Prepping and provisioning

First morning in Alcaidesa Marina

November 2019

The next couple of days, we spent preparing for our upcoming passage to Lanzarote. Sophie and I got on the task of provisioning for the trip. Provisioning is boat speak for “getting groceries”, but in the world of sailing, everything needs to have its specific boat term 😉 . Why use land lubber terms like kitchen, bed and toilet when instead you can call them galley, berth and head? A boat, even as nice as Ryan’s and Sophie’s, is a small space, and consequently one keeps food everywhere. So step 1 of any provisioning is to first figure out what you already have. Sophie and I tore the boat apart and did a complete inventory of the food already onboard.

Sophie is an avid provisioner and takes anything related to food very seriously. She had both a mental and physical list of what to buy, and so we got a rental car and hit the shops. We drove to Morrison’s on the Gibraltar side of the border and spent almost 3 hours there. I have never bought so much food in my life!

Those carts are really larger than they look…

If you are now thinking “but why are they buying so much food, they’re not going to be at sea for more than a week?” there’s a few things that are different about living on a boat compared to living on land.

a) You don’t know for sure when you will arrive and can’t count on on a specific day. Lots of things can happen at sea. Lots of extra food is a good thing to have.

b) If you forgot something, you cannot just pop out and get it. What you brought is what you have, period. (Which also means it’s nice to stock up on some snacks or some sweets, because you cannot spontaneously get those things when you crave them).

c) The fridge could break and ruin all of your refrigerated food. The stove might not function for some reason. You could lose electricity or have problems with the gas. So ideally you should plan for those events, and have different kinds of food that would be edible in those different scenarios.

d) The amount of space is very limited, and so are options for storing food in whatever the optimal condition is for that type of food. There is heat and humidity to take into account. So that requires some extra thought when it comes to for example the size and type of container the food comes in. What food can you put where and will it last for a while in that place or will it go bad quickly?

e) The boat moves once you get out on the sea (sometimes in the anchorage too…). Will you get seasick? Will other people get seasick? That will affect the ability to cook. How safe is cooking in a kitchen that moves violently? You should plan some food that can be prepped in advance or eaten as is without cooking.

f) You don’t know what kind of grocery stores and food items you will find at your destination. So it’s best to stock up when you have the opportunity to do so!

Those are some considerations on top of the normal ones such as: what should we eat every day? What do people like or dislike? What’s easy or difficult to cook? What do things cost? What’s in season? So maybe provisioning deserves its own word, because it’s more complicated than normal grocery shopping 😀

After 3 hours at Morrison’s, we drove back across the border. This time it didn’t go as smoothly, and we ended up sitting in a long queue at the border before we could get into Spain. I didn’t think it was so bad though. The sun was shining, the music on the radio was good, we cracked open a couple of drinks and some chips (you know, we did have food… a whole car full…) and I didn’t think we had much reason to complain.

However, our provisioning didn’t stop there. Sophie wanted to get some items in a grocery store on the Spanish side as well, so we went to Carrefour and spent probably another hour in there as well.

They REALLY like their ham in Spain

Coming back to the boat, the next challenge begun: putting all that food away… But thanks to amazing team work and efficiency, we managed to put away almost all of the food fairly quickly. Food went into cupboards, underneath the settees, and into the bilge (that is, compartments under the floor).

Food goes everywhere

This part was a little stressful, because we were having guests over for a barbecue that night! So as soon as Sophie and I had gotten most of the food put away, we got right onto cooking for the barbecue. Targ and Tereza, Ryan & Sophie’s friends and the owners of Lady Golem, also known as “The Drugboat” , came over while we were still cooking. They brought amazing dry-aged steaks for grilling on Ryan & Sophie’s brand new barbecue.

