Location: Colon Panama
Hello, blog people! Welcome back to the daily Vela updates. Today was a very (VERY) busy and, honestly, pretty crazy day over here in Panama. As the provisioner on this boat, I have made many large provisions, but today, I took the cake. In case you dont know. After we go through the canal, the only place we stop before French Polynesia is the Galapagos. Safe to say that the Galapagos does not have a grocery store big enough to shop for 22 people across most of the Pacific Ocean, SO we did it today! Yeah, you heard that right roughly 45 days of food for 22 people covering about 4200 nautical miles. It was epic. The stats were crazy. Over 1000 cans, 60 kilos of flour, 30 kilos of pasta, 70 kilos of chicken, the list goes on.
Most of my provisions I do by myself, but today I was blessed with the presence and helpfulness of Jay, Morgan G, and Maisy. I sorted my mega grocery list into sections based on what I think each of them would love to shop for (aka Jay was on hot sauce), and we all divided and conquered. Sam came along with us and did a bunch of filming, so look forward to a fun video of the day coming out soon! The store was about 30 minutes away, so by the time we got there, it was about 10 am. Between that time and about 2 pm, when we started checking out, we filled 22 CARTS!!! I think my record before today was like 11 carts, so yeah thats epic. Check-out was a wild process of Morgan blasting some country music, Jay loading the conveyor belt, and the rest of us bagging (Morgan was bagging, too. She wasnt just on music, haha). The kind people who worked at the store brought us heaps of boxes to put the food in, which was super awesome. Around 4:30, we wrapped up checkout (you got that right 2.5 hours shout out Rey staff members!). One of the staff members of the store who was helping us at checkout offered to drive us back to the boat in his MASSIVE pickup truck. Ive always required a big van when I come back from a big shop, but today we needed this truck more than eve,r and it DELIVERED. A fire line was assembled, and we loaded everything up into the truck, and with one quick mission for Jay to grab us all blizzards at Dairy Queen (I knowI cant believe they had it either), back to Vela, we went! Winding through the streets of Colon in this truck that probably weighed a good 3 tons was a wild ride.
Upon arrival at the marina. The rest of the crew was ready with wheelbarrows to bring everything back. We organized everything on top of the Charthouse in order of where it gets stored on the boat. Beans in one pile to go into the port six stacks, canned tomatoes to go into the starboard six stack, cleaning products to go into the port three stacks, condiments to go into the focus, and the list goes on. Once everything was organized, the real fun began. At this point, its about 7:30 pm. Everyone is hungry, but everyone was EXTREMELY helpful it made me SOOO happy! The saloon was a madhouse. Music blasting, 60 jars of peanut butter being stuffed into a bilge that I have no idea how Caro and Morgan C fit it all into, a produce assembly line getting everything organized to go into the fridge, and a massive meat organization party going on with me on the port aft saloon table. Somehow, a milk chant began when all 120 cartoons of milk came down below, and all of a sudden, everyone on the boat was screaming about milk. It was flippin hilarious. Around 8:30, every spare bunk was filled, every bilge filled to the rim, 22 very sweaty people, we were done.
I want to give a massive shout-out again to Jay, Maisy, and Morgan G for tagging along with me today and being so helpful. Its a big day on provisioning days, and they crushed it. Yall are awesome.
But yeah, that was today. Definitely a wild one, and one for the books, but those are my favorite.
Mom, Dad, Will, Bet, and my whole family back home I love you all so much, and I miss you endlessly.
To everyones family back home, your kids are awesome, and they all miss you so much, but dont worry, theyre having too much fun to even notice. HAHA!
Thats all for now,
EG