June 13, 2005 - Stocking Up the Old-Fashioned Way
by Michel & Jane DeRidder

	Staples stowage on Magic Dragon.

We are scarcely in a position to instruct others on stocking up for a cruise. We still live in another century. We use hardly any canned goods and little packaged food other than our usual biscuits and cookies and a few other "can't-do-without" items. We prefer to make things from scratch. No cake or waffle mixes or self-rising flour, for instance. Moreover, there are only two of us to provision for.

We have lists that we refer to, add to and amend, the same lists we've had for years, to ensure that we will not forget some essential items and live to regret it. Like king-size chocolate energy bars. We buy staples for many months, amounts dependent on where we're stocking up, where we're going and for how long, bearing in mind always that we delight in eating fresh local produce wherever we are, and ever aware that emergency extra must be factored in.

We take along such basics as flour, rice, sugars, pasta, as well as dried beans, chickpeas and lentils, and the essential pressure cooker to deal with them. We put bay leaves in certain of the screw-top containers to discourage weevils. We carry muesli makings: oats, sunflower and pumpkin seeds, almonds and raisins, for our breakfasts which stay the same but vary depending on fruit in season in the place we are visiting. One of the great pleasures of changing latitudes is changing to different fruits - peaches become papaya, apples turn to pineapple. We love to shop in local markets, and therefore hesitate to carry too much preserved food, although I usually make applesauce, jams, jellies, marmalade, chutneys and relishes to take along. We've been known to bottle fish at sea, when we catch more than we can eat, refrigerate, freeze or dry.

The tinned goods we bring along are those that we use no matter where we are: tomato paste, canned tomatoes, kernel corn, mushrooms, beets, tuna, sardines, salmon, perhaps some fruit for emergencies. We've met many cruisers who've stocked up on far too much, ending up giving much of it away, eventually deep-sixing swollen cans. One lot hadn't eaten fresh fruit and vegetables for weeks, although much was available locally. They were trying to eat their way through their aging stores. We met people who'd had the labels of canned goods wash off when the boat shipped water. They had no idea what they were opening, whether it would be pork and beans or canned peaches. Each meal was a surprise.

As for meat, before setting off on a lengthy cruise we still choose to bottle meats in our pressure cooker - 10 pounds pressure for 45 minutes - just as we did in the 1960s: chicken, beef, lamb, or pork; concentrated spaghetti sauce to be added to; corned beef and tongue. We all did this, way back then. (Remember Tzu Hang and "Once is Enough"? Miles and Beryl butchered their cows and bottled them, labeling each jar with the name of the animal within, which did not apparently spoil their appetites).

Food bins.

In addition, nowadays I have meat shrink-wrapped and frozen to put in the mini-freezing compartment of our gimbaled LPG/12 volt fridge: boneless beef, lamb or pork steaks for special treats. I remember meeting up with South Africans who'd been flagged down at sea by a huge powerboat whose freezer had given up. They'd been offered great quantities of meat. Trouble was, they were vegetarians.

Once upon a time we were horrified to discover that a case of canned butter we'd specially ordered from a major supermarket was in reality a case of ordinary butter. We learned this when we had gotten to lower latitudes and the cardboard box began to look oily. We filled the lower vegetable drawer of our fridge with the packaged butter wrapped in newspaper and plastic, as much as it could hold. I baked shortbread and cookies. We drenched potatoes with melted butter. When we reached an anchorage, we used to visit other vessels bearing a pound of butter as a gift. Cholesterol was not a household word at that time.

We met up with a young draft dodger in the early seventies in his Canadian-registered yacht, a small vessel with an Easthope engine whose nameplate was changed from Easthope to Lasthope, and whose flywheel was decorated with a painted psychedelic spiral. He invited us for a memorable breakfast of porridge served with brown sugar and fresh-squeezed coconut milk, afterwards showing us how one of the several lidded buckets that had originally contained OATS now contained salted goat meat and was labeled GOATS.

Then as now, we didn't keep meticulous track of stores, though I might count now and then to see how much or little was left. We admire those who know exactly how much of what is stored and where. Computer systems are only as good as the ones who enter the info. Both of us are methodically challenged. Now and then I do mark in the back of my log-cum-journal the date and the number of items remaining, and put a tally mark when another is used (if I remember) so I usually have a rough idea of what's what and do not often get a rude shock.

The thing to bear in mind always is that some destinations, such as Australia and New Zealand, do not allow fresh, frozen, canned or preserved meat; fresh produce of any kind; eggs; honey; or seeds capable of sprouting such as beans and wheat, from being brought into the country. This complicates provisioning because we all must carry emergency stores in case a dismasting, or appalling weather, or whatever should force us to be self-sustaining for a few extra weeks. A long time ago a friend told us of eating only rice and fish for weeks when adverse weather and bottom growth slowed their progress.

We have been known to give away some of our provisions before we leave to ensure that little will be incinerated on arrival. Once I bottled leftover onions, garlic, tomatoes and green peppers on our approach to the Bay of Islands, turning in the peels to the agricultural inspector. He let us keep the preserved vegetable sludge. We'd had such a rough passage that we'd not been able to eat our normal diet. Sometimes we make a giant omelet, or scramble remaining eggs, to eat as we await entry, popping all shells in a rubbish sack to turn in. To speed entry inspection we put items to be confiscated in one container and questionable goods in another.

I remember being horrified to hear that on arrival in Opua in the Bay of Islands, friends exhausted from the last very rough leg of a second (or was it third?) circumnavigation were taken to jail in Kawakawa in oilskin jackets and little else because an overlooked tin of Argentinean bully beef was found in a locker by an overzealous MAF official. They are far less officious these days.