Four Wet Dogs

They were four wet dogs who made landfall in the San Blas Islands yesterday.

We put to sea from Cuba expecting that we would get 30 knot winds on the passage to Panama. A certain "show me something I haven't seen" world-weariness may have infected the pre-trip preparations of the Galactics.

The wind would be behind us, we reasoned.

Well, no.

A closer consideration of the geometry involved, including the crucial vector of our 8+ knots of forward progress, and what that does to the apparent wind, would have revealed that we would spend most of the passage on a beam reach. And as any sea dog will tell you, an entire world can be held in the difference between a broad reach and a beam reach at 30 knots.

We hadn't made quite all of our heavy weather preparations before the trip.

We knew that there was no need to get the trysail bent and lashed prior to departure, and the series drogue fixed to the stern cleats and lashed firmly on deck, so that a quick cut of its lashings would be enough to deploy that air bag of the sea. We do that for crossings that have some measurable, but small, chance of getting *big*. Thirty knots in the Caribbean doesn't count.

But it might have been really nice if *someone* (maybe the *someone* who has the t-shirts saying "The captain is always right and I'm the captain") had remembered to plug the naval pipe with plumber's putty. That would have been a nice touch. Ditto remembering to cover the stack for the propane heater in the aft cabin.

And it might have been nice if *someone else* (maybe the *someone else* who is the living walking sea goddess for the lucky dog in the funny t-shirts) had remembered not to dog the saloon hatch on top of the little knot in the bungie cord that holds the hatch cover in place, so that the gasket was deformed around the little knot, and each wave could send a little emissary below to the spot on the sole where Eric likes to sleep while we're at sea.

Pauvre Eric! His seasickness is getting so much better, but he still got to enjoy Alisa's famous tamale pie twice, once on the way down and again on the way back up.

And in addition to these little oversights in the ship's watertight comportment, there was the issue of the dodger. Tired stitching and design limits were both at times inadequate to the seas that came aboard. They who will beam reach in 30 knots will have to get used to the dubious pleasure of boarding seas.

It's amazing how much water that dodger blocks when it's all in one piece. When it wasn't, quite impressive amounts of the wet came through. The chart table and all of the electronics that it houses even got a hit. And the cushions that we normally sit on became saturated affairs. Alisa and I did some emergency at-sea stitching which helped things quite a bit. And we rigged the famous Antarctic Entry quite early on to give us some protection on the aft end of the dodger.

But for all that, the area under the dodger remained no refuge for our saturated crew. It was far too warm for raingear, so we passed the days and the nights in our saturated swim wear. Salty skin discomfort ensued.

Sitting around in salt-soaked shorts for day after day is enough to make anyone want to be an armchair sailor.

The interior of the boat was something of a salt-caked scenario. But it's amazing how quickly, once you gain a nice protected anchorage and give the interior a wipe down and have your dinner with victory chocolate pudding for all hands, that interior goes back to being your comfortable domestic refuge.

And, for all that hold-on-kids, we'll-be-there-in-a-couple-days excitement of this crossing, we did manage to put up some good numbers. Noon to noon runs of 152, 182, 177, and 186 nautical miles, the whole 750 miles in four and a half days.

And now Glenn Gould is tickling the 88s, and Alisa is baking bread, and we have the promise of catching up with friends, old and new, who are also in this famous archipelago.

All is right with our world, thanks very much.

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This post was sent via our high-frequency radio as we're far from internet range. Pictures to follow when we reach internet again. We can't respond to comments for now, though we do see them all!