You probably wondered what is going on these days. It has been a while since I posted anything. The last you heard we were still riding out cold fronts at Cambridge Cay. We have since moved on to Big Majors Spot. I don’t know why they call it “Spot” instead of “Cay” but that is the name on the chart.
We are anchored near Staniel Cay. Staniel is one of the hot spots for cruisers in the Bahamas. With a population probably less than 300, it still provides a lot of services, and it has an airport! With regularly scheduled flights! We hear and see a lot of airplanes, all of them very small, but quite busy here. When the wind is from the east, they zoom directly over our anchorage before making the turn for final approach, and sometimes they zoom frightfully low, barely above the top of the mast. A few mornings back, two of them were apparently racing for the landing strip and they zoomed overhead wingtip to wingtip in a terrifying formation reminiscent of the Blue Angels. At the last possible moment, one of them turned sharply away as the other turned into the access path. All this at a height that appeared to be mere inches above the masthead. Whew!
Air freight is one way people on the island receive goods. It is also the way cruisers receive goods. We needed our snail mail after we arrived, because it contains tax documents we need, and air freight enabled us to receive it only six days after we requested it! Subsequently we needed an engine part, and it, too, will arrive by air freight.
If not for air freight, the only other option would be the Bahamas Mail Boat. Air freight takes six days. Bahamas mail takes ?????????
The mail boats are the lifeline for the islands. They all start their journeys in Nassau, the capital, the largest city, and the largest port (I might be wrong. Freeport might be bigger.). They travel throughout the island carrying mail, of course, but they also carry groceries, construction materials, passengers and pretty much anything someone needs to deliver anywhere in the islands. People know the “schedule” of the mailboats very well, and in the Bahamas, when anyone says, “Has the boat arrived?” nobody answers, “What boat?” They all know what boat. It is the mail boat. In every part of the Bahamas, there is a large community of boats – sailboats, motor yachts, fishing vessels and so forth. But when anyone in any part of the Bahamas says, “the boat” everyone knows that the boat in question is the mail boat.
We arrived at Big Majors anchorage on a Tuesday. It had been almost a month since I set foot in a grocery store, and you can well imagine that our supply of fresh fruits and vegetables was about gone. We still had apples and oranges, which keep almost forever. We still had potatoes, onions, carrots and cabbage. However, things like celery, peppers, tomatoes and so forth were long gone.
As soon as the anchor was set, we jumped into the dinghy and headed for the grocery store. On Staniel Cay there are three grocery stores – the Pink Pearl, the Blue Palm, and Isles General, where the proprietor says, “We have what you need to get you where you are going.” We chose to go to Isles General, because it is right on the water.
We arrived at the location and found a steep beach in front where we could land the dinghy. A rope about fifty feet long strung between two concrete blocks well above high tide line provided a place to tie our painter to keep the dinghy from floating away. This service replaces the parking lots needed by suburban supermarkets.
The store itself is about as large as the master bedroom plus walk-in closet in many suburban homes. Or maybe not that large. It is dimly lit. The largest part of the store contains an assortment of supplies and odds and ends. Band-aids, school notebooks, transmission fluid, and etcetera. The smaller space (this is the walk-in closet) contains food. Or it contains food sometimes.
We found very little in the way of fresh produce, which was our real objective. The proprietor, Vivien, told us we could expect better selections after “the boat” came the next day. We talked with her at length about this situation, because it was all new to us, although we had some idea about it from listening to radio traffic. She told us the boat was expected the next morning, and she would have her goods on the shelves before noon. We made our plan to stop by again the next afternoon, about 1:30 when she re-opened the store after her lunch break 12:00 – 1:30PM.
The next morning we tuned in as always on VHF channel 12 to hear the weather report from Blue Yonder. We get weather daily from Chris Parker on SSB 4045 upper at 6:30AM, from the Bahamas Air and Rescue Service Association (BASRA) on SSB 4003 upper at 7:00AM, from Waterways Radio Club on SSB at 7268 lower at 7:45AM (if I don’t forget) and from Blue Yonder on VHF 12 at 8:00AM, or thereabouts. Radio reception is full of challenges, and on any given day we may be unable to hear one or more of the sources. Each has its own unique information. We try to glue it all together and make a guess at what our day will be like. The weather from Blue Yonder uniquely includes the buoy reports from near Staniel Cay, which is perfect for us right now.
