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.