At Risk of Sloth

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“What are you doing in that freezer?”, I asked, trying failing to keep my tone neutral.

“I saw you had ice in your drink the other night and I want some ice!”  Michael is rummaging around in the freezer in a way that is setting my teeth on edge since the freezer is packed completely full and only I know how everything fits together in the one square foot of space we have for frozen foods.  I am not amused, although I am not averse to his getting ice for his well-deserved drink. I begin to think about how I can get the ice to be on the top of everything so he won’t have to dig next time. My teeth can’t take the added stress right now.

Cool fountain down on the malecon.

“Well, Mister Man, be sure to put everything back exactly the way you found it because it took me an hour to tetris all that stuff just so into that little munchkin freezer and it was not easy. I had to take out frozen chicken thighs, which I am not even sure how I’m going to use at this point, to make room for all the cheese I’m storing in there. I’m prepared to be off grid here! I’m prepared to have to feed us for months without a decent grocery store! And in spite of how overly prepared I am,  now we have been here at this  (creative swear words here) dock so flipping long that I am beginning to have anxiety about leaving. I tell you I am prepared! All cabinets, the fridge, the freezer..all possible stowage is packed tighter than a church pew on Christmas.  So just get everything back in the freezer the way I had it. K?”

Michael, accustomed as he is to my unfounded anxieties, retorted as his plastic ice cubes clinked noisily into his glass: “Well, we’ll just put your anxieties about leaving along with all the other anxieties we have about life in general right about now. How about that?”.

I guess he’s not wrong. We’re both getting a little antsy here at the dock in Ensenada. It’s been too long since we have anchored this boat. Too long since we have sailed this boat or even motored this boat. We have been here at this dock TOO LONG. When I start knowing my way around town, then we have been in a place too long. The security guard knows me now. Oh, hell no!

This post is going to degrade rapidly into a bit of a ramble, but I won’t even apologize for that.

Honestly, I have just about reached a tipping point with this whole ‘we live here now’ dock living we have been doing since our belated return from the homeland in Washington State; somewhere on or around January 17. This is a weird thing, this tipping point. When we have to be on a dock, at first I feel  like that’s going to be a nice break from the stress of always living at anchor at the whim of mother nature. We can walk into town. Going for groceries is easy. We can buy boat parts we didn’t know we needed. What’s not to like?

But soon I begin to feel like I’m getting ‘soft’; like if I don’t get back out there away from the easy life of land I’m not going to want this life of ease to end. I’m going to start leaning into being lazy. I’m going to be at risk of embracing the sloth. Days and weeks are going to pass with absolutely nothing to show for it.  I’ll end up doing nothing with my life besides watching Instagram videos and sitting on my ass in the evening eating things that are surely shortening my very existence, dreaming of the day I can get back to refinishing furniture in the basement and planting seeds in the land dirt. Maybe I am the only person who feels this way about dock living. Most people seem to love it and it’s fine with them that they don’t have to worry about anchors holding or being on a lee shore.

When I begin to be this accustomed to easy street, I begin to get anxious once again about the day when we have to leave the dock.  I’ll start planning how to get out of the slip and begin looking at tide and current charts well in advance so I have a concrete plan on how we will do this without messing up other boats. Even though we have literally NEVER MESSED UP ANOTHER BOAT when leaving our slip. Literally never. Does this mean I am finished with the cruising life? It does not. What it means is that I don’t have enough to keep my brain occupied in a positive direction so it has begun to entertain itself.   Don’t try to understand me. I’m complicated.

I’d like to say we enjoy seeing these big boys right next to our boat. Alas. They blow black soot all over everything.

Anyway.  We are still in Ensenada at Cruiseport Marina. Why? Because this trip, destination Banderas Bay to an eventual Pacific Crossing, has taken way too long overall and it continues to do so. Let’s recap this trip so far:

Return to land life in Olympia, Washington during covid times. Get jobs. Sell house. Buy different house. Remodel house. Move into house for the briefest of moments in time. Continue working on boat during all of this, including pulling and replacing all chainplates, re-rigging, modifying the settees in the salon, replacing mattresses in aft cabin, among many other expensive and time consuming projects. Prepare to leave the dock in April 2023. Everything is seemingly falling into place until then. Full. Stop.