Blue Yonder also keeps us informed about The Boat. That morning, the first thing she said was, “Has anyone seen the boat yet?” Despite the fact that this location hosts probably 50 boats, nobody asked “What boat?” Unfortunately, nobody had seen “the boat” and it was a subject of radio chatter throughout the day. We heard people calling the Captain C (I am guessing at the spelling) all through the day, but the captain did not answer. We heard people reporting that it had been seen here and there. Finally, the next morning, Thursday, we saw “the boat” entering the channel to the government dock. At last!
Needless to say, we did not go to the grocery store on Wednesday. It would have been pointless. We waited until afternoon on Thursday.
When we arrived at the store, it was humming. The dinghy beach was full of dinghies, although there was still room for ours. The store was full of people. As we arrived, a crew from a nearby yacht club came in with a huge cooler to collect their special order. People were buzzing about excitedly picking up tomatoes, celery, zucchini, cauliflower and other fresh items. There was meat in the meat freezer. (We have learned that in the islands, all meat is frozen. Fresh meat cannot be transported on a mail boat that wanders the islands for a week.) Our choices were chicken wings, chicken leg quarters, pork ribs, NY strip steak, and ground beef in 1-pound tubes. There were fresh eggs, butter, heavy cream and other dairy products. There was a lot of bread, but all of the “Wonder” variety. We made our selections and departed happy. I bought 4 tomatoes, even though I would like to have had more. I suspected the supply was inadequate for major restocking, and I was right. We were there the next day for something else, and the tomatoes were completely gone. There were a few droopy onions, and other odds and ends, but no tomatoes.
The next week, we knew to be watching for the boat. Blue Yonder started her broadcast asking, “Has anyone seen the boat?” but nobody had. It finally arrived about 5PM. I followed good island tradition when I heard someone call Isles General on the VHF and listened in on the conversation. I learned that the store’s proprietor would be meeting the boat to get her order and would spend the evening stocking shelves. She would open the next morning at 8:00 AM.
This time we wanted to visit all the stores, plus the bakery. On Thursday morning, we dinghied over to the Staniel Cay Yacht Club and landed at their dinghy beach. The Pink store, the Blue store and the bakery are all in easy walking distance of the yacht club.
We visited the Pink Store first. This store is in a building about the size of a wide garage. The proprietor is an ancient lady who waits patiently behind the counter while customers browse. Her store is so poorly lit that we could hardly make out the labels of items on the shelves. Even after the arrival of the boat, her shelves were half empty. Many items appeared to have been there for a very long time. However, she did have fresh produce, and we bought a few things. The owner was very pleasant as we checked out and wished her a good day.
Next we went to the bakery. Baking is done in one room of a nearby house. The owner makes various kinds of bread, but on any given day the selections are few. We could buy white, whole wheat, or cinnamon raisin. We bought a loaf of whole wheat and one of the raisin loaves. The raisin bread had just come out of the oven and the aroma filled the room. After we got home we cut a piece, still warm, and it was wonderful. Yum!
On to the Blue Store. This store is larger and better lit than the Pink Store. The owner is more attentive to her customers. She came over to help me when I started looking at the meats in the freezer. Her selection of meat, produce and dry goods was the best I have seen here. I was delighted to be able to find romaine lettuce. We haven’t had lettuce for a while, and good as cabbage is, it is more appealing when interspersed with crisp green lettuce salads.
Finally we went to Isles General again. I was hoping for more tomatoes, but it was not to be. At the Pink Store and the Blue Store, there were a few tomatoes which may have been locally grown, but they were so flawed that I knew they wouldn’t keep very long. I should have grabbed one or two, however, because Isles General had none of any kind. I am learning that island grocery shopping is quite different from my land-locked experience. We eat well, but it takes a willingness to innovate with what you find. Isles General had pork chops on this occasion, a product we did not find anywhere else this time.
