Provisioning for The Bahamas

We have had some windy cold weather recently. Sleeping through the night has not been an issue for me, I could fall asleep standing up. Rob frequently gets up throughout the stormy nights to check on our dock lines or to try to tighten a halyard that is slapping against the mast. Working outside on the boat during these windstorms is nearly impossible. Towels, tools, and dog toys fly into the water. I’ve gotten pretty quick at fishing things out with the boat hook. So during Saturday’s storm, we decided to shop for provisions.

From what I have researched, food, toiletries, and alcohol are very expensive in The Bahamas. $7 for a box of crackers, $10 for a gallon of bleach, $60 for a case of beer, your left arm for a bottle of sunscreen —who can afford this?! Not us. Or at least not everyday. In order to take this time off, we have to keep our costs down and keep an eye on our budget. Therefore, we are stocking up on provisions before we leave for The Bahamas.

But like everything else on the boat, it’s a balancing act. I don’t want to spend the next year eating nothing but boxed mac and cheese and ramen.  We love cooking with fresh vegetables, eating street food, and experiencing new cultures through food. So while we want to save money where we can, we also don’t want to restrict ourselves so much that we don’t fully enjoy our experiences. With that in mind, I tried to follow the guidelines below when determining our provisions list.

1. If we don’t eat it now, we probably won’t start eating it in the future. I don’t like spam now, so there’s no reason to think I will want to dive into a can of it in 5 weeks. So spam did not make the provisions list.
2. Buy ingredients with meals in mind. While I love the challenge of developing a new recipe with what’s in the cabinet, it is most efficient to develop your provisions list with meals in mind. Some of the meals we provisioned for include pasta with red sauce and artichoke hearts, fried rice, stir fry, red coconut curry, chili, quinoa salad, jambalaya, etc.
3. Bahamians eat and have grocery stores. While it’s great to stock up on staples (rice, oatmeal, quinoa, pasta, diced tomatoes), we will still be able to buy fresh food in the Bahamas. We wouldn’t want to miss out on shopping in local markets and cooking with new ingredients anyway.
4. Rob is going to become an expert fisherman. Who doesn’t love fresh fish!?! We are also stocking up on fishing gear and plan to catch some of our meals each week. Brown rice and black beans go very well with blackened fish and take up very little space in the boat.
5. Size matters. A 39 foot boat is a fairly large boat. But add a couple of newlyweds and 2 large dogs and the space starts to feel pretty small. We are happy to shove food and wine into any free storage space, but we don’t want to make our space feel any smaller.  Therefore, we tried to stock up on things that don’t take up much space, like spices and ziplock bags, and recognize that we will need to replenish things, like paper towels, along the way.

So we set off to Walmart with our provisions list and bought an almost gross amount of food. Once we got all of the food, toiletries, and cleaning supplies back to the boat, we started the process of repackaging them.  Everyone’s number one boat rule is, NO CARDBOARD ON THE BOAT.

I’d say that I’m adapting well to life on the boat, but one thing terrifies me. BUGS. The boat has so many nooks and crannies and small spaces for little critters to hide out. I can’t imagine how big of a pain it would be if we had an infestation. So I’m very in favor of anything that prevents insects from boarding Kairos. The Boat Galley has a wonderful post about this. But the bottom line is never take cardboard on board. Cockroaches and other critters are attracted to cardboard. I can backpack through the Colorado Mountains, I can shower in the ocean, I have no issues doing my business in the woods, but I CANNOT live on a boat with cockroaches.

Thus, we removed all the cardboard packaging from our provisions and repackaged the food into ziplock bags. With the boxes gone, we had to transfer the cooking instructions to the ziplocks. We even threw out the ziplock bag box and placed the ziplocks in a ziplock.

I also read that putting bay leaves in mixes that contain flour or grains discourages weevils. Now, I’m not entirely sure what a weevil is, but I’m guessing I’d like it as much as I like cockroaches. Each bag received its own bay leave and I threw a couple in the food lockers for good measure. Similarly, ants don’t like cloves, so guess what!?! Our food lockers now smell like Christmas!

Where are we going to store all of this food you might ask? We have two large food lockers in our galley where we will store the food we plan to cook in the near future. The rest of the people food is stored in storage lockers under our bed. While most people store money under their mattress, we will be sleeping on top of cans of peas. Good thing I’m not a princess. Once we removed the bags of wine from their boxes, they can be stored just about anywhere—under the sink, in small cabinets, under the floor boards.  It’ll be like an Easter egg hunt each time we need to open a new one.  Lastly, the dog food is stored in air tight Gamma2 pet soft storage containers.  They are awesome.

Right before we take off to cross the Gulf Stream, we will stock up on perishable foods like cheese, vegetables, bread, and meats. Hopefully all of this preparation will keep us well fed and insect free. T minus two weeks until we leave the marina.