When I return to GANNET in a little over two weeks, I have only to install the gudgeons for the emergency rudder and the chaffing plates for the Jordan drogue bridle shackles, provision and reconfigure the interior into passage mode.
Ruddercraft has confirmed that the rudder will be shipped to arrive on or about May 6.
A week from tomorrow I will place orders to be shipped directly to San Diego for freeze dry food and some extra duffle bags from CampMor and a 24 canister case of fuel from JetBoil.
The title of this post is a slight exaggeration, but only slight.
I’ve been considering the list of acceptable meals that I posted in January. Since then I’ve experimented with a few new ones and rejected all except Natural High’s Beef Teriyaki. This brings the total to twenty-two.
Although I will eat ashore occasionally, I want to have aboard enough to last me from San Diego to New Zealand, five months, 150 meals.
While it has been my practice in the past to limit myself to fourteen different dinners and repeat every two weeks, this time I’m going to order seven each of nineteen of the meals, and four each of the Backpacker Pantry Chicken Salad Wrap and of the Mountain House Chicken Fajita Wrap, which are very similar, and of the Backpacker Pantry Chicken Vindaloo, which provides a welcomed change but is almost too thirst inducing spicy for a passage where fresh water is limited.
If you do the math, you will find this comes to 145 meals, but as I noted in January, each packet of Santa Fe Chicken makes two dinners, so the real total is 152.
Breakfast, as almost invariably ashore or at sea, will be uncooked oatmeal, trail mix, fruit—fresh ashore and in the early days of a passage, then dried, powered milk and water; juice; two cups of black coffee.
I’ve determined that a container of Quaker Oats lasts me exactly two weeks.
Lunch will vary some. Canned fish, chicken, crackers. Cheese. Hummus while it lasts. Maybe salami, though not as frequently as in the past.
I used to have a can of Coke in mid-afternoon during passages as added liquid, but have lost my taste for soft drinks and now usually have a can of beer, though I seldom drink beer ashore.
There will almost always be a drink at sunset.
And there will be a bottle of Laphroaig aboard as long as I can find a source of supply.
As I noted after being adrift when CHIDIOCK TICHBORNE pitchpoled in the South Pacific, if I ever get to the point of having only one last drink before I die, I want it to be something better than Coca-Cola.
I’ve been asked about a specific departure date.
I don’t have one.
I have given notice to Driscoll that I’ll be out of the slip by May 31.
I expect I will be a week or two earlier than that.
