Purchase of Provisions: Best & Worst Countries

[Drek4]

Originally Posted by El Pinguino

I enquired about going to Peru on my boat in 2013. An agent was required and all fees were related to commercial shipping. Things like $US50 a day for garbage collection.
You may find this interesting
https://www.noonsite.com/report/peru...0-to-clear-in/

Other stories i have heard are similar. There was a boat here in Puerto Lucia when I arrived in late '19. It had been seized by the Peruvians for some minor infraction and it took him lawyers and three years to get it back by which time - going by the photos he showed us - he could have made a good living mining guano on her.

Best when passing to stay a solid 200 miles offshore.

I passed through there soon afterwards - by bus on my way to Arica - the coastline is pretty bleak.

Oh - and another link
https://www.sailblogs.com/member/sequitur/132313

Thank you very much, for the links and the read.
An adventure that turned out to be an ordeal.
Yup 200 miles sounds like good advice!

[RickG]

We wrote about provisioning from Florida to the Virgin Islands on our blog - https://dinghylife.wordpress.com/201...irgin-islands/

The Florida Keys have a reputation for being expensive. We found prices to be reasonable and stocked up more than we needed for our cruise to the Virgin Islands.

Like CatNewBee, we found most things to be significantly more expensive in the Bahamas. We did find local vegetables and eggs in Georgetown and on Long Island. Water was $0.40 per gallon, when available. The only diesel we could get on Great Inagua had to be jugged from a poly tank on a forklift for $6US per gallon (2019).

We found wonderful provisions in Puerto Plata, DR. Some of the brands were different, but quality was very good. We bought beef and pork for $2.50/lb, chicken for $1.75/lb and eggs were $1.25 a dozen for farm eggs. The diesel fuel was also reasonably priced at $3.39 per gallon. Presidente beer was ubiquitous and reasonably priced.

We found prices in Puerto Rico to be less than Florida. Availability of fresh vegetables and meat was very good. A case of Medalla beer was $19.99. 11.5% sales tax adds to the expenses.

Further south, the dry islands of the USVI, BVI, Anguilla, St. Martin, and Antigua rely primarily on food that is shipped in. The prices reflect that. Getting to the wetter islands like Dominica and Grenada we saw available of fresh product drive prices lower. On Dominica a Dominican friend said that the way to live cheaply was "Don't eat white people food." We were in Portsmouth and we bought provisions from the markets and small stores. On a day trip to Roseau for COVID tests we hit the big supermarket there. Prices there were significantly higher. We needed a throttle cable replacement while there and the cost was $US 72, but delivery was $80.

We'll be summering in Grenada for our third year. Cost of living there is less for us than in the USVI. Available of produce and fruit is very good. The most expensive cost for us has been haulout and yard storage. Labor is less expensive and availability of marine parts is good.

Cheers, RickG

[Old fella]

Originally Posted by JPA Cate

Hello, Drek,

There are a number of ways to look at this, and it really depends on where you're going and how much stowage space you have. And of course, one's tastes change over time too.

If you're going west, through the Pacific you have to provision for the long passage, for us it was Cabo San Lucas to Atuona, in the Marquesas, and approximately 3 weeks passage. For this, at the time we did it, we got our fresh things from the mercado central, and the CCC mercado; plus we arranged for eggs from the chicken farmer. Those eggs lasted with no spoilage, and no refrigeration, still useable in baking at 3 months. They were better, before, of course. I did not smear them with vaseline, but I did turn them weekly. Staples (like flour, sugar, and rice) are pretty universally available. Peanut butter is not very available in the pacific after you have left Mexico, and nor is maple syrup. I carried maple flavoring and made our own, not nearly as good as Canadian (which is available in Australia), but it worked okay. We used canned Danish bacon and butter. Canned fish and corned beef are regularly available, and I was fortunate to find a very acceptable recipe for using the corned beef. We mainly used canned chicken meat or beef, and then made things out of it. You will experiment. When we were there, rum was a real bargain in Mexico, and also gin. Not red wine. NB: installing a fan to help ventilate the galley while baking is much appreciated.

Tahiti was the next provisioning place, more expensive than Mexico. One NZ frozen leg of lamb would cool 2 Hinano beers, then we'd BBQ the lamb, with rosemary and garlic, next day, lamb curry. A frozen Arkansas chicken cools only one beer. We really enjoyed the pamplemousse concentrate, and "invented" a drink, Rumplemousse: a tall cool glass of pamplemousse and water, with a shot of Bacardi Gold. See, what happens is that one tries various things along the way, and on a long passage, we found ourselves running out of the little boxed mixes of "bisquik" sorts of breads, and no more tortillas, so I started baking, mainly two loaves at a time, but sometimes, I made English muffins; and we ate a lot of pancakes. We eat a lot of wheat based things, with breads and pastas. You can buy whatever you want in Tahiti, at a price!

