Provisioning

This week has been a blur of shopping, stowing groceries, and finishing projects. The haul out itself was one of our easier ones since the only big job was getting new bottom paint on the boat. When we were working stiffs (and vacation time was precious) we used to bang that chore out over a four day weekend, but with eight days in the yard we could take it easy. The big news is not only did we paint over the old blue boot stripe, but we also raised the waterline - again. Hopefully this will cut down on the number of times we have to scrub green slime off the white hull. While we were on the hard John also painted the newly modified propane locker in our cockpit. Now it fits the new tanks we ordered after the ones we purchased in Panama City rusted.

Thanks to Ralph and Glenda we've made numerous trips to Costco which has been a huge money saver. It always hurts the wallet to buy six months to a year's worth of provisions but we think it will pay off in the long run. Except for last minute fresh things we made our last $300 visit today and are already kicking ourselves for not buying more cans of dry roasted peanuts. And after spending $200 at the vet on five cases of prescription canned food and a 10 lb bag of prescription kibble we find we still need another bag of kibble to get us through one year. I still can't wrap my head around the idea of needing a prescription to buy cat food.

I spent one day scrubbing misc. black marks and marks from the Travlift off the hull and the next day we gave the whole boat a good scrubbing. John finished replacing the rigging (shrouds and bobstays) and cut down our new plastic chairs to fit in the cockpit. Stowing all the provisions is a time consuming process as we make it a rule to label the tops of cans with a Sharpie and remove all paper labels in the hope that this will cut down on places for critters to hide. We try to eliminate as much packaging as possible to give our garbage to a first world country rather than burning it ourselves farther down the line. And we do a lot of vacuum sealing/bagging to keep the critters out and to repackage bulk items into smaller units. We're stowing heavy items on the port side of the boat in anticipation of spending most of the passage on port tack, and we now have a noticeable list.

John is now working on our taxes, we have some more non-Costco shopping to do, and a few projects to finish up, and we're looking for a good weather window. Oh, but first we have to get our fuel injection pump back from Honolulu, so we'll try to wrap everything up in anticipation of that.

Linda