Ok, now I am getting nervous about food.

I know that there are lots of folks that are obsessed with food.   You know,the kind of person who “lives to eat”?  As I have said in the past, I am more of the type that “eats to live”.  If I am hungry, I eat and it doesn’t make that much difference to me WHAT I EAT, a source of continual frustration to Brenda.  Most anything tastes good when I am ready.

But, that’s not what I mean by my being “nervous” about food.  In this case, it’s all about WHAT AM I GOING TO FEED MY CREW!  With the four of us aboard, it’s going to be crowded and perhaps the most important part of making passage is the whole question of “when is my next meal and what are we going to have captain?”.

As past posts have outlined in nauseating detail, we have a lot of food on board for me and Brenda to use over the winter aboard and I am not too keen on having it all vacuumed up in the ten days or so that it takes us to make our way to the BVI.

Anyway, I was going to wait till at least Cathy, one of my crew, arrived on Friday to begin getting the major supplies but now realize that to wait that long is making me just too worried about getting everything ready in time.  So, today it will be, shopping SOLO with the knowledge that what I have on board to feed my crew will have a lot to do with how well the trip goes.  Of course, weather and keeping things from getting broken is job #1 but keeping them fed is right up there.

However, for reasons that have always baffled me, I have found that when someone is on a boat they are somehow less gastronomically sensitive and that a meal they would send back in disgust at a fine dining establishment brings them to near-rapture when it’s served to them on the high seas.   As the late Andy Rooney might have said, “why is that”?  Who knows…   But, I cling to the hope that this trip will be no different.

An additional source of anxiety for me is the fact that our trip  is probably going to take us a week to ten days (I sure hope it’s not two weeks) and I have never had to provision in advance for that many meals in a single voyage.   To date, the longest trip I have taken without a stop was a week and 1,100 miles, from Nassau Bahamas to Essex CT.  And that was with two crew that I knew have the the discerning taste of your typical feral canine.    This crew?  They are a bit more high-brow.

Well, wish me luck today as I try to sort through all of this.  For sure, pasta will be high on the list.  “Ok Crew, repeat after me, I love carbs, I love carbs”  And the funny thing is, they will.  Well, at least that’s what they will probably say.  Perhaps they just want to encourage me for fear that the food will get worse if they don’t gush.  Whatever…  Works for me and I am sticking with that.

Enough about food.  How about a few cool boats.  The marina is full of boats ready to cruise.  Not a lot of day sailors in these parts now and a few really stood out to me.

How about this aluminum one?  My friend Chris, who doesn’t want to go to sea in anything that can’t be dropped into the water from 100′ and live to tell the tale, would love this one.  Very powerful. 10-28-15a 001It was fun to run into our old friends Rick and Julie who recently took delivery of a brand new, really red, French built catamaran.  “Rick, your boat is really, really red and amazing.”   They took delivery in France, sailed in the Med for a bit and then brought her to the US.  Ten thousand miles of sailing and they have only had her for a year.  Love the “lawn furniture” on the side deck.  Not too exposed to the weather.  Right?10-28-15a 004And, perhaps the “belle of the fleet”, this terrific Gunboat.  She looks like she is screaming along standing still at the dock.  Not even sure if “she” applies unless she is one tough woman, and she is.  What a remarkable machine. 10-28-15a 003Yesterday I posted a shot of a “Hampton/Salty Dawg” burgee.  I thought that it was pretty neat.  However, through some sort of quirk of the rally, you can participate in the rally and not technically be a “Salty Dawg” by membership.   And frankly, the additional benefits of membership are a bit blurry to me.  However, being the “I want to be part of the club” sort of guy that I am compelled me to join as an “official” member.  And, I got this terrific burgee.  Now, that’s a burgee.  And it’s big, which is good as I have always been a bit peevish about boats sporting a teeny tiny 8″ burgee on their starboard spreader.  Now, this is a proper burgee and I am happy to be a “dawg”.   Nice, shiny and new.  We’ll see how it looks after 4,000 miles of sailing come spring. 10-28-15a 005So, enough of that for now.  In a few days I’ll have a pack of hungry “dawgs” aboard.  Yikes…  I’d better get my yellow pad out and start making a grocery list.

Besides, I have a reputation to uphold.

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