Our delays begin when, during the final countdown to leaving Olympia aboard our beloved Galapagos,  we are faced with an unplanned remodel of the apartment at our house. We had always planned to remodel that hovel of an apartment SOMEDAY,  after the current renter left. But we didn’t know he was leaving until two weeks before he did. This was a curveball that, while welcome in many ways, would have been better thrown like 3 months before it landed on us. Wait.

That’s only partly true. The delays began when we could not, in a timely way,  get on the schedule of the guy who did our fiberglass work. Those two delays together, the refit and the apartment remodel, started us off in what was a delay that would have a trickle down effect.

It was August 1 before we were able to leave.  Our plans for Alaska were cancelled once again; our plans to circumnavigate Vancouver Island gone, once again.  Between one thing and another it took us way too long to get the heck out of the Pacific Northwest. By June we had planned to be sailing down the coast. Once we made the big left turn outside of Neah Bay it was already September. And it took even longer than we could have foretold to make it down to southern California. Leaving in this late, we chose to stick close to the coast rather than sail offshore and risk being in one gale after another.  While it seemed like our weather window was a good one, it turned out that we either had zero wind with sloppy and uncomfortable seas or gales. So we spent a lot of time gnashing our teeth tied to a dock or at anchor somewhere waiting for weather systems to pass. So one thing leads to another.  This, we know.

Still, no sense getting down into Mexico before November  (due to hurricane season and all) so we spent time in the Channel Islands, which is always a good idea. Honestly, this was the best, most enjoyable part of the entire trip so far.  By the time we got to San Diego, it was clear our batteries were dying so we had to replace those. Another delay. If I didn’t know that this is sometimes how it goes, I’d think someone ‘up there’ had something against us.

We were honestly sad to leave the Channel Islands. We could easily have spent a much longer time there.

And let’s not forget that when we finally did leave San Diego, we ran afoul of some kelp in the channel that actually wrapped itself around our prop, leading us to call it quits and go back to the anchorage for another night. That was not a long delay, but it did just feel like more of the same. By the time we got to Ensenada, it was time to go home for the holidays. I guess we could have skipped that and gone directly to La Cruz, but it’s a good thing we didn’t.  Family issues back home meant we had to reschedule our flight back and didn’t get back to Mexico until the middle of January.

Back in Mexico, we didn’t want to leave Ensenada until I had been able to get an overdue physical exam (so much easier to schedule that here, and cheaper, too), had my teeth cleaned, and had a couple of retainers made for my teeth since apparently I tend to gnash them on the regular. This had always been part of the plan. Those are checked off the list, finally. (An hour consultation with an Internal Medicine doctor for $58. Complete lab profile, including test for parasites and checking electrolyte levels for 60$. That’s 6 pages of lab results. Teeth cleaned for $50. Two retainers for 150$. Thanks, Mexico.)

Walking down the tourist district. This little girl is learning how to charm the potential buyers!

While I was busy with medical and dental, and catching up with clients, Michael needed to fix the outboard engine that seemed to hate going at low speeds. It expressed its disdain by misfiring and sometimes outright stalling. Mike finally got traction on that today thanks to an older gentleman who works at a local shop specializing in outboard engines. Michael showed him a video he took of what the engine was doing and the guy, correctly, diagnosed the issue and sold him the part for it. It was some kind of rubber covering for the spark plug. It needed replacing. Ten dollars later the engine is finally ready. This is great because it means we can putt putt along close to shore, staring down into the water like we do.  And Michael will be able to enjoy the scenery without staring at the outboard, a puzzled frown on his face.