The next day we went to Gibraltar to get fuel, as it is cheaper there than on the Spanish side. Ryan took us off the dock, but then let me take the helm. I’m used to the tiller on our own boat, which works a bit like the opposite of how a steering wheel functions (when you want to go left, you push the tiller to the right). I was quite astonished at the amount of trouble I had steering with the wheel on Polar Seal, considering that I spend significantly more time driving a car (with a wheel) than a boat (with a tiller). It was like my brain decided that “we’re on the water now, so just do the opposite of what you would do in a car”. I got the hang of it eventually, but it was a bit embarrassing to turn the wrong way, when it should’ve been so easy.

Polar Seal’s pretty logo

Polar Seal at the fuel dock in Gibraltar, with the Rock in the background.

Now we’re pretty much ready to take off on our long passage! However, we all wanted to see a bit more of Gibraltar than fuel docks and grocery stores, so we decided to stay another day in Gibraltar. On the agenda for tomorrow is visiting the rock and doing some touristy stuff.

Gibraltar & La Línea de la Concepción

November 2019

Kelly and I flew to Malaga in early November, just days after finalizing the sale of our apartment and getting rid of all our belongings in one way or another. The reason we flew to Malaga and not to Gibraltar, which was our final destination, was the uncertainty surrounding Brexit at the time we booked the flight. There are no direct flights from Sweden to Gibraltar; all flights include a stop in the U.K. And if Brexit had happened on October 31st as was planned (it didn’t), who knows what kind of chaos we might have ended up in. Hence, the safer option seemed to be to fly to Malaga in Spain and book a cab to Gibraltar. It added up to the same cost anyway, and was a pretty comfortable trip.

To be specific, we weren’t going exactly to Gibraltar. Ryan and Sophie – our hosts, with whom we are going sailing – were staying in a marina in La Línea de la Concepción, a city on the Spanish side of the border. However, Alcaidesa Marina is basically in spitting distance of the border to Gibraltar.

Ryan and Sophie greeted us with lunch and freshly baked cookies. Not a bad start! I really haven’t had any appetite lately, probably caused by stress, but for some odd reason I suddenly got my appetite from the last few weeks back all at once, and helped myself to several portions of Sophie’s wonderful broccoli risotto (and cookies).

Yes please…

No more than an hour later, we were eager to see Gibraltar, so we walked from the marina to the border and went through the rather relaxed passport control and customs. We had to hold up our passports to several officers (on the Spanish side and on the British side) but that was pretty much it. I understand that this isn’t always the case, and hasn’t always been the case. With so much traffic (both foot traffic and cars) going across the border, it really creates problems when the process isn’t this smooth. Many people work on one side of the border and live on the other. I heard that they did a “Brexit test” which apparently caused 3-4 hour long queues on the border. I hope any Brexit deal that eventually comes into effect takes the people of Gibraltar into consideration, although I fear that that might not be the case.

The Rock of Gibraltar

Heading to the border

A little slice of Britain right next to Spain

To get from Spain to Gibraltar, you have to cross the runway of Gibraltar airport. It feels a bit odd.

Casually crossing a runway, as you do…

Sophie is filming most of the time for their YouTube channel “Ryan & Sophie Sailing”

A little slice of Britain right next to Spain

Sailors have a thing for chandleries, kind of like children and amusement parks. So it’s not totally surprising that the first order of business was to visit Sheppard’s Chandlery in Ocean Village. Ryan quickly disappeared among the shelves to find who-knows-what, and Sophie eagerly showed us the gear she had scouted out for us prior to our arrival. We needed new life jackets and I needed some foul weather gear, and there was no time to shop for that before we left Sweden. So there I was, trying on hot and heavy foul weather gear, sweating like a pig. Remember, I came from Sweden just that morning, where we had to scrape the ice off the car before driving to the airport. So I thought Gibraltar was HOT at this time. But it was very much worth it, as Sophie had indeed found really good gear for a really good price 🙂 . We made a bargain and got everything that we needed!

Later, the foul weather gear in use when leaving Tangier, Morocco.

After our shopping success we cooled down (well, I was the only one who wanted to cool down) in the beer garden of The Royal Calpe. They served Pimm’s! I hadn’t had Pimm’s since we lived in London years ago. It was delicious and added to the feeling of being in little Britain 😉 . What an amazing first day of our new adventure!