Recently our sailboat, Winterlude, enjoyed a three month cruise – down Florida’s West Coast through the Keys, across the Gulf Stream to Bimini and finally down through the Exumas and back.. In a series of earlier posts, we outlined our provisioning process. Now that we’re back, I can emphatically say that …
WE DIDN’T TAKE ENOUGH BEER!!!
Only one case of Yuengling Light … in aluminum cans because they smash up small and are easier to stow than the glass bottles that David prefers. We had big plans to buy a couple cases of Kalik Bahamian Beer while we were there – we always like shopping locally and buying local products while we’re cruising. Everyone warned us that prices in the Bahamas would be three times those in the US, but nothing prepared me for the sticker shock of seeing a case of beer for $65!!! SIXTY FIVE DOLLARS! Guess we’d better go back to drinking water! The beer is for David & anyone that drops by, so that stretched it, but we definitely underestimated our beer provisioning! Actually, that’s not true – we did not underestimate, but we had planned to buy Kalik – we underestimated our willingness to part with $65 for a case of beer! 🙂
Luckily, we didn’t have a problem with the item most cruisers seemed to be running out of … CASH! Cold hard cash. When you’re cruising the Exumas, there are no ATM’s between Nassau and Georgetown. Cruisers were coming up with all sorts of creative ways to get cash, I don’t have a clue if any of them worked. I wondered if we had enough the first time I bought fresh produce in Highbourne Cay and the bill came to $14 … for a tomato, an onion and a head of cauliflower. YIKES!
We had plenty of fresh produce when we left the Keys. But it doesn’t last long aboard Winterlude and I think we came back with one acorn squash, two onions and a sweet potato. Underprovisioning fresh produce was not an oversight, it was a factor of space in the refrigerator and cooler. Interestingly enough, in the past for longer cruisers, I’ve provisioned lots of green bags to help extend the life of produce. They seemed to work great, but I really thought I’d be able to get fresh produce in the Bahamas, so I didn’t restock on green bags. Probably a mistake. For the record, we restocked after the mail boat came in on Staniel Cay, and I spent $50 for a pitifully small pile of fresh veggies and we didn’t get any fruit other than a couple of bananas.
TAKE MORE CASH THAN YOU THINK YOU COULD POSSIBLY SPEND!
Luckily our tp and paper towel, personal hygiene products and wine held out fine. Joy dish detergent was close, arriving back in Florida with maybe a half inch in the bottom of our last bottle. We wished several times we’d brought fruit juice to make painkillers, but since we didn’t have it, we did without.
We were running perilously close to running out of coffee, but managed to stretch it until we returned. We could have restocked – a tiny package of Maxwell House Coffee was $14, but it was available.
And the last item we totally ran out of was GATORADE. We always carry a few tubs of the Gatorade powder because when it’s really really hot, both of us love a nice ice cold Gatorade. We had enough for 2 of the 3 months. And water isn’t a bad thing to drink ice cold when you’re really really hot, so it worked out OK.
As I’m reviewing the trend here, it seems that, except for Joy, everything we ran short on involved drinks of one sort or another! Interesting notation for next winter’s cruising!
If I had to trade no beer, no gatorade and no fresh produce for more months in the Bahamas, I’d definitely take the more months in the Bahamas! But I might bring more unsweetened applesauce! 🙂
Did you run out of anything cruising the Bahamas? Leave a comment and let us know what it was! Cheers! Jan
