Provisioning for the Pacific - Phase 1

One of the things I (Sherry) have been doing while Dave is working on his projects, is getting ready for our big Pacific Crossing provisioning. We will be 9 months getting from Ecuador to Hawaii, in very remote areas. Where we will find provisions, they will be very expensive.

The first step was to inventory all the stores currently on board, and eat up, or throw out old expired stuff.

That included the Shake n Pour pancake mix that EXPIRED in 2005! (We tried one package, it turned out lead pancakes that tasted musty. We dumped them and had cold cereal instead). We checked all the cans, and took out the ones starting to rust or were well expired. These went into the 'eat or trash' stack. The rest were cleaned of roach poop and put back, with the oldest ones in front.


One can, a big can of peaches was obviously bad... exploded looking. That one definitely was trashed. Another can had too much rust on the can seam, and looked like it might be breached, so I trashed it. I carefully scruitinize ALL the cans we open... make sure they don't look 'puffy', look at the contents carefully and give it the 'nose' test. So far, we've managed to avoid any problems, even with stuff that is 'a little' expired.

Once each locker was unloaded, it was carefully cleaned, and fumigated. We bought 2 spray cans of RAID in Costa Rica that is absolutely lethal to the roaches, if you get it anywhere near them. (on the other hand, I have drowned a roach in a competing product, and it walked away).

So the locker first got RAID-ed and closed for awhile. Then when everything was dry, we sprinkled some Roach Pruf (powdered Boric Acid) in the nether reaches.

Then I loaded everything back into the locker, recording quantities and locations in my 'Where Stuff Is' spreadsheet.


I've also been combing the aisles at the local supermarket... trying new stuff, and seeing what's where. It's important to make sure we don't buy 20 cans of some Ecuadorian brand of something, and find out it tastes horrible.

I have also been reading other peoples 'Provisioning Tips for the Pacific' info on websites. One particularly good website was from s/v Ocelot

Ocelot Polynesia Provisioning Advice

This account is from 2004/2005, so the prices won't be exactly accurate, but the rest of the advice should be pretty golden.

So now I'm ready to start thinking about loading up for 9 months in the Pacific. We'll take advantage of the convenience of the local supermarket here in Salinas, before we leave in November. And do a final provisioning from Bahia de Caraquez, at the local fresh food market, and a 1 hr bus ride into the supermakets in the city of Manta) just before we leave.