Let the Provisioning Begin

Provisioning is the term we cruisers use when we are outfitting our boat with food.  Why we don’t call it grocery shopping is a mystery to me, but then so is the language sailors use for calling otherwise simple things by ridiculous names (eg. a bathroom is a head, a bed is a berth, a kitchen is a galley, and the list goes on).

Where does one begin provisioning for a long passage?  The task seemed even more overwhelming than when we left San Diego for Mexico in October of 2009.  Our next voyage will be at least 3 weeks long, but we need to provision for an even longer period of time since food availability is minimal in most places, and when it is available, it is pricey. My friend Behan on s/v Totem (currently in Australia) just emailed me that a dozen eggs in the South Pacific will set us back about $6.  She also blogged about spending $12 on a melon, because her crew hadn’t seen fresh produce for a while.

Back to where one starts.  Several blogs and the Pacific Puddle Jumpers’ website offer spreadsheets, as do several of my cruising reference books.  I opted for recreating the wheel, so to speak.  Well, not quite. When we came down to Mexico in October of 2009, I had created a list of things we ate for breakfast, lunch and dinner, and shopped based on this list.  The list has now become my reference sheet for provisioning.  By the way, you will cook and eat on board the same way you have always cooked and eaten.  Just because you’ve moved onto a boat, that won’t change.  As in, don’t start buying dried beans to cook in your pressure cooker if you’ve never eaten dried beans before, and better yet, rarely if ever use your pressure cooker.  Although I’d recommend you start before you move aboard, as it is so much easier on your pocket book.

Okay, again, back to where one starts. I began my provisioning this time by taking an inventory of everything I had on the boat in the way of food, cleaning and washing supplies, medicines and toiletries.  Talk about a tedious job.  I was feeling depressed as Michael was crossing things off his list left and right, while I was still drowning in the hulls below the floor boards with my inventory sheet day after day.  Alas, it did get completed.

From the work-of-art known as my Inventory List, for items we use often, I made an estimate of how often we eat it.  For example, I make 3 cups of long grain brown rice at least once per week.  Multiply this by 26 weeks and we need  a lot of rice.  This gets tricky, since long grain rice is hard to come by in some places in Mexico, but it is doable.  For other items, I have just been winging it.  Like for soya sauce, or BBQ sauce, or for so many other items.  Do I get one extra bottle, or stick with what we have? 

This gets even trickier since we want to be left with almost nothing by the time we make landfall in Australia in 6-7 months.  The reason for this is that the quarantine rules are very stringent: the authorities will search your boat and take away things like fresh meat, vegetables and dairy, but more importantly, any dried beans, rice and grains, plant sources and even canned meats like tuna.  Then, hopefully, a few weeks after making landfall in Australia, anything that’s left must be made 'gone' if we are successful in selling our dear boat there.  Yet provisioning is not an exact science.  And there’s that psychological aspect that you MUST have enough food or YOU’LL STARVE.  It has one wonder what people living on these islands eat, no? 

Okay, so back to getting the provisioning started.  This inventory exercise took me a full week to complete.  I now have a 17 page document that lists every item on my boat, including the quantities, and where they are stored. A little overboard, perhaps, but it's done, and I'm loving the accomplishment, not to mention the system and how it works.

Next blog:  Heading out to shop.

-Barb in La Cruz