One thing we learned from our sailing course last year is that when cruising, preparation is alpha and omega.
While we’ve been in port here in Cartagena, we’ve gotten to know a craftsman and his wife. He was supposed to make new windows for us, but he couldn’t get the materials, so the windows will probably remain crazed as they are. Apparently it’s normal for windows to get small crazes due to sun exposure over a longer period of time.
Instead, he is doing other things for us. He and his wife have been over here several times helping us with all sorts of things, passing on their lifetime of sailing experience. They have been really nice to us.
The wife is very practical. One day she asked me what I was going to do about food. Where is it going to be stored and how and what amount. Um, well… I had given some thoughts to where the long-lasting food should be stored, but not actually made the room for it yet. Then she revived my fears and said; “You are not prepared!”
Since then, I’ve been doing everything I can to make room for food and reading one blog after another about what and how much food I should buy and store in plastic bags or containers already.
We have a potential freezer on board which has been acting as a fridge. Martin has been working on it to turn it into a freezer for a long time. He has put cork on the surface to insulate it better and put a fan inside to circulate the air. The thermostat is replaced with a freezer thermostat and the compressor has been filled up with gas to optimize it’s performance. Also one of the sides in the freezer has been isolated, and the seal at the door has been changed, but somehow heat is coming in anyway, hence the freezer needs to be isolated better.
The plate in the back freezes and the things inside the freezer are getting colder, but they don’t freeze. Next step is to plug the drain in the bottom and thereby prohibit the cold air to get out, and see if that resolves the issues.
With only 10 days to go from here, getting the freezer to work is now a high priority. It MUST work if we are to have any chance of bringing meat for longer than 2-3 days. The other fridge we have, isn’t very good either. The fresh meat goes bad after a couple of days. That is being fixed as well. I think there is a cable that’s not thick enough, and therefore too much voltage is lost on the way from the battery over to the fridge. Nothing on the boat is really working as it should.
At the same time, we’ve also been tidying up to make room for all the long-lasting food we’re going to have on board. The previous owner, at our request, left a lot of stuff on the boat since he no longer needed things for a boat and as new boat owners we could use fishing tackle, tools and spare parts etc. As a result, we took over a completely full boat, with virtually all storage space, both inside and out, filled up. We are now in the process of getting everything out and deciding whether to keep it, sell it or throw it away. In a way, it’s fine to go through everything so we know where to find spare parts and pumps when we need them in a hurry. We have also found things that we didn’t know we had and have already bought new of, for example mosquito nets and velcro.
Right now our home is a real mess, but we’ve managed to make space for the food under the sofa seats. Next step is to get started with some spreadsheet magic and plan the food stock.
