessary, so that the water would be calm and the viewing better. In fact, I lost sleep at the Capitola anchorage not due to swells, but due to my excitement over possibly seeing a Great White Shark, even if small. The Capitola anchorage was very comfortable. But it did not offer sharks.

Instead, I saw Grebes. I saw Western Grebes at Shark Park. Of course, I do like Grebes as they are very interesting birds. But, frankly, I do not have to leave Puget Sound in order to see Grebes.  I was disgusted enough that I didn’t even photograph a Grebe.  This was our second attempt at shark sighting. I will not be deterred.

Our first attempt was also a magnificent fail. We sailed (and by this I mean ‘motored’ because of the lack of enough wind to get this heavy boat going) over to the Farallon Islands when we left Drake’s Bay. The thought was that Great White Sharks would surely be frolicking around the anchorage at Southeast Farallon Island, dining on sea lions. To be fair, this is an area known for Great Whites, even exceptionally large Great Whites. Maybe there was a chance of seeing one.

Approaching the anchorage.

Pinnipeds in the sea. Do you see any likely places to land? Neither do I. I'm not sure what the scientists are so concerned about.

Pinnipeds in the sea. Do you see any likely places to land? Neither do I. I’m not sure what the scientists are so concerned about.

Stark and forbidding, Southeast Farallon Island rises from the sea like something out of The Isle of Dr. Moreau. It’s basically a series of big rocks with thousands of pinnipeds keeping company with sea birds; mostly pelicans and cormorants. The usual suspects. I imagine that there are other interesting birds there, too, but only the researchers, or people with really great binoculars, are allowed to see them so we only have their word for it. No one else is allowed to land on the island, as if they could anyhow. There is no way. It’s actually laughable to even consider it, if you are the kind who laughs at other people’s death wishes.

However, in spite of the ‘no landing for civilians’ rule, Fisherman Bay is a marked anchorage on Southeast Farallon and we wanted to check it out. As we approached the bay the sea lions started their bellowing barking calls to all that would hear that a boat was approaching the anchorage. We bobbed around in the bay getting our bearings, noting the bottom on our sonar, and taking photos of pinnipeds and dramatic rocky landscapes. The boat was holding position really well, in spite of the swells, and we considered anchoring there. Of course, we had been warned by internet strangers that “we did not want to anchor there” because it’s rocky and there are swells, however, that kind of warning only peaks my curiosity. It has straight up never resulted in my saying, “You know? The internet stranger who doesn’t know us is right! We DON’T want to anchor here because swells and rocks! Thank goodness we asked their opinion!”.

Fisherman Bay, Southeast Farallon Island, looking through the rocks.

Being spied upon.

But, at the end of the day, we chose not to anchor there. Was it the swells? No. We have anchored in much worse than that. (I’m looking at you, Isla San Benedicto.) Was it the rocks? No. Catalina Island was probably equally bad, if not worse. It ended up being the flies. My dear deity! We have never been faced with this many pestering flies at once. I thought we were fly-experienced. I was so wrong!  I could barely take photos on deck without batting them out of my eyes, my mouth, my ears. It was all we could do to stay there for maybe 30 minutes, waving at the scandalized scientists on top of the hill. They watched us through their big scope on a tripod. I waved in a friendly way. They did not wave back. Maybe they sent the flies. Anyway, I could hear Michael smacking and thwacking them in the cockpit and we both agreed that while we could probably anchor there, it would not be much fun since we would have to stay below in the cabin with all hatches closed. So we left, no sharks seen. Phooey.

The rocks are not white. That’s bird poop. Being downwind of this island will make mouth breathers out of anyone.

So speaking of rolling at anchor, I know a lot of folks set up a stern anchor so there may be some people who wonder why we don’t. Mostly it’s because if swells change direction then you have to reset the anchor, which is a pain. You’d think that swells would always be from the same direction, but that would not be accurate in our experience. That may be true some places, just not where we happen to be. We have only been successful one time at setting up a stern anchor such that it actually helped us and that was at Catalina Island. The last time we tried it was at a big anchorage in the Sea of Cortez and when we had to pull it in after winds had shifted and piped up, after dark of course, it was such a shit show that it was not worth the effort. Also Michael almost lost a finger that time.  A little rolling doesn’t measure up to that kind of risk. However, being folks who do like our sleep, for this trip we did get a fancy swell dampener made by Magma. We got it for almost a song at a used marine store in Washington. Here in Monterey we have it set up nicely, hanging off the end of the boom,  since we will be here for a few days. It actually helps a lot and is much easier to deploy than a stern anchor. I think we’ll keep it.