If you fish, you will find the fresh fish that you catch to be the best (freshest) you have ever eaten. For us, that led to learning how to pickle fish, so that we could keep it without refrigeration. Lettuce needs refrigeration, cabbage doesn't, so we learned to make a lot of different kinds of cabbage salads. We learned to use powdered milk and make our own yoghurt. It is that once you leave the big box stores of the US behind, everything changes, and so your eating habits change, too.[No more orange blossom honey.] We cruised without refrigeration our first year. I prefer having refrigeration. But we have some lovely, healthy, Canadian friends who cruised without refrigeration, and home canned all their meats. And we've known people who dried their own fish and vegetables. You can really eat well using techniques from early last century.

I would say the place most limited in provisioning that we visited were the Solomon Is., and even there, I was able to buy flour. It was weevily, so I sifted it before use, and I found the weevils really gross--how privileged was that!, but we coped okay. Advice for going to the Louisiades or the Sollies: if you want to eat it or drink it, bring it with you. [And carry packages of store-bought cookies for gifts to people when they do something nice for you.]

You can get everything you need in New Zealand and in Australia. And the Kiwis really understand boats!, and the US dollar vs. the Kiwi dollar is favorable to the holder of the US dollar.

Now, if you want to go east from the US, it will be a totally different story.

Ann
PS. Sorry for rambling on so long.

Jeepers Ann, you and Jim must be very wealthy, as a kiwi in NZ I have to take out a second mortgage to get a leg of lamb, and if I want a pound of butter, I have to sell my car. But thanks for some good ideas in your post.

[Drek4]

Originally Posted by RickG

We wrote about provisioning from Florida to the Virgin Islands on our blog - https://dinghylife.wordpress.com/201...irgin-islands/

The Florida Keys have a reputation for being expensive. We found prices to be reasonable and stocked up more than we needed for our cruise to the Virgin Islands.

Like CatNewBee, we found most things to be significantly more expensive in the Bahamas. We did find local vegetables and eggs in Georgetown and on Long Island. Water was $0.40 per gallon, when available. The only diesel we could get on Great Inagua had to be jugged from a poly tank on a forklift for $6US per gallon (2019).

We found wonderful provisions in Puerto Plata, DR. Some of the brands were different, but quality was very good. We bought beef and pork for $2.50/lb, chicken for $1.75/lb and eggs were $1.25 a dozen for farm eggs. The diesel fuel was also reasonably priced at $3.39 per gallon. Presidente beer was ubiquitous and reasonably priced.

We found prices in Puerto Rico to be less than Florida. Availability of fresh vegetables and meat was very good. A case of Medalla beer was $19.99. 11.5% sales tax adds to the expenses.

Further south, the dry islands of the USVI, BVI, Anguilla, St. Martin, and Antigua rely primarily on food that is shipped in. The prices reflect that. Getting to the wetter islands like Dominica and Grenada we saw available of fresh product drive prices lower. On Dominica a Dominican friend said that the way to live cheaply was "Don't eat white people food." We were in Portsmouth and we bought provisions from the markets and small stores. On a day trip to Roseau for COVID tests we hit the big supermarket there. Prices there were significantly higher. We needed a throttle cable replacement while there and the cost was $US 72, but delivery was $80.

We'll be summering in Grenada for our third year. Cost of living there is less for us than in the USVI. Available of produce and fruit is very good. The most expensive cost for us has been haulout and yard storage. Labor is less expensive and availability of marine parts is good.

Cheers, RickG

Thank you very much for sharing this information and link, I truly appreciate.
Very informative and pertinent to my future plans.
Great to view your pictures and just can't wait for the weekend to enjoy your videos.
Your website is a nice read also.

[tamicatana]

Everyone bitches about Bahamas prices, but we eat what locals eat and don’t find it any worse than the Keys.

[El Pinguino]

Originally Posted by Drek4

Thank you very much, for the links and the read.
An adventure that turned out to be an ordeal.
Yup 200 miles sounds like good advice!

Latest news from Peru.
A boat pulled in the other day. Peruvian owner who bought her recently in Panama. Sailed from there to a northern Peruvian port where they gave him so much grief he just turned around and came back up to Ecuador.
According to him they said
'you can't leave you haven't checked in yet!!!'
'Yes I can - see you- toodlepip etc'.

And he is Peruvian.

[BlueH2Obound]

Looks like Peru is off our list