Provisioning for the Pacific

Marinas are great sources for obtaining information from people about the hottest sailing destinations, what's good, what's ugly and the places to totally avoid. The people you meet can also persuade you to change your entire sailing plan as well if you're not careful. Once we reach the Pacific our plan is to sail to the Cocos Islands for a few days and do some diving, head to the Galapagos Islands then across the South Pacific to the Marquesa Islands in French Polynesia. It will be about a 23 day passage from the Galapagos to the Marquesa Islands (approximately 3,500 nautical miles) depending on the weather of course! We then hope to visit the islands around Tahiti, Tonga, Fiji and hopefully New Caledonia depending on our progress. Whatever happens we need to be safely back in Australia before the start of the cyclone season starting in October. The total distance we will sail from Panama to Australia will be around 6,000 to 7,000 nautical miles. So far we have only really sailed 1,500 nautical miles since leaving St. Maarten in the Caribbean. We were told by other experienced sailors that Panama is the best and cheapest place to provision so yesterday Ian and I hit the supermarket to buy our groceries. We had to plan meals and had a list of items that would keep us well fed and watered for 5 months. Of course we will be able to top up on fresh food along the way once we cross into French Polynesia but it will probably be a lot more expensive and it's good to know we have ample supplies for any eventuality. We ended up spending $1,500 on groceries that filled 6 shopping trolleys. One trolley was entirely filled with beer and wine which should keep us happy for a while. We spent the afternoon and the next morning storing everything on Faraway and making a list of where we had stowed the items so we could find them while at sea. Check out Ian's tan lines and yes he still has those darn smelly boardshorts on. The bad news is that we have to go back to the supermarket tomorrow to buy the items that we forgot or decided that we needed some more of.