S/V Galapagos, standing by on channel 16. Still looking for sharks.

 

Seven With One Blow

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If there is one thing traveling by slow boat will encourage, it’s making your own fun. Not to say that traveling by sailboat trawler isn’t fun, (because on this trip so far, basically we have been a trawler with a large white stick in the middle), but on those long days where the engine just drones on and on and on, it helps if you know how to play little games with the creatures you will encounter. In this case, those creatures are flies.

These are not your average houseflies. They are what some people call ‘beach flies’, although that is a misnomer because they certainly do not stay at the beach. These flies are known to land in our cockpit when we are 15 miles from shore. How do they even fly that far? When close to shore, as we always are nowadays, great gangs of them descend on the boat almost the minute the anchor is down. I’m not even sure what they eat or why they are attracted to boats. It’s not l like they are landing on anything in particular. They land on literally everything; not being particular at all. They land on the chart plotter, the cockpit cushions, the windows, Mike’s eyebrows. If their goal is to eat, then what are they eating? Are they getting nourishment? If their goal is to annoy, they have met their goal. They are very, very annoying. They are also slow witted and slow of flight and so they are easy to kill.

Proof of flies.

While we are generally non-violent toward our fellow creatures, we have begun killing these pesky flies with impunity and a complete lack of moral outrage at ourselves. Armed with old-fashioned fly swatters, we stand athwartship in the cockpit, a swatter in each hand, braced against the swells;  thwacking and smacking as fly carcasses collect in the gutters of the cockpit floor.

It’s interesting. We would never do this were these creatures something on the order of the Honeybee, or even the Yellow Jacket. We co-existed with literally hundreds of honeybees on our boat while anchored off islands in Mexico. We never deliberately killed any, even though we got stung and were also run out of the anchorage having been overwhelmed by sheer numbers of the bee army. But these flies just need to die. And so we play the game of ‘Fly Kill’, and we play it well. Team Galapagos: 5986  Team Beach Flies: 2. We play to win.

As we fight our way through the cloud of flies, we are both remembering with fondness the stories we used to listen to as kids. Honestly, I am not sure if we have separate memories of this or whether our memories have merged as one over the years, but we both used to listen to the Tale Spinner records when we were kids. What tales they could spin! There were so many great stories, and they were very well done.  A personal favorite of mine was Cinderella, which I had completely memorized, including all the voices of the characters. I believe my parents enjoyed this more than I did as they were able to get me to perform on command. Good thing there was no social media back then because I probably would have been some kind of TikTok or Instagram child star at age two. That might have been fun until I started school and had to compete with other talented toddlers.

Back in those days, you might have parents who “expanded” on their kids’ talents; I mean,  what parent does not believe their own child is the most talented, the smartest, the best whatever? That’s just a baseline for being a doting parent when parents and little children live together in the innocence of their kids’ early childhood, before the hard realities of human limitations hit home.You see these kids all over Instagram; their parents having set them up with their own account where they act all sassy and challenging and everyone laughs because they are little and somehow we find this charming. I digress, but all I can think to myself is ‘yeah, you think this is cute now but will you feel the same way when your kid is 9 and thinks he is 35?’. Ok. Enough of that.

But when I was two, due to the lack of the internet, it would have been hard to create an entire ‘brand’ for a kid that made them look like something they absolutely were not. That kind of smoke and mirrors would have been found out pretty quickly and there would have been plenty of other doting parents just waiting to expose your kid for being normal and you for being a fraud. Or would they?

Maybe it would depend on how much people wanted to believe in your stinking little talentless toddler. Maybe it would depend on how much they needed to believe in him. People have a strong desire to believe in things and they love a good team experience. Having a strong team (or ‘tribe’, if you really must) goes a long way for the greater population, so you can see how the need to believe in someone, when combined with a strong tribal spirit, can make even a weak man remain looking strong; at least to his own team. And once that belief is locked in, no amount of logic will necessarily change it.

Enter the Brave Little Tailor into this argument; as timeless an archetype as ever there was.

I remember this album cover so fondly!

