I’ll give Frank Zappa the nod he deserves for this finely chosen combination of words and the visuals they bring up. But, I mean, he got his idea from this cover of Man’s Life magazine from 1956.  This may be a man’s magazine, but I will not be outdone by old masculine tropes. Weasels do not discriminate. More on that later.

So, how’s it going out here with this shakedown 2023 cruise? I mean, we are both shaking down and cruising, so I guess all the goals are being met. We have shaken down the outboard lifting system until it works flawlessly, even for old spaghetti arms here. We have given the new Alado furling system a hard shake where by at first we worried we had made a horrible and expensive error in judgement ordering that one (even though we loved it on the Cal34). It’s dialed in now, and much relief on board. For now. My trust level is tentative on this one. We continue to toss around the new stackpack, which is working well but still has a few small issues to be sorted. No big deal. We just like to tweak things incessantly.

Mike is working on replacing the lifelines, going from pink to blue dyneema. They used to be red. That lasted about a week in Mexico before they faded from UV damage. I imagine the nice rich blue color we currently have will be more of a baby blue before it’s over. Oh yes, and we added 200ft of anchor chain to the aft locker to balance the pointy part of the boat better. Now when the engine is on, she squats like a pro, sometimes maybe a bit too much. We’ll continue to shake that down as we go. Hmmmm. Let’s see. I know there is more.

There was almost a galley emergency when I realize my pressure cooker was not pressuring. I don’t want to buy a new one so I was happy when giving the valve a deep clean was all that was needed to set it to rights again.  We are loving the new folding steering wheel and the new wind instruments with a beautiful display in the cockpit that we can rotate to show whatever combination of data serves the purpose at any time. Thanks, Garmin.

The Starlink has been working beautifully and is a true treasure on board. (Our only hiccup was in Princess Louisa Sound, where we were surrounded by towering land masses. I believe it can be forgiven for not streaming a zoom meeting to perfection in those conditions.) We refer to this new comms system as The Muskrat, for obvious reasons. While we’re ‘floating like the heavens above’, we do have that Muskrat love.

In other news we are rightly pleased as all get out with our new True Kit dinghy and the 2 stroke engine I got last year for my birthday. It goes almost TOO fast. The new way we have rigged the boom is working nicely. Still happy we took the mizzen off and we’re getting used to how she looks without it. The new latex mattresses in the aft cabin, while, yes, really heavy, were worth every penny and every minute of difficulty and heavy lifting. Expanding the settee in the salon, while making the access to stowage underneath the cushions a little more difficult, was an excellent choice for overall comfort.

We decided at the last minute to pull the trigger for larger membranes for our Rainman Watermaker, so those are on order from Australia. I mean, what’s a shakedown cruise without at least one international delivery? Thanks to friends in Port Townsend, we’ll take delivery of those there. We have made a number of last minute on-line purchases and at least one of our kids will meet us somewhere in the north Puget Sound to deliver the goods, as well as some Costco loot and all the wine I took off the boat to avoid paying Canadian Customs for the privilege of bringing it across the border.

Our paddle boards are still holding air. And that brings us to the title of this post.

No shakedown of S/V Galapagos would be complete without a foray into the water. You’d think that the water up here in Canada would be way too cold for foraying, and as a rule you’d be dead right. But in Princess Louisa Sound the water was close to 65F degrees. Still cold, but with my handy new 4mil wetsuit, I was game since it was also about 90F outside and it wasn’t like I was actually going to go UNDER the water. Just the thought of putting on a wetsuit and getting into the water made me giddy with anticipation. And that, my friends, is where our cautionary tale begins. That feeling of giddiness that is the harbinger of being possibly less careful than I should be, even though who would have known? Certainly not me.

It takes anywhere between 15 and 60 minutes for me to don a 4mil wetsuit, depending on the amount of moisture on my skin at that particular time.  It’s not easy, graceful, or even, really, acceptable, but there it is. By the time I have tugged, stretched, shimmied, threatened and sworn the wetsuit into place and zipped it up, I have less of a feminine glow and more of a dripping sweat to deal with. It’s bloody hot in there and the cold water is going to feel good.  Into the water I slipped, being very careful not to fall off the swim step and smash my forehead on the propeller of the dinghy engine. I was absolutely sloth-like as I made my way down the swimstep ladder, which is known to be slippery, and sank beneath the surface. Cold water made its way in a trickle down my back and I breathed a sigh of relief and profound pleasure at being back in the water again. Today, I would see great things.