I’m still working for a living, so it was hard to leave Monday, Tuesday, or Wednesday of this week, and we could leave tomorrow but another big rainstorm is coming through with pretty big swells coming directly from the west, so they’d be right on our beam as we head south. That sounds like fun, doesn’t it? No. It does not.

Maybe…Sunday? There isn’t supposed to be wind that day but I don’t care if we have to motor for 100 miles. It’s time to go before I become ossified into this slip and attached to a life whose biggest challenge is whether my Google Translate app is up to date. So for now, barring any other delays, we are leaving on Sunday.  I’ll make some sort of sacrifice to the Gods of Leaving the Dock Safely. We have given notice to the marina. They will have our paperwork ready for us. We have listed our next port as La Cruz in Banderas Bay. That’s where so many people stage to prepare for crossing to French Polynesia. We wish. We hope and we plan. We envision warm water and beautiful fish.

Where are we going next? Who knows? At this point we will let the sea decide where we land to stay at anchor and catch our breath and remember how to sleep on a boat that is moving,  Overall it will be south-ish. We still plan to cross to French Polynesia this year but will we make it? We still need to apply for a long stay visa and to find liability insurance.  It just feels, I don’t know how to say it, but like the wave of energy we’d need to ride to make that happen for sure has not appeared for us yet this year; like we have just started “raising the sails” when the wind suddenly dies. That kind of thing.  Maybe the energy of La Cruz will change all of that. We are trying to practice the “non attachment to outcomes” that is necessary when cruising. We are not always successful with that. But we try.

Getting this blog post up is the first step toward re-engaging with this cruising life. Let it be written. Let it be done.

S/V Galapagos, out. Not even standing by. No one keeps their radio on in this marina.

 

 

The Rule of Four

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Yesterday we left San Diego to finally get into Mexico through the port at Ensenada. Today, we are in San Diego sitting at anchor at La Playa. Without an anchoring permit. Oh well.  Breathing a sigh of relief as the anchor hit bottom, I realized I had to write about the Rule of Four and how we came to have that thrust upon us lately.

Our battery project having gone almost aggressively well, we were feeling pretty chuffed about that success and although I was not really ready to leave San Diego, having had too much fun here, we had to go. Fueled up, we waited for the huge sailboat race to be done and then motored out, into the sunset, as it were. I took a few videos and realized no one would really want to see those. They meant more to me than anyone else. I just hated to leave, I guess.

Maybe we had to come back to see Santa and his helpers paddling through the anchorage.

The first issue with the Rule of Four was that the folks at Cruiseport Marina in Ensenada have never gotten back to us to confirm a slip. This gives me reasonable pause because word on the cruiser’s forums was that the guy there who was in charge got back to everyone in a timely manner; sometimes within the hour. Mike had sent our documents a week ago and we had heard nothing. They also did not pick up the phone when he called repeatedly.  Even though this is Mexico and sometimes you just accept this kind of thing, it didn’t sit well with either of us, especially when this was not the experience other cruisers’d had recently. Mike finally got the guy at the marina on the phone.  Turns out Mike’s emails had ‘not been received’. Now, generally when an email doesn’t go through, your email program lets you know. However, Mike sent them again, with our documents. Mike still has not heard back and again, phone calls go unanswered. Sometimes one just gets tired of trying. We figured we will just show up. It’s not that far down there if we have to turn around and come back. We left San Diego.

This beautiful K50, so identified by my friend Roberta Darrow whose family had one all the while she was growing up. I can’t even relate but that is so cool I can hardly stand it.

Just past the headland, before the channel markers even gave out, the second of the four issues began. Big swells on the beam made the ride so uncomfortable all I could think was ‘Great. I don’t even want to be out here in this crap’. Coming from the flat water in San Diego’s anchorages, it was a bit of a big comeuppance. With no wind at all, we were destined to spend a pretty uncomfortable night at sea. And why, you might reasonably ask, did we have to leave on that day? Because of a schedule. A schedule is the worst thing you can have on a sailboat and we almost never have one. But we are flying home and the airline doesn’t hold flights for sailboats. They just leave when they say they will, more or less. Honestly, we wanted to leave the boat in San Diego since we are flying out of this airport,  but the only slip I could find for our boat would have set us back 3K for a month. For. A. Month. We just could not do it, so onward to Ensenada. And now things begin to get interesting.

