Day 123, Year 5: A Little Extra Protein
Date: Friday, February 26, 2010
Weather: Hot Day with Late Afternoon Sea Breeze
Location: Bolgatty Hotel Anchorage, Cochin (Kochi), India
Writing a daily log like this bares your soul to anyone out there checking out Handleysail.com. I have never really worried about that as I feel I am writing each day to my family and good friends. But this morning when I discovered weevils in our food supply, I thought maybe I should just not mention this to anyone. But then, I didn’t feel honest, because I have always written what is happening each day just as it happens. So the bad news is that some pasta and rice bought in Thailand and all the rice we have bought since arriving here in India are all crawling with weevils. Yuck! In our four and half years of world cruising, we have never encountered these little buggers, but now we know them well. Mark and I spent the entire morning meticulously checking every item in every storage basket in our forward head. That has become a food storage area and a week or so ago, I bought four kilos of rice here and just threw them into the storage bin. I had promised to vacuum seal them quickly, but somehow the days have gone by and I didn’t get the job done. When I got the packages out to vacuum seal this morning, the critters inside were very obvious. I threw out one bag, but went ahead and vacuumed packed the other three. I figure the weevils cannot live without air and when we open the packages for use, we’ll just enjoy the extra protein!
But unfortunately, the story doesn’t end there. I have four milk crate-sized bins in the forward head, so I decided I should check each one for unwanted critters. The top bin was fine. The second one contains Oreos and TimTams for Mark, crackers, and soft and hard taco shells-no critters. So this is good. The third bin is for pasta-fusilli, vermicelli, bow ties, shells, and rice vermicelli. Well, the vermicelli bought in New Zealand in 2007 and the vermicelli bought in Thailand were all fine, but one bag of the fusulli from Thailand was absolutely riddled with weevils. Both bags of bow tie pasta bought in Thailand were also horribly infested, so out they went. Then I got to the bottom box of rice bought in Thailand. I hadn’t vacuum packed it because it looked airtight. Big mistake. I vacuumed packed anything that still looked passable, cleaned the milk crates and wiped the outside of very single package and then put everything away, liberally sprinkling bay leaves and whole cloves every where. I know weevils are a common problem with cruisers in this part of the world, but I have just never had to deal with this. We will check the milk crates regularly and hope that vacuum packing suffocated any wildlife left behind. And we’ll just enjoy those suffocated little weevils as extra protein in our diet in the coming months.
Mark, Ed, and I went into Ernakulum for lunch today and then did a little shopping. Ed bought 2-stroke engine oil and Mark bought aluminum bar to turn Windbird into a jail before we arrive in Madagascar. People there are so very poor and unfortunately you have to make sure you are locked in at night so no one can get inside. So Mark will make little grates to install in our hatches so no one can get in. I then bought more onions, we all bought little rag rugs to use for various purposes, Ed topped up his cell SIM card, we bought more Indian snack food that we have learned to love, I bought cloves and cardamom seeds, mailing envelopes, scissors, and a garlic press, and then we headed home. It was a successful shopping trip and a needed break from being on the boat.
Mark and I have been working on getting photos uploaded to the website and we now have successfully uploaded photos for Days 94, 95, 96, 100, 103, 116, 119. And more will be coming soon.
Our West Marine toilet repair kit has been in Paris for the last 24 hours, so we hope it is enjoying its time there. Our compressor seems to be on its way here from Chennai, but there was no update today. Hopefully it will arrive in the next day or so. And we talked to family in Florida this morning to arrange to have a few West Marine goodies sent back here when Lynne returns. My sister-in-law, Sue, and her husband Brad live in Boynton Beach, the same town where Lynne is staying while visiting with her mother and family. So we talked to Brad this morning and gave him our West Marine wish list. He will do the shopping and get the things to Lynne to bring back to us. So thank you to Brad and Sue for doing this shopping for us.