That is the lesson. You make the most of what you find when you find anything. I think we could order special items if we made the order before the boat departs Nassau, and if we knew we would be here the next time it arrives. We haven’t tried that idea yet. The boat comes when it comes, and you get whatever you find.
As we returned to the boat with our treasures, the sun was warm, the sky was deep blue, and the water was every imaginable shade of blue and green. We were splashed by the spray as the dinghy hit the waves, and we were soaked when we got back. Who cares? I remember thinking as we zoomed toward our boat, not the boat, how fortunate I was to be in this place at this time. It is so beautiful here. I thank God every day for the opportunity to enjoy it. It took us a while to get here, but I am learning that time is what you make of it. We are blessed to enjoy this life. And if we are smart, we will learn to flex with the situation and to make the most of it when the boat is in our port.
June 9, 2009
All the wise planning in the world will not prevent the regular need to shop for groceries. I suppose we could live on survival rations and buy a year’s supply at a time, but where would be the fun, not to mention the flavor, in that? It is fairly easy to buy fresh meat and produce for about two weeks, but that is very close to the outer limit of both refrigerator space and the life of fresh produce. Meat can last quite a while if frozen, but our marine refrigerator does not reliably freeze things. We try to manage to keep it just at, but not past, the point where things would freeze, and that gives us two weeks or thereabouts with fresh meat.
Eventually the day comes that we have eaten everything in sight and it is time to go shopping. Yesterday was our first shopping day as cruisers. By the time it was over we discovered that we had planned pretty well, but we learned a few new tricks.
In strange places, the first challenge is to discover where the grocery stores are. Cruise guides often include notes that groceries are conveniently near one marina or another, but one still must flesh out that information. For our first go, however, we used information we already had, but for the first time we used it starting at anchor. We had gone into Baltimore on Sunday evening in order to use the Port Networks wifi, but that experiment proved to be a disaster. Nothing worked. However, we anchored in sight of a big Safeway store where we have shopped for years, and that was a good thing.
Come Monday morning, yesterday, we got ready to shop. We started by getting out our shore-shopping backpacks. Each of us has one, and each backpack is stuffed with two big tote bags. Not knowing with certainty how things would go, never having done this before, I dragged out another big tote bag to add to the supply. Into the backpack went my billfold, my shopping list, a pen and some extra index cards. My shopping list always represents some specific meal plans, but in case I find something more appealing than my plan, I use the index cards to record my revised meal plans.
This would be the first time to leave our boathome at anchor in a metropolitan area with nobody aboard. We were a little bit paranoid. We locked up everything, then remembered that we needed something, unlocked, rummaged, and locked up again. Finally, we were ready.
We let down the boarding ladder on the aft deck and pulled the dinghy around. We are still learning this drill, but each time we do it, it is easer. Larry got in first, I handed the bags down to him, and then I boarded. For the short jaunt to the dinghy dock, we didn’t bother with the motor. Larry rowed. He is getting to be pretty good at it!
If boarding the dinghy from the boat is a challenge, debarking from the dinghy at a strange dock is moreso. However, I eventually managed that trick. While I held the dinghy’s painter, Larry ran a cable through the dock structure and locked down the dinghy. Many is the dinghy, both with and without outboard motor, that has disappeared while cruisers shopped or dined out. We knew we could not swim back with our groceries, even though the boat was in clear view from the dock.
As I shopped, the grocery cart grew heavier and heavier. We looked the situation over and worried that we needed to buy more than we could carry back at one trip. We decided to stop without the meat or dairy items. We paid the bill and packed our bags. We were amazed that about $100 worth of produce and assorted other things fit easily into our prepared bags, with bags left over. We walked back to the dinghy dock, just across the street and down a little path.
The next challenge was to get the groceries back to the boat without losing anything in the water. We passed the bags carefully into the dinghy and rowed out to the boat. Holding that dinghy reasonably still and passing the bags up the ladder to the deck is not rocket science, but it does take coordination.