Nothing more fun than sitting in a cockpit watching small boats racing around the anchorage. Unless you are on one of the small boats. That would be more fun.

As we motored out the channel, Mike decided to take a look at the charts of the course we’d be motoring. The charts of Mexico were not there. They HAD been there earlier in the day. But now, nada. There was actually a line at the border between the countries and the screen was completely white underneath that line. Huh. This was not great. I mean, we don’t trust the Mexico charts that much, but it’s nice to have SOMETHING that represents things like land masses. And we recall that the chart to the entrance at Ensenada was pretty good. Where were our charts? Why were we not seeing them? It crossed my mind, honestly, that this was the final straw. Clearly we were not meant to go to Mexico on that day. But I rarely do myself justice when I have those intuitions. I mean, what am I supposed to say? “Honey, I just feel like we shouldn’t go today. I don’t know why.” I mean, to be clear Mike would almost certainly listen to me on that. We’ve been married too long for him to ignore these little things. But in the absence of evidence that is firmer than missing charts, we carried on. He had to go down and retrieve the little sim card holding the charts, reinsert into the chart plotter, and download them again. The little hairs on the back of my neck were becoming more alert.

I went below to cook dinner. I had just decided that the conditions below were absolutely not conducive to cooking dinner and it would be cold pizza for all when we heard a small thump from beneath the keel. It wasn’t a big thump and ordinarily it would barely even register on our internal radar. But still, we were in an area where there are way too many crab pots. Mike went below to check things out. He found nothing. He looked over the back of the boat and saw nothing. We shrugged and we motored on, wary of the big war ship steaming down the channel.

Our friends on S/V Copacetic. We just can’t seem to leave them behind. Hopefully we will see them in Ensenada in a day or two.

A few minutes later I felt like we were going more slowly than we should. We had the engine at about 1500 rpm and the current was with us, but we were making only 4 knots. That seemed wrong. About the time I realized that our speed seemed wrong, something gave a god awful screech/rattle kind of noise. I leaped across the cockpit from my position in front of the autopilot controls, hurriedly throttled down and threw the transmission into neutral as Mike popped up the companionway like his pants were on fire and yelled to throw the transmission into neutral. Great minds, and all that.

Pants may not have been on fire, but brains most definitely were as I spun the wheel and yelled, “The steering! I have no steering!” Crap, man. What a comedy of errors, almost. I was already saying, ‘Where is the Boat US number? We may need a tow!’ and practicing my radio skills in case I needed to call for help out there. I am not a fan of zero steering and big swells pushing my boat towards Warship #4 sitting right outside San Diego Harbor, and Warship #7 bearing down on us in the channel. No, thanks. Having leapt from my seat to get the boat out of gear and throttle back the engine, though, I had failed to take the steering out of automatic. Breathe. Just slow down. That’s usually the important thing in these situations. Slowing down.

We tested everything we could. Engine sounded fine. Steering was working. Transmission was working. I gave the transmission a little bump in reverse a couple of times in case that might help anything that was wrapped around the shaft spin off and float harmlessly away. Still, we were definitely, MOST DEFINITELY going back into San Diego and dropping anchor so we could check the prop and shaft in the light of day. Nothing makes me sigh more deeply in resignation than having to enter literally any port with a lot of lights at night. Fortunately, in this case, we could just follow our GPS track. Babying the boat and our jangled nerves, we went dead slow and stuck hard to the right of the channel. We dropped anchor, back at La Playa, with a sigh of relief, poured some wine, and hit the sack shortly afterwards.