As Mike and I swat the life out of all these flies, we recall one of our favorite stories from the Tale Spinners series of records so popular in the 1960’s. The Brave Little Tailor.  This is the story of how a simple tailor got sick and tired of flies landing on his supper and, using his hand, not even a fly swatter, he killed seven of them with one blow. He was so surprised and excited by this incredible feat that he sewed himself a special belt announcing “Seven in One Blow” to the world. A bit of a braggart, our tailor, but I imagine he was a man of little power in the broader world so we might forgive him this little brag.

Anyhow, the story goes on to discuss how people began to believe that this man of small stature and quick needle must have killed 7 men with one blow and his reputation began to unfold before him. Sounds like he got a big head about it and did not disabuse people of their notion. Or maybe he tried at first, but no one wanted to believe he was literally referring to killing flies. Who knows? Certainly the idea that he would be fierce enough to kill 7 men with one blow would be a hard one to give up, especially if the truth of the flies were to be known.

So of course, word got out that he was a tough character and this caught the attention of the neighborhood bullies, in the form of a giant. All neighborhood toughs think themselves to be giants so this comes as no surprise to the gentle reader. By using his wits, the tailor is able to fool the giant enough to best him at several giant games and his reputation grows. I imagine giants everywhere were quaking in their boots.

I also imagine that once he realized what he had done, the tailor’s head may have grown a half a size larger and he may have begun to be just a bit full of himself. Again, this can be forgiven as who among us would not feel like we had underestimated our own power were we to best a giant? That kind of thing can be positively addictive. Telling the truth, working hard,  being a little tailor, regardless how brave, had not done anything to increase his wealth or prestige or even his bodily comforts. But to trick a giant, or even maybe a few hundred ordinary folks? Here is the path to success!

Passing Point Arena

The story goes on in this way with the tailor being challenged by bullies who hear about him through whatever was the equivalent of social media back in the 1600’s, and then overcoming said bullies by continuing to use trickery and what amounts to fraud until finally, the tailor has made his way to being in the royal service to the king. I’m sure you can see where this story is going, even if you do not know the story. That’s right. It isn’t enough to have a good job at the royal table. There has to be more.

By this time the tailor’s reputation has become reality to everyone who comes into his orbit and it has spread throughout the land. You know how people talk. The king’s army is now worried that at one point the tailor might get mad at them and start the killing; 7 soldiers with every stroke. I mean, pause and scroll back up to that picture of the tailor sewing away at this belt. Does he look like the kind of guy other guys with weapons are afraid of? I submit to you that he does not.  Is this not a testament to the power of groupthink? Who in their logical mind would believe this guy, who is described as ‘little’, could kill 7 men at once? Only people who wanted to believe. That’s who. And apparently, reading between the proverbial lines here, everyone in the land is a complete idiot except for the tailor. No one just walks up and offers to arm wrestle the tailor. No one challenges him at all. They are too in awe of his reputation, his brand. He is the ‘7 in one blow’ guy. That’s who he IS.  We are led to believe that even a well armed soldier is too afraid to get close to him. I can hear the townsmen right now, gossiping at the local pub.

Guy number one: “They say that small tailor guy, the one who works for the king, he can kill 7 men with one blow of his hand!”

Guy number two: “No way! How can anyone do that? How would that be possible? I don’t believe it. I mean, look how small his hands are! No way!”

Guy number one (getting agitated because being challenged is not fun): “It’s true! I heard it from my wife’s cousin’s dairy maid’s husband’s nephew! That guy never exaggerates! It’s true! I tell you it’s true!!”

Guy number two (backing down because one does not want to lose a member of a sworn tribe): “Huh. Well, if you heard it from your wife’s cousin’s dairy maid’s husband’s nephew then it must be true! Who would have thought! Good thing you did your research! I better go tell Saul!”

Anyway, what’s a king to do? He is afraid to lose his power, if not his life. He cannot lose his army (even though they are spineless cowards who seem to not own a single brain cell between them, but whatever), but if he sends the tailor away, perhaps the tailor will take his revenge by killing the king himself. So, in the honored tradition of patriarchy everywhere, the king offers half of his kingdom as well as his daughter, who may or may not have even known the tailor existed (women being kept in the dark about the news back then due to their lack of resilience and brain, you know…). To earn this largess, the tailor need only be victorious in just a few small tasks laid out before him; tasks designed to create failure, of course. But the tailor is a trickster and he beats back giants, armies, finds a unicorn, and God knows what else but what you can be sure of is that none of this came down to actual hand-to-hand combat. It was a battle of who could out scam who. And the tailor married the princess and other than the fact that she apparently did not love him and tried to expose him to her father as the complete fraud that he was, he lived comfortably in his newfound wealth. New money, It always smells a little bit bad.