As is my habit, I pull my floating swim platform, the paddle board, over and begin to decant snorkel gear onto it from the handy swim platform at the back of the boat. Case with special mask, anti-fog spray, earplugs to keep the cold water away from my brain. (I hate the scuba hood I have and have ordered something else, but meanwhile, it’s the earplugs for me.).  Water bottle with electrolytes. Case for eyeglasses. Fins and snorkel. Quick-dry baseball cap. Excellent. Now to mount the board and paddle out to the area where I want to snorkel.

Let me pause here and give you a visual about how I generally accomplish this feat of unadulterated  athleticism.  From my position in the water, I rest my forearms across the board. Then I give a mighty dolphin kick, truly Mark Spitz-esque,  and launch myself bodily from the water and onto the board, landing gracefully draped across it. This move makes me feel 25 again! I am so elegant and natural looking as I perform this with the ease of a true sea mammal!  From there I can pivot and sit up. Securing all of my belongings under the handy bungie straps, off I go. So easy. Except…

Except that I haven’t done this in over three years. Except that I was not wearing my swim fins, which I generally am. Except I am, as of today, not 25 years old. And, of course, I didn’t warm up any muscles before I got in the water because who actually does that? Not me.

As I landed smartly sort of on my right short rib, I literally felt the weasel claws rip my flesh on the inside. “NOOO!”, I yelled to the absolutely no one who was listening. “Weasels ripped my inside flesh and wow, this is going to hurt tomorrow!”. The seal, he did not care. He silently slipped beneath the waves.

But what to do? Am I going to let flesh-ripping, if not eating, weasels ruin a perfectly good opportunity to test out my new snorkel and possibly see a curious harbor seal under water for the very first time ever? What am I going to do? Get out and try to struggle out of a cold wetsuit and apply ice? The water is already cold enough for a compress. The wetsuit offers structural support. It doesn’t actually hurt yet, although I know it’s inevitable that it will.

I just carried on. It probably didn’t make any difference to the amount of pain I’ve been in for, let’s see, 5 days. I figure I pulled some kind of core muscle somewhere near that short rib but whatever. It’s hard to say exactly where since the whole upper right quadrant of my abdomen hurt dreadfully by the next day, to the point where movement was difficult.  I was forcefully reminded that 1) I use those muscles regularly 2) I live on a sailboat that is never still 3) I am 40 years older than I think I am. Nothing is broken and no one can do anything about this kind of injury. It’s already turned the corner on getting better as of today, which is a great relief because sailing down the coast would have been extremely painful and probably not a good idea. So overall, I feel like I made the right call by carrying on with what I was doing. As we are currently sailing across a pretty challenging Strait of Georgia and dealing with big swells and a short interval, I’m using those core muscles a lot just to stay upright. So, thankfully, I’m good.

We enjoyed a couple of days being mostly lazy before leaving Princess Louisa Sound and moving down the inlet towards Pender Harbour. There was a 2 1/2 hour hike that sounded like it went almost straight up to 1500 feet or so. We passed. I know my limits.

Not to be outdone by an actual injury to my flesh, weasel or no, the area of Pender Harbour at the mouth of Jervis Inlet still celebrates the manly man of the 1960’s and his glorious physique. And why wouldn’t they? They have a grand tradition, according to their history,  of celebrating this trope of masculinity and the well developed muscles it boasts, hanging out for everyone to see and, potentially, to admire. The evidence of this is clear from the latest edition of Pender Harbour Magazine, a publication that celebrates the harbour lifestyle. Why just look at this photo from the 1950’s of the shenanigans harbourites got up to during some kind of regatta. I’m not sure what these guys are doing, but it doesn’t involves sailing.  I envision the local weasels, salivating and showing their sharp little teeth.

