Atlantic Crossing: Picking up crew, Party, and Provisioning

Pre-departure party! 

We picked up Matt, our friend who would help crew around noon on 12/6.  You may recognize him from the Around N' Circles sailing blog. A few hours later, all the other boats in our crossing group came over for a pre-departure party! What a great send-off! The kids even put on a play for us all!

Early on 12/7, I went to the local market to pick up our produce order and confirm the meat order delivery at 1pm later on that day.  This was made easier by Zoe driving her rental car, so we could bring everything back to our boats. A few other boat mamas met us there and we set off to business.

The local Mercado is a fantastic place to shop for provisions. Besides the many produce vendors, deli and coffee merchants, there are also meat vendors. We chose to use  JP Rosser, who will vacuum pack and then deep freeze the meat for you. This is a huge benefit, as there just wasn't any way we could have frozen it all ourselves.
We estimated the trip would take between 14-16 days and so we bought the following to ensure we had plenty of food (we had plenty and we are still going through it, a week after making landfall).

For 6 crew (3 adults and 3 children): we made a menu plan in excel, which calculated all the ingredients to make shopping easier. If you'd like a copy, send us an email--happy to share it. =)

150 eggs (we had about 15 left when we arrived to Barbados)
50 carrots
25 onions (yellow), 4 red  (we have 1 red left and about 10 yellow)
3 kilo potatoes
6 sweet potatoes
7 kilos apples (green granny smith and fuji sweet)
20 green tomatoes, 10 almost ripe tomatoes
4 kilo oranges
10 bulbs garlic (still have about 3 left)
10 cucumbers (amazed at how long these lasted--fresh the entire way)
14 zucchini
.5 kilo limes
1 kilo lemons
.25 kilo beets
2 heads green cabbage
5 heads lettuce
16 red and green bell peppers
2 mangoes, handful of chilis, mandarins, and bananas (gift from the vendor)
huge banana tree with over 100 small bananas (gift from Luiz, our port authority friend)
*these didn't ripen until week 2, and then we were eating a lot of bananas!

Meat:
14 kilo chicken breasts
7 kilo minced beef
4 kilo minced pork sausage
2 kilo sausage links
1 kilo beef strips
bacon: 30 packages (yeah, I may have over provisioned on bacon just a bit--we have a lot left over)/
pork roasts: 3
goose breast: 1
rotisserie chicken asado: 3
chicken roast/loaf: 3

Dairy:
20 kilo butter (we do a lot of baking)
30 liters UHT milk
20 liters soya (plain and vanilla)
3 kilo variety of sliced and unsliced cheeses (gouda, parmesan, brie, etc)

Snack items: chips, crackers, granola bars, treats, etc were stashed all over the boat.

We filled our freezer, turned our fridge into a 2nd freezer, and then bought 2 large ice chests to act as fridges. Everything was stuffed full! We ran our ice machine every day to replenish the ice and keep the ice chests cold. It worked pretty well!

We left Las Palmas after getting fuel around 3pm on the 7th of December. We anchored a bit south off the coast to clean the hulls. After spending the night there, we set off for Gomera island as we had reports of bad weather and sought shelter there. It was an overnight sail, with great speed. The katabatic winds from the islands helped push us along. We had a bumpy ride with the confused swell.

Approaching Puerto de Vueltas at Gomera                                                                      Gomera anchorage

Going to get fuel with jerry cans (no dock here).

We arrived to Gomera around 11am, dropped the hook, and sent the guys into town to top up on fuel.
We now had a good weather window to depart to Barbados! After a quick swim, detailing the hulls one last time, we set off around 1pm with our friends on Tatsu waving us on. We were on our way to cross the Atlantic!

On our way! Barbados, here we come!