While Alex finishes his final job on the boat (fiberglassing stringers in the aft bunks), I am organizing with food supplies, cleaning the cupboards and making sure there are only the things that we absolutely need. We still have a few preserve cans and tins that was bought two years ago when we first started this journey so I have kind of learnt what we really need and what would be a waste. Rather than stocking up on corned beef (which I genuinely despise), canned mushrooms, suspicious looking tins of pork paté, odd soups, sauces and marinated herring, I am nowadays filling our lockers with only the things that I know for sure will be used. Pasta and rice are obviously the main staples which lasts forever and are in use many times each week. With what you see above, along with olive oil, salt, pepper, some random herbs, garlic, lemon, a few potatoes and the fish that we catch from the sea while sailing, we have what we need for lunch and dinner for almost a month. Grilled mahi mahi with dry rice and a tangy coconut sauce, oven baked barracuda with mashed potatoes, sautéed tuna with a creamy pasta salad.. the variations are plentiful and given that we normally catch at least one fish a day while sailing, we should do fine without having to search for a grocery store on each of the islands that we visit.

There are obviously smaller supermarkets on almost every destination where we are going to stop, but it's always good to know that we have the basic stock prepared. Also, provisioning here in St Maarten is way better than any of the other islands down the chain. Carrefour in Martinique would be the next good store that we would want to visit and according to my calculations we should be perfectly fine until then.

Before we left on this tour and while we still were pretty unfamiliar to living on a boat and traveling with our home like this, it was easy to believe that we occasionally would be stranded on the open sea for weeks and months and that we would have hard to find grocery stores on each of the islands that we would visit. So we stocked up way more than what we would ever need and have had to throw some of the things we couldn't use in time. Glad to know these things better now, both in regards to the weight and space it takes to have too many things that are of no use in the boat, and for the money that we save by actually making use of all what's purchased rather than having to waste. Tell me one thing that time and experience does not teach us.