Boat Living - Part 2

More opinions and answers to your questions....

What does Jake do for fun on the boat while underway?  The same thing he did on land.  Play, play, play.  He has legos, spaceships, books, submarines, airplanes, cars, trains.  I really thought we sold most of this stuff but I was wrong!  Our boat is regularly scattered with kid stuff.  He also likes to do crafts, cook and watch movies…after the movie, he reenacts whatever story was playing.  Mostly though, he just blows things up.  He has become a Star Wars freak ... making light sabors with play dough is his latest activity while underway.

How can you afford to do this?  It’s not as difficult as one might think.  We’ve met people out here on retirement checks, Social Security checks and some lucky souls who still make money from their investments.  We are able to fund our day to day living on Andy’s Navy retirement, using investments for emergencies and big purchases.   From our conversations with other cruisers, we appear to be lucky in this aspect and are not on as tight of a budget as most others (albeit an 80% a month pay cut for us – difficult for anyone, I imagine).  The cool thing is if you’re in a place and you see you’re blowing your budget….you leave and go to some island or cove where you can’t spend any money.  That’s been our method and so far we’ve come under budget each month (with the exception of August – spare parts and two weeks in the states blew that right out of the water).

How do you get your news?  We don’t.  I have no idea what’s going on in the world.  But if I do want to know, I can usually check the internet or ask someone else.  With out new SSB radio, we have been able to pick up BBC news if we really want to, but so far, we don’t want to.

What do you do when you run out of food?  We try not to let that happen.  No one has lost any weight so we’re good so far!  The thing we run out of the most is fresh vegetables, so we try to keep a number of canned and frozen items on hand.  Most of the small towns we go to sell at least eggs, tomatoes and avacados.  We also run out of bread quite frequently.  I’ve been able to make simple white bread, tortillas and the latest is Nan bread – our favorite so far.  For meat, we have one of those vacuum sealer/food saver things.  This has been invaluable.  When we find something good, we buy a lot and separate it and freeze it.  But the best part of running out of food is that we have a resident fisherman on board.  He’s a pro at spear fishing and we can almost always get something fresh for supper.  Gringos aren’t supposed to get clams, lobster, scallops or any other crustacean, so of course we don’t eat those fresh…ever… of course not. 

If you’re thinking about cruising and are curious as to what to bring on board with you, I would say to bring anything you just can’t live without.  For us, that means balsalmic vinegar, rice wine vinegar, wasabi, Jiff peanut butter, Israeli couscous, gnocci, good wine, and diet dr. pepper.  While I’ve been able to find some of this stuff along the way (vinegar, wasabi, mediocre wine), I didn’t want to chance it!  When it’s gone, it’s gone.  More than likely you’re going to want to eat like you eat at home.  We’ve tried some new things and being the adventurous eaters we are, I’m sure we’ll try some more.  But overall, we still cook and eat basically the same as always.

Stay tuned for part 3... technical questions.