St. Helena to the Caribbean - Day 9
Harmonie
Don and Anne Myers
Mon 21 Jan 2013 13:24
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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
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