One of the unfortunate things about the Galapagos was that we were severely restricted in terms of what we could do with both Iron Lady and our dinghy. We were first restricted by where we could go without local guides living aboard (which got very expensive) and the process of getting a Zarpe every time we wanted to move Iron Lady – which meant we had to clear out with the Armada with the correct paperwork before moving and check in again at our next port with another visit from the Armada. As a consequence, we visited three ports – San Cristobal, Isabela and Santa Cruz. Most of our touring was done with local tour operators.
While we were permitted to take our dinghy from the boat to the dock and back, that was the limit of what we were permitted to do. Most of the docks really had no accommodations to leave the dinghy and several of the ports – particularly Santa Cruz were basically open roadsteads open to the ocean with significant surge. Even if there were places to leave the dinghy it really would have been foolish to do so.
As a consequence, we used local transportation – a fleet of bright yellow open skiff water taxis which were hailed by VHF. Fare was generally set at $1 per person.
One of the things you might notice is the bras made of nylon line they all have on front.
Same was true for most of the commercial operators who use skiffs to transport their guests around.
All this with good reason. The docking procedure consists of running their skiffs hard onto the dock using the motor to hold them in place. Including Iron Lady.
Fortunately she is a significantly tougher then a wooden skiff and it was not unusual for the skiff to come off much worse for the encounter with various chunks left behind on the swim step – especially with the surge in Santa Cruz.
We decided that Beer Can (our aluminum rib so named by our children) would benefit from a similar treatment.. We called out agent Antonio and he arranged for the village artisan who made them to come out, measure up our dink and give us a price. He took a bunch of measurements (all in his head), gave us a price to which we agreed and he told us he would be back with the completed bra the next day.
Sure enough, around 4 the next afternoon he arrived with a very impressive looking woven bra.
After several hours of fitting and cinching, we were really impressed with the result.
It adds nicely to our industrial appearance and will be most useful down south when running shore lines to a rocky shore.