Day 37, Year 6 Provisioning, Phase One–Done
Date: Tuesday, November 30, 2010
Weather: Overcast with Strong Winds, SW Then NE
Location: Tuzi Gazi Marina, Richards Bay, South Africa
Phase One of the provisioning for our Atlantic crossing is DONE. Phase One is all canned and bottled food plus all the needs for baking bread and goodies and the supplies for making granola. We have ordered oats and flaked almonds but they are not in yet. Hopefully those will arrive in the next few days. Phase Two will be meat for the freezer and that will probably be added in Cape Town, along with Phase Three which is all the fresh fruits and veggies. Buying meat and fresh fruits and veggies takes only one day, so the hard part is over. Starting on December 1, we have about 182 days or 26 weeks until the last day of May. We should be in Florida by that time, and can reprovision there. So we have packed away enough canned salmon, green beans, and pasta sauce to have those once a week. We have enough tuna to have tuna salad sandwiches for at least two-thirds of the 182 days. We have kilos of flour, rice, and pasta tucked away. And we have more than three gallons of extra virgin olive oil and many bottles of honey stored. We have cans of artichoke hearts (a staple on Windbird), spinach (leftover from Thailand as it doesn’t exist here), peas, baby corn, kidney beans, chick peas, olives, salsa, and jars of peanut butter. We have bags of dried beans and lentils. We bought spices, vitamins, toilet paper, paper towels, and enough beer, coke, potatoes, carrots, and onions to get us to Cape Town. So once again, Windbird is sitting low in the water. Early in the morning we will go get jerry cans of diesel to fill our one empty tank (the other two are full) and then we will be ready for take-off whenever the weather allows. The rental car must be returned by 11 am tomorrow, so we will be walking or taking taxis from here on out. We found a great butchery shop today and bought enough meat to last us for two or three weeks and we bought a frozen turkey for Christmas. Just in case we leave here and can’t get to Cape Town by Christmas Day, we will at least be able to have a Christmas dinner. I have one can of pumpkin and one of cranberry sauce left over from Thailand, so we can also have cranberry salad and pumpkin pie.
As soon as the car is returned, I get to turn my attention back to photos and to boat projects. I really hope to have photos from Kruger ready to post by tomorrow night, so stay tuned on that one.
