(Or, how neurotic can one person be?)
We'll leave Seattle on the morning of Friday, May 22, head north through Puget Sound, and then west in the Strait of Juan de Fuca. We're planning to use our motor, not our sails, for most of this portion of the trip, so when we get to Neah Bay, right before we meet the Pacific Ocean, we'll refuel and wait for good weather to head out into open water. From there, we'll hoist the sails and head south along the west coast of the US, bearing west when the winds change direction. After we leave Neah Bay, we won't stop until we make it to Hilo, on the big island. Our intention is to fly back to Seattle on June 14.
Part of what all of that means is that when we leave on May 22, we'll need to have everything we're going to use until June 14. That's 24 days. That's a lot of food. (And a lot of books. And a lot of toilet paper.) This post will tell you about our provisioning, but it'll probably tell you more about my freaky weirdness. Yay. Fun times ahead.
I'm packing a few different options for breakfasts (oatmeal, cereal and milk boxes, eggs) and lunches (macaroni & cheese, ramen noodles, peanut butter and rice cakes). I'm hoping we'll all be able to eat most of those meals together, but everyone will be responsible for choosing -- and preparing! -- their own food. We're going to make an even stronger effort to have dinner together every evening, and I've mapped out a menu for that. I've planned every dinner for our trip, and I tried to space things out so that we won't have meals with the same proteins or the same "flavor family" too close together. (No two consecutive nights of Mexican meals, for example.) I can recognize that this might be ridiculous, but I can't seem to help myself. I was hoping I could also avoid having too much carb repetition, but those are going to be mostly rice and pasta, so it's hard to keep that from getting boring. I also have to store things within the limits of a 12-cubic-inch freezer, a dorm-sized refrigerator, and the various other random spaces on the boat. I've started freezing a few things to make things a little easier, but still, we'll be opening a lot of boxes and cans.
I don't know how much the boat will be rolling around on any given day, and I don't want to have to dig through lots of stuff to find what I need, so I've numbered all of the ingredients for each meal, and as much as possible, I'll be storing them together by day number. I've got plastic boxes to store things so that it all stays nice and dry and contained. We'll be using the same boxes to store the garbage when we're finished eating. Right now, I've only got about a quarter of the food we'll need, and the sheer volume is already overwhelming.
Finally: snacks and confessions. Confession #1: I get seasick. Sometimes I can overcome it with my superhuman mind power, but when that fails, I'm a firm believer in the healing powers of Tostitos Hint of Lime. I can usually knock out about a bag a day, but frankly, 24 full-sized bags sounds excessive even to me. Confession #2: I really, really don't like sharing my food, even with my own children, especially when that food is in limited supply. I'm trying to decide if I can manage with only 12 bags, and if so, where I can hide them all so only I know where they are. This is difficult. The boat's not that big. The runner-up seasickness cure is Distler's Fiery Pretzels. These come in 2-ounce bags, so I've just placed an order for 48 of those. That might be enough to survive. Maybe. Stay tuned.
