January 21, 2010 (Excessorizing continues unabated)
 

EXCESSORIZING CONTINUES UNABATED

 When last heard from, in May, LULU was crippled in a Bocas del Toro marina. So it’s long past time to enlighten you on almost 8 months of post-lightning strike activities.

We made short shrift of ordering replacement electronics—ultimately some $40,000 worth.  That’s just parts. While awaiting their arrival we settled ourselves into the busy sailor social life—weekly dominoes, potlucks and ladies lunches, Wednesday night Chicken-Fried Chicken dinners and delectable Friday night ribs, accented by a lively Father’s Day brunch (paper ties provided), several Fourth of July bashes and several fire dances, one enchanced by belly dancers. Plus on Thursday nights an intense trivia competition, showcasing how brainy our fellow cruisers are, embracing, as they do, an astonishing range of former occupations and current interests. Surprising, too, how information- retentive some of us still are.

Father's Day with paper ties

Fire Dance

(Not quite) Ladies Lunch

Turns out we are living the dream we envisioned—diversity and diversion in astonishing aquamarine, rather than golf green; talcum beaches instead of sand traps.

The electronics arrived in June and July: two massive shipments, each filling a local delivery launch—and overwhelming our cockpit. Undaunted by the undertaking’s scale, demonstrating unflappable (and characteristic) persistence and patience, Gary installed it all. In time to pack for our annual trip home to pat the kiddies.

First parts shipment

After a typically hectic month in New York, we were happy to return on August 19 ready to get moving toward Cartagena.

It took more than the usual four days to stash the 300 pounds of “essentials” we brought back (six suitcases totaling 50 pounds each,) The math is easy; the actual packing aggravating, the $200 in overweight charges annoying and the transporting itself dreadful—most especially those terrifying moments going through Panamanian airport immigration, where we’d been advised that forbidden frozen meats and foodstuffs, if detected, would be confiscated. The best we could hope for in such an eventuality is that should our five-pound first-cut brisket be snagged it’s by a kosher Customs agent, so it spends Rosh Hashonah with a nice Jewish family. (Of course in this scenario, the pork roast then becomes toast.)

Rosh Hashonah in Panama is actually not so far fetched: Panama City has a big Jewish population and a quasi-shtetl neighborhood with Kosher butcher, supermarket, delis, lousy Chinese food but good Chinese laundries, proper toilet paper and the requisite chiropractors, heart specialists, dentists and plastic surgeons.

In this neighborhood we picked up another hundred pounds or so of Gary’s beloved Vita Herring in Cream Sauce, Manischewitz Gefilte Fish, Gold’s Horseradish and Breakstone Whipped Butter, as well as some fabric to re-cover our cockpit cushions. Since we had to draw the line somewhere, we stopped at borscht. (Beets I can get, so borscht I could theoretically make should the need arise.)

The logistics of flight between New York and the Bocas del Toro archipelago pretty much necessitated two nights in Panama City, which stay had to be in a suites-type hotel because we needed the refrigerator/ freezer to stash our NY meat and newly amassed Panama appetizing. More: since Bocas produce looks older than our grandchildren, we swept the Panama City supermarkets for basics like Andy Boy romaine hearts and decent broccoli, plus bought more exotics, like Brussels sprouts and snap peas. (I bring my own shallots from Trader Joe’s.)

At this point we weren’t nearly finished with luggage The meat had miraculously passed through the lasers, sniffing dogs and inattentive but potentially carnivorous airport officials. Thus, for the one-hour puddle-jumper to Bocas, the entire 60-pound baggage allowance ($30 per person) had to be allotted to meat, produce and Vita Herring. We took our other 340 pounds to the Panama City national airport and sent it to Bocas as air cargo, costing 30 cents a pound. It was flown out the same day and, miraculously, was all there when we arrived the next day.

On the perils of unsupervised projects

We had little time to stash it all away—because two days later we received yet another 200 assorted pounds of supermarket and Costco-like comestibles (Heinz ketchup, Hellman’s mayo, brand-name frozen chicken, decent cheeses and some better-than-Bocas wines, which a professional Shopper Lady on the Panama mainland shopped for and shipped to us 

(Everything can be a business in these remotest of islands. And I the consummate customer.)

All I had had to do was design my order and email it to her. Or so I thought.

Gary predicted gloom-and-doom results, while I waxed rosily optimistic that all $800 worth would arrive exactly as specified.

Yes, there were some (slight) surprises, which he got to crow over.  While I got to admit I've still not learned much about delegation, specifically, and most Caribbean transactions, in general.

Like 24 bottles of wine arrived “Ordinario” instead of Riserva. Another 12 were Wrong Brand.. A case of toilet paper came double-ply and we can only use single ply in boat toilets (yes, we're always at risk for unsightly breakthrough). Three seedless English cucumbers morphed into three PACKAGES of 12.

And worst of all, the ketchup...she bought DEL MONTE!!!

But from another perspective: I merely had to put away (and not shop for) these necessities. The wine was drinkable, though it's true not applaudable.
The shopper's cucumber overkill worked great for Gary—for days to come he got plenty of
much beloved and entirely dietetic raw cukes (badly needed after a month-long New York burger and pasta tsunami) plus cucumber salad, and a brand new recipe at
that.

The toilet paper was entirely my fault. I didn't specify one-ply (apparently
I even favor overkill in toilet-paper plies.)

Del Monte & double-ply

I could devise no excuse for Del Monte's, except the Shopper Lady is neither Jewish, from New York nor, as it happens, American.

The $800 shipment came to us in a sort of transportation triathlon: trucked first over the Panamanian Andes; second, loaded onto a ferry to the main Bocas island; third, picked up by the two of us “downtown,” transferred carton by carton onto our dinghy and taxied to LULU, inauspiciously parked on a different but dinghy-able island. And in a final backbreaker gymkhana, hauled aboard, into the cockpit and finally downstairs and inside. Thus I am not throwing out such hard-won Del Monte Ketchup bottles regardless how strange they look in my refrigerator.

Besides, I think it’s usable in our favorite homemade spaghetti recipe, invented during our courtship and suitably named Spaghetti Amore, though Your Cardiologist's Worst Nightmare works too: three or four onions, thin-sliced and caramelized amid a carton of Breakstone's Butter (or reasonable facsimile), sautéed mushrooms
(whenever possible), dumped on just-drained pasta, topped by julienne Swiss cheese, and finished with big squirts of Heinz Ketchup. All this mixed deftly and rushed into bowls before the cheese congeals.

There was one more Shopper Lady glitch. Instead of the SMALL package of mixed frozen seafood—an item I've been passing by in island freezer cases for years and had finally decided to try—she sent a 5-POUND bag. (Clearly she comes from a huge family.)

On the much closer inspection now dictated by horrified ownership and lack of freezer space) I discovered this medley consisted mainly of imitation crab accented by a dusting of real shrimp; rounds of what might be scallops, but also might not be; droopy black squid loops; miniscule mussels in that garish orange of airport-worker jumpsuits. Plus assorted fishy unrecognizables. I had no idea what to do with it besides just feed
it guiltily back to the fish.

At least she didn't send box wine!

The good news: after a brief negotiation, the shopper made up for
her glaring inefficiencies by sending a second shipment with 12 bottles of
the right red wine. Not free, but face-saving. For her or for me, I'm not
sure.

We will not be doing this next year.

On the road again