Day 15 - Bermuda to Guernsey
Stravaig'n the Blue
Thu 9 Jun 2022 11:44
Position timestamp: Wednesday 8 June 2022 14:00 (UTC-1)
Distance travelled in last 24 hours: 155 NM (average speed 6.5 knots)
Reduction in distance to destination: 111 NM
Shortest distance to destination: 1209 NM (great circle)
And now for something completely different. (cue Monty Python’s theme music)
So far, and I am sure this will continue, the meals on this passage have, as always, been great. Varied, with never the same thing twice, hugely appetising, brilliantly cooked and presented, and teeming with fresh ingredients. For example, tonight’s Asian-style prawn curry will have in it - and bear in mind this is day 15 - fresh carrots, yellow peppers, courgettes, sugar-snap peas, green bananas and coriander.
In this first of a number of guest articles Linda explains how she does it.
Provisioning in Bermuda for this passage was more of a challenge than it had been on our two previous Atlantic crossings. This was because, instead of being in a marina with access to a courtesy car, a rental car or taxis, we were anchored off and had to take the dinghy into the town dock and walk to and from the supermarkets towing the trusty shopping trolley (and lugging heavy shopping bags - Ed).
But before the provisioning could start, I needed to know what provisions were required. We assumed the passage would take a maximum of 24 days (it is going to be tight) and, when we arrived in Bermuda at the end of April, I started to build the menu plan for all 48 meals. (Except on high days and holidays we always have home-made muesli, fruit and yoghurt for breakfast so that required little planning apart from remembering to provision.) Despite having an extensive back catalogue, planning 48 meals is a massive task and it was done in bite sized chunks several weeks, with the plan going through a number of iterations as I fine-tuned what we might want to eat as we sailed northwards and into cooler climes.
Based on the menu plan, I wrote down every ingredient needed for each meal (eg carrot x 1, red cabbage x 1/6, rocket x 1/2 bag, chicken breast fillets x 250g, bread x 3 slices) and totted up the individual quantities to get the total for each ingredient. To this I added in all the other stuff we’d need from snacks and drinks to general stores like washing up liquid, tissues and kitchen roll, to make a monster master list.
There were over 150 different items, some with pretty large quantities - 20 carrots, 24 tomatoes, 30 apples, 10 long-life milk, 15 (very heavy) gallons of water (our emergency supply incase the water-maker broke down). We could only manage five or six shopping bags at a time so we’d be making quite a few trips over the last week. The final planning aspect was organising the master list into the order in which the items would be bought: cans, bottles and dry stores first, then frozen foods, chilled foods, long-keeping vegetables and fruits and, last, tender vegetables and soft fruits.
It was a bit daunting! Made easier, though, because the two best supermarkets in Hamilton not only stocked fabulously fresh ingredients but also had a huge range of Waitrose products! I found almost everything on the list, including really fresh kale, radicchio, rocket, chicory and golden beetroots. Another rare find this side of the Atlantic were pomegranates (which were an eye-popping $10 each) but, from the day we arrived, there were no bananas in any of the stores - and no-one could tell us why. Luckily, on our second last day, on the way to the launderette, we chanced upon a sole trader at his stall in a car park in the back streets of Hamilton. He had big bunches of very green locally grown bananas. After discussing the ripening merits of a couple of large bunches, much to his surprise we took both.
All is well.
Linda
Still to come. Where am I going to store everything and will I ever find it again?