We had anchored in the harbour for a couple of days so I could work via Starlink and maybe rest the savaged flesh inside my abdomen. Needing a walk on actual land,  we took Sea Pony, our fast dinghy,  over to the dock where, mindful of the need to mitigate pain,  it took me 5 minutes to disembark, strategizing every movement before executing same. Once on my feet I was fine, so we set off down the road. Honestly, during this time of removing myself from the dinghy onto the filthy and splintery dock, I wished I had a sweatshirt that read, “Not Old. Just Injured. Carry On With Your Business.”

Coming around a bend in the road I see this little shack labeled ‘Nut Hut’. Considering that their storage facility here at the harbour is called “Squirrel Storage”, I imagine there are a lot of squirrels and nuts around here. Hungry, I checked out the offerings. Sadly, no nuts were to be had. Instead there was a darling little display of a school desk and chalkboard, plus a way to measure your height on the corner of the wall. I think it’s a school bus stop. But wait! There’s more!

On the wall was a magazine rack holding a number of fine copies of old comic books. Like from the late 1960’s and early 1970’s when men were real and women were… almost exactly the same as they are now.  And these were not the Archie comics of my own youth, regardless of Betty’s curvaceous nature. What we had here were real comics for real budding men; manly comics, especially of the Wild West variety. Everyone knows that only a true man understands the wildness that is west.

Michael and I took a walk down memory lane as we took our time leafing through the pages, revisiting such beloved and thoughtfully indoctrinating characters as the skinny many who always had sand kicked in his face by muscle bound beach bullies, and the young woman who needed extra bust development. How could that smile be real with breasts that small? How she must suffer.

Who could ever forget the days where you could learn hypnosis by mail for the low, low price of 1$? I should have taken advantage of that way back then. I think the cost has really gone up.

I don’t even remember being offered the chance to earn prizes by selling seed packets door to door. Man. I really missed out. And being paid for ideas? A girl can only dream! According to the advertisement, big companies need thousands of ideas per month! (See above) Just send the people at “IDCO” (get it?) all your ideas and they’ll let you know if any are good! Imagine! People would have PAID ME FOR MY OWN IDEAS AND WOULD IMMEDIATELY LET ME KNOW IF I HAD A GOOD ONE! And to think of all the money I spent getting college degrees. What a waste.

Scams as old as time. I remember that somehow I knew these were scams, even as I sat in the tree with the neighbor kids reading the latest issue of Betty and Veronica. How did I know? Well, probably my parents told me. I mean, I didn’t have a checkbook or even a debit card back then so I would have had to go through them to get the hypnosis coin. And I can just about imagine them saying no. I mean, as a rule, my parents didn’t approve of stuff like hypnosis. They already had enough trouble with me. Who knows what I would have got away with had I been given more power over others,

My favorite comic among the ones left at the Nut Hut was the Bat Lash comic, which I think may have been from 1968. I kind of wish I’d taken that but I didn’t. I’m not going to say I was not SORELY TEMPTED! It was incredibly cool and I can’t even believe that my finer nature won out on this internal battle. I wanted that comic for some reason only my own, dark inner self knew.  I had never heard of Bat Lash before and, doing a quick search later, found out there were only 7 editions of that comic published. Good thing we had been motoring at 5 knots for about 3 hours before I remembered to google it. Otherwise I’m not convinced that my moral compass would have passed muster. Bat Lash was, according to Wikipedia,  “A self-professed pacifist, ladies’ man, and gambler”, probably not necessarily in that order. Had I known all of that while standing in the Nut Hut, that particular comic would have found its way into my backpack. I didn’t even read the entire comic, so I will never know if he actually saved the Wild West or ruined it. Alas.

We are headed back to the states, kind of slowly. Currently under sail for awhile, which is a new twist on this trip. We’ll make our way through the islands again, spending some time at old favorites before we cross the strait to meet up with one or two kids; probably one. We are extraordinarily grateful to Kerry and Donn Christianson in Port Townsend for letting us use their porch for an international delivery of high volume water maker membranes. It’s good to have friends, even if you don’t see them often. We look forward to a little time in Port Townsend, a favorite place. After that, we’ll make our way out to Neah Bay to await a weather window for going south.

S/V Galapagos, standing by on channel 16.