Sailing Bear and Seal

If you watch the videos, you can see that I am moving around a lot more in the preceeding days. Those first couple days take time for my body to acclimate to sea life.

It wasn’t until I watched the video that I realize it was really time to take down the BioSafety notices that are required for the Galapagos Islands. We had a week long sail from Panama to the Galapagos, so I took some time and made the required signage.

All boats are required to have the notice “Do not throw garbage into the sea”. This was painted on a visible area both inside and outside every boat, including the water taxis.

Then there are the three different kinds of waste and every trash receptacle must be labeled and its contents will be checked by BioSecurity when entering the island chain.

Recyclable waste, labeled in blue (large ships must place in blue bags):

Non-recyclable, large ships (like cruiseships/liveaboard dive boats) must use black bags for this.

and organic trash in green bags:

Fortunately, Ecuador realizes that we do not create as much trash as the larger cruiseships so we can keep these in little bags and combine into one to be collected by the trash boat that roams the harbor most mornings. For $3/bag (glad we can consolidate) the trash boat will take your trash and separate the bags for you ashore.

For the days included in this post, I’m happy to be a bit more mobile and can actually get up and cook dinner. Cooking on a boat is a bit different than cooking at home because things are moving around. I am extremely hesitant to start boiling a pot of water to cook pasta because there is no urgent care or emergency room if we get burned. I tend to cook the majority of our meals in the Instant Pot because it is tightly sealed and does not emit/radiate an extreme amount of heat and moisture into the saloon.