St. Helena to the Caribbean - Day 9

Harmonie
Don and Anne Myers
Mon 21 Jan 2013 13:24
03:12.125S  25:33.814W
 
January 21, 2013
 
Let's talk vegetables.
Specifically, rotting vegetables.  Our daily blog updates have covered the weather, the wind, the sailing, the lack of fish (or glut of dead flying fish) and Don's daytime sleeping habits, but there's been no talk of vegetables.  We can only hypothesize that what used to be a bunch of brightly colored, firm and very much alive good-for-us foodstuffs are feeling neglected, and this why their health is declining so rapidly.  It can't possibly have anything to do with the lack of fresh vegetables in Namibia and St. Helena, where most things green are shipped in from South Africa.  Nope, it's got to be the jealousy factor.  So, to rectify the situation, at least one paragraph in today's blog update will be dedicated to vegetables.  Lucky you.
 
The carrots that looked so promising in the refrigerated section of Namibia's finest grocery store are now growing a crop of fuzzy white hair in between weeping black sores.  This, after only 3 1/2 weeks!  I'm not trying to make the Namibian (which are probably South African) carrots feel bad, but their Sri Lankan cousins lasted a good 8 weeks last year through the heat and rough seas of the Indian Ocean without batting an eyelash.  The 'long life' Namibian tomatoes (also probably South African), packed so carefully in our 'long life' produce bags, and taking up precious refrigerator space, were tasteless even before they developed their own version of weeping black sores.  The yellow peppers, one of the very few vegetables in St. Helena's tiny grocery stores that wasn't a potato, onion or cabbage, barely lasted a week before breaking down into black mush.  It's all so sad and depressing.  Even the onions have developed a sheen of blackish-gray - obviously their way of voicing solidarity with the others.  And the cucumbers?  They're fine.  Fine as long as you're not bothered by their new found ability to bend nearly in half without breaking.  Who says a flexible cucumber can't still be tasty?
 
Just typing all this is making me teary-eyed.  It's good the apples and oranges and eggs are soldiering on so well with barely a blemish.  The winner of this year's vegetable longevity competition by far, however, is cabbage.  Cabbage, the unsung hero of hot weather food storage.  Give it a little cool air and it will be your friend for weeks and weeks - months, even.  Ten days from now we might be slightly less inclined to heap such lavish praise on what's left of the cabbage though.  Vegetable monotony can do that to a person.
 
Ok!  Well, that's better.  Hopefully that will be enough to hold off the inevitable black death for the carrots, tomatoes and peppers for a few more days.  If not, well then, there's always cabbage.
 
Still sailing perfectly downwind in 10-20 knots from the southeast.  Day 9 brought another 168 miles of progress as we close in on the equator and the last of the southeast trades (estimated equator arrival: Wednesday night).  No fish, no dead flying fish, and no freezing freezer (again! but much less of an issue now as its contents are nearly depleted).
 
9 days down, 14-ish to go.
Anne