Approaching the final steps in our departure from Panama one of the last things to do is complete our provisioning.
Provisioning is cruiser-speak for shopping. But it is more than just grocery shopping. When we used to shop on land it was the way “normal” people shop. We’d do some big shopping for large quantities at a club warehouse store, with stops a couple of times during the week for smaller quantities of fresh items and things we didn’t want in industrial sizes. But our general horizon was a week or two.
Now it is a bit longer. As I’ve mentioned before, no one flies to the Galápagos for the shopping. In the days of sail ships stopped there to grab tortoises and seals for the larder, but the authorities now frown on this sort of thing. There are people there which means there is food, but without substantial local production we don’t expect there to be lots of variety and good pricing. What we expect is to make sure we time our shopping around the arrival of the cargo ships.
When we leave the Galápagos it is a 3,000 mile trip to the next stop in the Marquesas. This will take us three weeks of sailing non stop, perhaps more if the wind does not cooperate. French Polynesia consists of hundreds of islands scattered over an area larger than Western Europe. Though run by the French, which bodes well for the bread and cheese in our future, many things still must be delivered a long way and are in limited supply. We are planning to be there for six months. We will have to shop locally eventually and immediately for fresh things but there are many items that are cheaper to bring with you.
Which brings us to our “shopping horizon” which is closer to three months than two weeks. We are provisioning with the hope of being able to save money by not paying three times as much for the same things, as well as having access to some things we don’t expect to find, and having food for weeks and weeks in the event that it takes us more than the anticipated twenty days or so to reach the Marquesas.
Unlike some boats we had a separate freezer as well as refrigeration so we can stock up on some perishables. Some excerpts from our recent shopping list:
- 64 pounds of ground beef
- 32 pounds of chicken breast
- 16 pounds of pork loin
- 24 pounds of cheddar cheese
- Eight pounds of mozzarella cheese
- 28 (additional) liters of powdered and UHT milk
- 11 Kilograms of rice
- 24 pounds of spaghetti & six pounds of macaroni’
- Sixty pounds of flour
- A variety of canned meats, vegetables, tomato sauces, etc.
- Three cases of beer (remember those $3.00 beers in French Polynesia?)
- Bottles and boxes of wine
Much of this is to add to some existing ship’s stores – for example we already have a LOT of milk in various forms on board (powdered milk outside the U.S. is actually good and drinkable), as well as pasta stores. And that isn’t the whole list by a long shot.
Yesterday we went to pick up the meat. A local grocery store here has a nice service where they were willing to take an order for a large quantity of meat which they would break into small packages and vacuum seal and freeze for us. On board we vacuum seal a lot of our food, it prevents freezer burn in meats and makes them last longer and is an excellent way to keep bugs out of your flour. But the job takes a lot of time and uses up hard to replace vacuum seal bags so we were very excited when we learned we could get our meat already sealed up, allowing us to skip this time consuming task and save our own bags.
We showed up at Riba Smith with our two little freezer bags and some other shopping bags. I approached the meat counter and started stuttering out Spanish to fellow behind it; eventually he figured out that that we were the big order back in the freezer. He smiled at me and disappeared into the freezer. For about half an hour.
When he returned he had his own cart…near full of frozen meat. Unfortunately we had a translation issue and they had packed bone-in breasts. We couldn’t take them because they use too much room in our fairly small freezer for the amount of meat on them. We’ll buy them and use them in small quantities, but when I says “32 pounds” I meant of meat, not bones. “No problemo” they told me, the whole breasts disappeared and in short order 32 pounds of boneless breasts were awaiting us in two pound packages. So we have to do some vacuum sealing.
While we were waiting for the meat Kathy was off fulfilling some of our other items from the list. We’d been carefully reserving a spot for all the meat in our carriage. Silly us…when the butcher came out his cart was 2/3 full, there was no way it was fitting in with the other stuff. One hundred pounds of meat is…big.
Fortunately we’d done our “bulk” shopping at another store a different day and didn’t have all that flour, cheese, milk and canned goods to schlep. But this was more than enough – all that meat filled our cold bags to bursting and we could barely lift them. When we flagged a cab down the rear shocks lowered visibly when we put our groceries in the trunk.
We are almost done shopping. There is one more trip to make for some fresh vegetables and fruits. One other thing about the Galápagos – they are very strict with what you can and can not bring in. They do not want any invasive species, so vegetables and fruits are tightly controlled. In spite of what you might have seen in All is Lost, fresh fruits and vegetables do not last for weeks and weeks on a boat anyway, so this isn’t too much of a problem. It just means more shopping in the Galapagos…the day the provision ship comes in.