Of course, after lunch, we had to go back to the store and get the rest of our groceries. This time we were familiar with the drill, so it wasn’t such a big deal. It just takes patience and careful handling.
Along the way, we stopped at Starbucks for an iced coffee and a couple of internet hours. I barely got all my uploads and updates done in that amount of time. We probably should have gone there on Sunday night and returned on Monday for another two hours. After all these years of internet on demand 24 hours a day, I have a lot of things I want to do, and I didn’t get all of them done on this trip. This, too, is a learning experience.
Now we are provisioned for two weeks. We ate dinner on the aft deck and watched the sun go down. Tomorrow is a new adventure. What? Where? We will find it out when it happens.
Ship’s Log
No Boundaries
Tuesday, June 2, 2009
Some people will think this post is boring. Pass it by and move on if you like. However, this post is for everyone who ever asked me, “How do you eat?” It happens just as soon as they realize we live on a boat. A person whose only image of a boat is a runabout or a bass boat might well ask that question. This post is a listing of our meals for a week. If you think we are camping out or living on canned tuna, this entry should be reassuring.
To list what we eat for a week may be more information than some people want. I well remember an ancient radio program on which one announcer read the hospital menus for her ten-day hospital stay after emergency surgery during a trip to Phoenix. Most people don’t love their hospital meals very much, but this lady loved hers. She loved them so much that she told us all the possible choices for each day before she told us what she actually chose. Bless her for making over the food service staff in a hospital. They probably still wish she would come back and be a patient again.
I won’t bore you with all our choices. I think a week of menus should suffice to reassure anyone who fears we won’t be well fed, and a few curious cooks will enjoy a look into our galley. These are the meals for our first week afloat, out of Baltimore, out of town. There is no running to the grocery store for some forgotten item; it must all be aboard, or it doesn’t happen.
Saturday
Breakfast
Hotcakes with fresh sliced strawberries for the topping
Bacon
Lunch
Cheese sandwich with tomato slices
Dill pickle spears
Fresh Rainier cherries
Dinner
Baked chicken selected pieces
Steamed broccoli
Fried potatoes with onions
Hot slaw (you can find this recipe on the website www.lkharms.com )
Sunday
Breakfast
Hotcakes with maple syrup
Bacon
Lunch
Salmon salad
Apple quarters
Ritz crackers
Dinner
Italian Sausage
Braised Fennel
Penne with red sauce
Sliced tomato with Italian dressing and sprinkled with toasted pine nuts
Monday
Breakfast
Special K Red Berries with milk
Lunch
Salmon salad sandwiches
Radishes
Dinner
Marinated Sirloin on iron griddle (too windy for grilling)
Oven-fried Russet potato
Jamaican Kale
Slaw
Friendship cherries
Tuesday
Breakfast
Oatmeal with apricots and almonds
Lunch
Leftover chicken legs, potatoes and hot slaw
Pasta salad made with leftover pasta
Peach Crisp
Dinner
Pork Tenderloin slices with Cajun seasoning
Rice
Cajun Zucchini (onion, tomato, spice)
Slaw
Peach Crisp
Wednesday
Breakfast
Special K Red Berries with milk
Bananas
Lunch
Sandwiches made of leftover sirloin from Monday
Dill Pickle spears
Dinner
Caribbean Lemon Chicken
Eggplant browned on griddle
Steamed broccoli/cauliflower/carrot mixture
Salad with golden raisins and honey-mustard dressing
Thursday
Breakfast
Bran muffins
Banana
Lunch
Sandwiches with leftover pork tenderloin
Leftover slaw
Leftover green beans
Dinner
Split Pea Soup with chunky ham and carrots
Apple Salad
Corn Bread
Friday
Breakfast
Boiled eggs
Toasted Corn Bread Splits
Lunch
Leftover Split Pea Soup
Leftover Corn Bread
Leftover apple salad
Dinner
Homemade Pizza
Salad with Italian dressing
So this is a week of food afloat. I hope folks feel better about us now. We eat a fairly civilized diet, and we enjoy interesting flavor. Can’t wait to get to the islands and learn some new tricks.