This morning Mike geared up in his wetsuit and found weed and kelp wrapped around the small amount of shaft that is exposed to the elements. What a relief that it was just weed and not nylon rope that could have melted itself onto the metal. The working hypothesis is that enough weed got wrapped that it slowed us down and cut off the water supply to the shaft, causing that ungodly noise we heard.  Possibly we hit something under the water that was trailing weed to in a big bunch, allowing it time to get good and wrapped around our shaft.

A few pieces like this floated free under the tender influence of the diving knife. Such innocuous looking weed.

Now we are in a bit of a pinch. I’ll have to reschedule some of my work for tomorrow as we need to have some flexibility worked in. That irritates me but I still need to do it.  I made one more pass at trying to find a place to leave the boat stateside, but on a Sunday, and with such short notice, it’s not to be.

So let’s regroup: First, the marina fails at communicating. Then, sea conditions are disgusting and uncomfortable. Then, our Mexican charts disappear. Then we get weed around our shaft and decide to call it quits. What a day.

Now here’s the other thing. It really gives me pause, and I’m not yet ready to make it a Rule of 5 because it will probably be ok. But still it niggles my mind. There are at least 5 boats stuck in San Diego because Mexico turned them away due to a paperwork issue that Mexico, itself,  invented. It has to do with their Temporary Import Permits, which are basically their way of keeping track of foreign boats in their waters, which they have every right to do. The problem is that when you leave with your boat, you are really supposed to cancel this permit upon checking out of the country. And many people do not do that little thing for whatever reason. Then they sell the boat to an unsuspecting new person who then tries to enter Mexico with the boat. The TIP, which may be expired but has not been “CANCELLED” (And why these two things are different is beyond me) has old owner names which do not match new owner names. Maybe even the boat name is different, so the name and the hull number are not the same anymore.  In the past there has been a way to fix this issue. Apparently that is no longer the case. They have switched systems, and these systems do not talk to each other. Not only that, but apparently there is no go-between. If you have an uncanceled TIP, apparently there is no way to cancel it and so you don’t get to enter Mexico with your boat. One less cruiser with a (probably) older boat to deal with?

Is this absolutely ridiculous? Yes. It is.  I have not been one to criticize how Mexico does things because it’s not my country and they can do things however they want to. But, frankly, I believe in the power of the Mexican authorities to fix this problem if they had the will to do so. Why they haven’t wanted to is well beyond my powers to understand.  There is at least one boat that has been waiting for over a year to have this issue fixed. At that point, I may just sail to Hawaii.

We have met some of the folks waiting for movement on this issue here in San Diego. They have spent a lot of time and money preparing their boats for their adventure, only to find, upon arrival, that a previous owner didn’t do what they were supposed to and now they are stuck because Mexico doesn’t want this fixed for some reason. I feel so sorry for them. They have literally done nothing wrong but here they sit doing the ‘anchor dance’ in San Diego.

Why is this on my mind, aside from feeling bad for other sailors? Because our boat has been to Mexico before we owned it and I am fairly sure that the folks who owned it back then did not cancel their TIP.  That would have been, I think, in the 1990’s or early 2000’s. When we checked in before, we just didn’t mention it and we got a TIP with no problems. We also cancelled that TIP when we left Mexico, although we cannot seem to find that paperwork for some reason. It’s not where it belongs.

Although no old TIPs were found in their computer system when we checked into Mexico before, they have upgraded part of their system. Just part of it, apparently. So even though it’s unlikely they will find any uncanceled TIPs for Galapagos, who knows? It’s also possible that they will. And if they do, I just will not be surprised.

The tall ship California sailed by, wowing us on the way out today.

We are sailing along now in much more pleasant conditions than yesterday, just slowly making our way down the coast. We’ll cross our fingers Mexico doesn’t have a record of an uncancelled tip with our hull number on it. But if they do, well, I really like San Diego, even with the anchor dance issue.

S/V Galapagos, standing by on channel 16. Avoiding all kelp.

 

 

 

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.