Crescent City

I guess you can look at this story any number of ways but I began to be a little uneasy thinking about it from my current point of view at my current place of adult development. I know the moral of the story is supposed to be how you can overcome adversity and rise an untold number of socioeconomic levels in the process but let’s be clear: this is not done through hard work the way our fore-parents at the School of Protestant Work Ethic taught us.  I’m sure our brave tailor was good at his job, and he did a dandy job at sewing that belt,  but it didn’t get him very far. He was still, after all JUST a tailor, a manual laborer of some skill probably trying to get wealthy people to pay their bills. In fact, if you think about it, many, many people work very hard; certainly harder than I have ever worked in my own life, and they certainly never get wealthy or powerful or anything other than worn completely out.

No, what got our tailor his riches was being boastful about a pretty lame, if not completely accidental, accomplishment: the killing of 7 flies out of what was likely to be a large cluster on his food. How hard is that? If these flies were anything like our annoying beach flies, it’s not hard at all. Maybe he was just good at marketing himself. One small stroke of luck with fly killing, some good marketing, maybe the knowledge that people want something or someone to believe in, and a lot of smoke and mirrors and suddenly this guy is sleeping in a feather bed with a beautiful princess at his side. Come to think of it, maybe the only thing that set this tailor apart from his tailor peers is the number of flies on his food and the fact that he believed somehow that killing several of the vermin at once was something to brag about. Perhaps he already had a touch of the narcissist about him.

No, what our tailor did well was to develop his ‘brand’ in the world and then go about boasting about it like it was some kind of big deal. Based on his outwitting dumber-than-rocks giants, I’m going to give the tailor enough credit to assume that when he embroidered his ‘7 in one blow’ belt, he knew that people would not assume he was talking about flies. He knew that they would think he was after much bigger game. So not only did he allow them to believe that, he WANTED them to believe that. Because it served a purpose and that purpose was to make him look somehow better than he believed himself to be. He knew exactly what he was doing because if there was one thing our little tailor was not, it was stupid.

I understand that if you say something loudly enough, with enough force, and just keep repeating it over and over, a lot of people will believe you. And the people did believe him!  It’s almost like they were as dumb as cows. Or maybe flies. Anyway, their belief was so strong that even the giants and king felt compelled to challenge him because probably this tailor guy was getting a little too much power in their land. And the giants and king’s OWN belief in the tailor’s prowess was so strong that they had no trouble believing his lies and were easily beaten by, again, what amounts to fraud and trickery. I’m not saying the king was a good man because clearly he wasn’t and probably didn’t deserve to be king, but back then people actually believed God chose those people who had money (not like now, wink wink). And the giant? Yeah, clearly a baddy. But you know, giants will giant and all that so who can blame them? They are born that way.

So anyhow, if this story is supposed to have a moral, and all fairytales do, then it’s a sad one. It goes something like this: Make a big deal out of something completely mundane. Boast and brag about it and strut around like you’re the biggest badass around. People will believe you and your brand will grow. As your brand grows more people will jump on the bandwagon and join your team. Over time, more people will turn a blind eye to your obvious tale spinning and if you just keep going and don’t blink, just boast more loudly and forcefully than ever, eventually you will be president, rich, have power, marry the princess, who hates you. Sad. The end.

These games we play on board Galapagos. Sometimes they go in a direction I cannot predict.

We saw a group of sunfish. Maybe 7 at one time! I don’t know. Maybe 4. Those are their little fins flapping. Wish I could have got a better photo but even going 5 knots is too fast for that. We have seen a lot of sunfish out here. Mike saw a big one today. Too bad I didn’t. Maybe tomorrow.

We sit here in Drake’s Bay near San Fransisco. We sit in fog. But so far, we do not sit in flies. The last time we were here was at the end of our passage from Neah Bay those years ago. I remember only that I was tired and that I looked forward to walking on the beach here. And I remember the flies. I called this the Bay of A Thousand Flies. This time, we have a lot of fly swatters. I went up and checked in the cockpit and there are no flies. Maybe they heard about us. I’m sure whatever they heard, it must be true.

S/V Galapagos. Standing by on Channel 16.