Tons of food

Today was the most stressful crazy day I’ve ever had on the boat. In the morning Brooke helped me with last minute cleaning things and other people who finished their jobs came in and helped too. Our order arrived around 0930, everyone got in a line and things started to slowly come down, I put Brooke in charge of canned goods, directing where they needed to go and un packaging them. We had 11 pallets of stuff to unload, 6 of them were frozen things. After the first one was done the hydraulic jack they had broke, so there was a long wait for the truck to move closer to the boat, we were able to put everything from that first shipment away.

The truck moved closer and food rained down like a thunderstorm. A few times I got really overwhelmed and asked them to slow down a little. When the frozen meat came on that’s when I got really stressed. I filled two freezers and I still wasn’t done putting chicken away. Chris came in and really helped me out putting things away and moving things around. Everyone was in on the unpacking of boxes and throwing meat to the freezers. It was cool when the 300 pounds of coffee came down because they wer elight enough to just toss to the next person. Eventually everything was on the boat and things were being put away slowly.

Brooke and Sam took care of all the canned goods and I’m very thankful that it all got put away in an organized fashion, both in the overheads in the galley and down below in dry stores. By lunch time not all the frozen goods had been put away, because there was no more room. John and Chris went out to buy another freezer, once it was on the boat and plugged in I was able to fill it. Meat was first, fish, bacon and meatballs mostly, then some frozen vegetables. Everything wasn’t going to fit, I was really strating to stress out, but Rebecca said I should take out whatever I’m going to cook this week, that helped a lot. At the end of it we only have one and half ice chests filled with stuff that won’t fit, hopefully tomorrow I’ll be able to move more things around.

The refrigerators on the other hand are full as well, the port one is filled with butter, garlic, guacamole and tortillas. The starboard is full of veggies and cheese.

By three o’clock everything was pretty much put away. Matt worked on storing some lettuce and I started dinner, coconut chicken curry and eggplant with spinach.

I declared that it was a night for mojitos.

Wall of butter and garlic.

Bread.

New freezer.

Order placed and cleaning

Again the morning was spent hunched over my computer making the last changed to the big order. Ramon, from Jose Santiago’s came around 0930 to make our order, he was prepared to write down everything we wanted, I had typed everything into excel, so after going over it I just printed it our for him. With the order in I felt a lot better. Had lunch of cabbage pancakes and miso soup with rice, then prepped for dinner right afterwards, meatballs, potato gratin and pea, mint, avocado salad. In the afternoon I asked for Brooke to help me clean things, while she cleaned out dry storage and labeled things for where the new cans are going go, I cleaned out the chest freezers and made sure they were on.

I didn’t go outside at all today until after dinner when I want to the grocery store with a handful of people. Robin get here tomorrow, I wonder what he thinks about me being the cook.

Food order

Today was worse than yesterday, huge headache, I just want to unzip my scalp and take out my brain so that I can relax. I never really thought about how difficult it would be to order food for 9 months; it’s everything from salt and pepper to meat and cheese. I’m avoiding ordering to many canned beans and gross vegetables that stick around to long. I made eggs to order and everyone was very please with that, lunch was white bean soup that I even liked and dinner was lots of fresh vegetables. My only fear is that I’m going to run out of ideas for things to make halfway across the Atlantic.

Brooke was organizing her rack and we got to talking about cold weather clothing, looks like I won’t be needing too much of mine now. She doesn’t have foulie boots, so she can borrow mine.

Making breakfast.

Costco

This morning I went over the list of food to order for this coming season; my brain hurts. I’ve never done anything like this before, I don’t know what some of the stuff is and on top of that, some is in Spanish. By the afternoon I had gone over the list of things to order and made a list for Costco, there were a lot of things that the company didn’t have that we got last year from Sysco. After dinner and tours were over one of the tour guides, Mark, was going to Costco and he has a card so John and I went with him. I love Costco, so I had a lot of fun; I picked up a few things to help this week until we get half our order at the end of the week. I got two large pineapples for 6 dollars, really ripe avocados 8 dollars, a giant bag of flour and 7 ½ dozen eggs.

Grant cleaning out medical drawers.

Day off, beach and caves

Most amazing day off in Puerto Rico. Brooke’s dad is visiting so they had a rental car and Richard, Jesse and I joined them. We went south to the dry forest and the beach, we drove down a very curvy road thinking it wouldn’t get us anywhere but then we found an amazing beach. After that we had lunch at a roadside stop, lots of little fried things, shrimp and beef empanadas, mufunngo and I think pork stomach soup.

Then on to the most amazing cave, behind a Texico station, as we pulled in we saw a bunch of people walking down a hill so it was obviously up that way. As we walked up the trail we were joined by a tour guide, a dog, she followed us all the way to the caves and deep into them and all the way back out. It was raining heavily by the time we got to the first cave, we climbed down between some tree roots and a few steps and there was a huge open room of the cave. The second cave was spectacular, climbed deep into a cave, past a some smaller rooms and lots of stalactites and stalagmites. We turned the corner and there was a huge window, a giant opening with an amazing view.

Beach.

Brooke's dad made a shark.

Goat.

Empinadas, fried pork, plantains, pork stomach soup.

Ruines of a house.

Path to the caves.

Brooke is excited.

Richard.

Back in the galley

I’m very happy to be back in the galley. Nick did breakfast this morning and that was his last meal, I guess he just wasn’t all that happy here and things between him and the management were not great. So no more work party for me for now, I went to the galley and started cleaning, did that for about two hours then sat down and decided what to make for lunch and dinner. Ended up doing veggie burritos with re-fried beans, rice, peppers and taco fixings and for dinner spaghetti and meatballs with bread.

