Visions, Revisions, Provisions…Decisions.

Our little adventure started about 2 weeks ago, after deciding a month ahead of time our final deadline to leave St Augustine, it was crunch time.  Giving ourselves a month to get everything ready, we were running around like chickens without heads.  Everything from giving my final notice at work (which was harder than I thought), to selling our car, to attempting to sell all of the crap we had accumulated in our storage unit, to provisioning for the Bahamas, time really ran away from us. 

It was lists upon lists of stuff to do, and with last minute deadlines, we were really wearing ourselves thin.  The most stressful of all of these things involved provisioning and preparing to be in the Bahamas for a couple months.  Figuring out how much toilet paper we were going to need, as well as how many bags of rice to purchase was absolutely daunting.  In traditional Frank manner, he did extensive online research as to how to go about calculating just how much we would need.  Turns out, you pretty much have to prepare what you would think it would take to be self sufficient and multiply that number by….oh about 10.  I also read in some provisioning article, sometime ago, that you should think to buy what you would  normally eat.  Don’t think that just because you’re cruising, that you’re suddenly going to get healthy and start enjoying Bulgar wheat.  You’re pretty much going to eat the same things you normally would eat.  Yeah, so imagine how difficult it was to purchase 5 10lb bags of M&Ms, 15 boxes of pasta, or better yet, 20 cans of coconut milk.  As we were loading up our carts at BJs Wholesale, purchasing most of our items in bulk, all that could run through my commitment phobic mind was…am I sure I really want to commit to this many boxes of Oreos?  What if I’m craving Double Stuff?  Do I really, really want to smell like Lavender Breeze for the next 3 months, or is Rain-Kissed Leaves a better option? Is 2–ply Charmin really soft enough to get me through this next couple of months?  Am I sure I need 3 bottles of spf 50 or should I just get one bottle of each spf?  Frightening! 

We, as Americans, take for granted that we have choices.  We are faced day in and day out with having choices, making choices, and choosing to make choices.  So when we loaded our little Subaru hatchback to the brim with these miscellaneous necessities, it really dawned on me that we were actually taking the plunge.  We were making our final choices because whatever we were taking had to find a home in what now seemed to be our tiny little boat, and as far as I know, shopping in the Bahamas can be limited as well as expensive.  So if I forgot to purchase a case of Welch’s grape soda, oh well, no grape soda for me.  Every nook and cranny was stuffed with what seemed to me an ungodly amount of Cheetos (yes, BOTH puffy and crunchy).  Surprisingly as we put away $1500 of groceries, we were able to find homes for it all.  The storage on Moitessier is impressive to say the least, and we managed to get everything put away neatly and in an organized manner.  Lesson learned is, you can’t take everything with you, and the reason we’re on a boat in the first place is to get down to the basics, and learn to live without.  But still with this in mind, as I sit here in my cockpit, anchored out with my chafey little butt, typing away about the values of simplicity, I’m thinking, damn, I could really go for a grape soda…

"…Time for you and time for me, and time yet for a hundred indecisions, and for a hundred visions and revisions, before the taking of a toast and tea…" ~T.S. Elliot