Provisioning, Packing and Painting

In the two weeks since Maiwar was delivered to the yacht club I’ve been kept busy stocking her with enough food, water and supplies to last me for the first leg of the journey.

I believe it will take approximately five months to reach French Polynesia, my first stop, therefore, I need a hell of a lot of food and water to fuel me for the next 150 days.

Shopping here is a bit more challenging then at home. Without local knowledge, a good grasp of the language, or a car, things can be challenging. Thankfully the kindness of others has continued to grace me. I would like to greatly thank Joaquin from the Lima Va’a group, and Gonzalo from the yacht club, for taking me shopping and helping me pack. It’s amazing how many bootfulls of food one needs to cater for the next 5 months.

The selection on the shelves here is much smaller than I was expecting. A lot of the products and flavours I’m used to in Australia just aren’t available, I think this is owing to the far superior food culture here. Why would one buy pre-packaged flavoured foods when they can make it better at home? For example, tinned Tuna. There’s plenty of it here, but my only options are either in vegetable oil or spring water. Back home tuna in olive oil was a staple of mine when rowing or sailing, as it has a high caloric content, we also had a smorgasbord of different flavours; there was chilli, Thai curry, smoked, Indian curry, mango chilli, etc. All very enjoyable. The same can be said for wraps, biscuits, muesli bars etc. Alas, there just isn’t the same range here.

So my diet for the next five months will be nothing short of mundane. I will have oatmeal, milk powder, dried fruit, nuts, tortillas, biscuits, oreos, cereal bars, cabanossi sticks and the odd sweet; as well as fresh fish, of course. My saving grace is the Back Country Cuisine dehydrated meals, I will be having one of these each night for dinner, I think I’ve got 15 different meals to choose from. The monotony doesn’t bother me a great deal, hell if I’m worried about a lack of variation then I probably shouldn’t be rowing. This is all coming from the guy that ate Vegemite on corn thins everyday for the 12 years of his educational career, I dont think it’ll bother me too much. There’s a famous Swedish sailor, Sven Yrvind, if you haven’t heard of him I urge you to do a quick search, anyway, he has written about the monotony of his diet at sea:

“Some people say, “Thats not much of a variation”. I say, “Cows only eat grass and wolfs only eat meat”. Modern society is so boring and there is so much food that we have to be stimulated by spices and chefs and different foods to eat. At sea in a small boat its different. Life itself out there is so interesting that I do not need stimulants.”

Thanks Sven, I like your style.

In her first week at the yacht club Maiwar was on the handstand, this is where I did most of the packing. I also used this opportunity to give her another two coats of antifouling. I decided to raise the waterline another inch, and I’m glad I did. She’s now in the water, fully loaded, with her waterline still showing, a good sign indeed!

I have been very happy with how everything is stowing in Maiwar, she seems to be just about perfectly sized. Her trim is also pretty spot on, I’ll give the designer credit for that one. Most of the food, and all the water (350 litres), is kept under the cockpit, nice and low. The liferaft, spares, lines, tools, sea anchors and the lightweight food is kept in the lazarette. The heavy items are tied down low, the light stuff thrown on top. In the cabin I have a bit of food and water tucked under the bunk, as well as 150 packets of tortillas. I’m concerned about condensation in these packets, so I’m keeping them in the cabin where hopefully they can stay a little cooler. She’s now incredibly stable with all that extra weight, it must be well over half a ton of supplies.

Iv’e got a bit of time up my sleeve, as the formalities are taking a while…more on that later. So I took the liberty of fibreglassing my spruce oars. I’ve got 3 pairs of oars, two carbon and one wooden. I bought the carbon ones new, and cut down the spruce oars from two old sweeps I had. Unfortunately, in the 7 months since they were repurposed, the laminations have started coming apart on the handles where there’s no varnish, obviously the glue’s quite old. So I set to work stripping, glassing then re-varnishing. It was an adventure in itself trying to find epoxy resin here in Peru, I succeeded eventually, purchasing some very second rate stuff, it was alright in the end. A few more coats of varnish and they’ll be ready for some serious miles.

All is well here in beautiful Peru, I better not mention the football…