It was kind of amazing all the things that I found leftover from last season, the best, ginger beer that Dina had made.

Tenley.

Grant, Sam and Ryan.

Brooke, Jesse and Richard.

Slow work

Ryan arrived last night, it’s great to see him again and glad that he’ll be crossing the Atlantic with us. I didn’t really have any good jobs this morning, I was helping the bilge team clean the tank room with pressurized water, my job was to stop the leaking from the hose connection to the machine. Then Caleb came around and tightened it with his man hands and my job disappeared. I was then told to stand by and make sure backstays didn’t catch on anything as the mast went up, but then that was halted because the head rig is in bad shape and things had to happen there first. So I stood around for awhile playing deck monkey and helped Sam paint some bolts, then more standing around.

Laura grabbed me and we went back into the tank room to install the mini bilge baffles that have been in production for the past few days. The idea is to slide a piece of plastic into a slot and have water flow in but not out. The pieces holding the baffle in place have to be screwed in to the hull, a very awkward place, none of it went well and we were just stripping screws, luckily it was lunch time so we got to quit early.

After lunch there was a lot more standing around and helping those aloft to put up the fore topgallant mast, but that didn’t go well either. There was a lot of up and down, but it didn’t go all the way up today.

Grant working in the tank room.

Engine room mess

I was confined to the engine room today, no sun for me. Sam, Tenely and I cleaned out the forward tank room and then Caleb and Don sorted things out and threw out a lot of trash. I then spent a good while vacuuming the engine room and then painting, while I was doing that everyone else was putting up the fore topgallant mast.

The forward tank room in the galley.

Cleaning and splinters

I spent a good part of the day cleaning while on duty; it’s amazing what people can forget about. I cleaned out the crew cupboards and the crew fridge, gross things left behind leaking juice. I tallowed the mizzen topgallant mast and got a deep splinter in my hand, I had Richard take it out, but he was too slow and gentle so Jesse jabbed and gouged at me and he got it out. Then I was sent to find iron work and that was a big sweaty mess digging under sails and rigging, but the right piece could not be found.

Mizzen mast

This morning Laura and I lead the braces for the mizzen topsail and did a bunch of other rig work. In the afternoon Tenley and I scrapped the mizzen topgallant mast.

Bending on the spanker

Took the 6:30 am ferry to get back to the main land, drove like crazy, got back to the boat at 10:30 because of traffic. Once on the boat we got to do lots of rig stuff, put up the main top and the spanker.

I bet he could fit a bit more junk.

Day off

We thought today was going to be a great day off, but turned out a little wrong at the end. The five of us, Richard, Brooke, Grant, Jesse and I, rented a car again for the day off, we went to the rainforest. The forest was beautiful and so by it’s name, it was raining. We stopped to get some food, fried little things; the best was corn with cheese, like a cheese stick battered in thick corn goop. Then it was a little further up the mountain to a viewing tower and then to a path to the waterfall. Hiked out to the waterfall on a paved path, raining the whole time, we were drenched by the time we got there. The waterfall was muddy and full on thrashing down the rocks, lots of rain, monsoon.

From the rainforest we drove to the coast to take a ferry to an island. While we waited we had an amazing lunch, fish that was brined in garlic and breaded with crackers, served with fried plantains. Off on the ferry we went, took an hour to get there, which we were all surprised about, by the time we got there we realized we only had about 45 minutes before the next ferry. We asked if there was another one, there was at 6, so we walked around a little then got tickets. Long story short we ended up throwing rocks at another rock by the water and missed our ferry.

So we spent the night on the island.

Rain forest.

Me and Jesse.

A path, a path!

Waterfall.

Ferry boat.

Food stand.

Donut car.

Chickens in trash.

Creature of the deep.

Brooke and Grant.

More sewing

This morning I helped Brooke and Sam rig the heel rope so the mizzen topmast could be placed on the fore. Mike, Jesse, Chris and Grant helped put up the mizzen topsail in under four hours and started to stretch out the sail. I also finished the three grommets in the clew of the spanker, then we stretched it out to roll it up and found another place that needed to be stitched.

Matt working on the co'jack.

Chris, Mike, Jesse and Grant rigging the mizzen topsail.

Sewing and Harvey Gamage

Even though it was a rig day Laura and I were sent below like the seamstress we are, she was finishing up her splice with it’s fuzzy ends for a sail makers slice and I was sent back on the spanker clew. I had put a patch on the corner covering the bolt rope, but that wasn’t going to work, I ended up putting leather around the corner and then sewing in the large corner grommet. After lunch I went with Nick to a huge produce center to get some fruit and vegetables for the next two weeks before we leave. When I got back Laura had put in the holes for the two smaller grommets. First she made a dotted line with an awl, cut a little here and there and in the long run just melted the edges.

The Harvey Gamage arrived tonight and is docked by us.

Laura and Brooke combing strands for a splice.

Sail stretched out to sew on bolt rope.

Sewing

Serviced more footropes on the main in the morning with Sam and Laura doing the fore while another group finished bending on the foretopsail. We had a big talk about striking sail and finally furled it right before lunch. After lunch we lowered the cro’jack from the shrouds, we had put it up there a few days ago to get it out of the way for the party last night, this way Matt would have a chance to work on it. Then Laura and I were sent to sew sail. I worked on the clew of the spanker, I’m going to put in three new grommets with rings, Laura is splicing in some bolt rope for the main topsail.

One of the 66 cats we counted.