Provisioning For The Bahamas

Over the past few days we have literally been up to our knees in provisioning in preparation for spending the next 5 months in The Bahamas. Here we are at the Palm Beach Sailing Club (PBSC) dock filling our first dingy load of provisions to take back to the boat in the dark. As an aside, PBSC is a great place for transiting cruisers. They have a big dinghy dock, very large mooring/anchor field in front of them, showers, laundry and quite a varied group people is always coming and going.

For The Bahamas, the theory is that everything except fresh food is more expensive there and the selection can be poor on the smaller islands, so it’s wise stock as much as you can on the mainland before you go. For example, cases of beer can cost as much as $60, while we can find some here in Southern Florida for $12. Having a Costco nearby is a tremendous help. Living on a boat, storing huge container sizes isn’t feasible so it takes a lot of planning to organize what to buy at regular grocery stores and what to get in bulk sizes. We’re still learning and was thrilled to meet some experienced sailors who have shared lots of great tips and tricks.

We had already made a small provision run while in Harbour Towne Marina, but that was a bit too easy with a rental car while tied up to a dock where we could just step on and off the boat. We prefer to do things the hard way it seems…

Here I am back at the boat trying to figure out how to hold onto the davit so I don’t wack my head while passing all our stuff from the dingy up to John on the back of the boat.

We switched places for the second load.

Some spaces on the boat are designed for storing provisions, like the small holds in the salon floor. We still haven’t put everything away yet, but in essence you just look for space to store items anywhere you can.

 

This is our second load in the dinghy, with paper towels balanced on top of all the food. John is actually sitting on the outboard while taking the picture there is so little space left. The little bench/ottoman you can see in front of me was one of our best deals so far. For $38 it gives us an extra bench seat at the salon table and also acts as our liquor cabinet. And yes, those are actually socks covering the wine bottles to cushion them from banging together in rough conditions.

There are more items that we would like to get, but you always risk buying too much and spending too much time doing so. In the end, we just had to stop shopping and get ready to go. After we get some more time on the other side, and we finish storing all the goodies, I’ll post the list of what we actually brought with us.

Boat Maintenance
Crossing To The Bahamas

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