Almost time to drop the lines…
by Tom McMahon – Deckhand aboard Sea Dragon.
And now it seems we are ready to cross with the Atlantic Odyssey. We have prepared the boat for not only the crossing but the legs beyond as well.
We have made Sea Dragon look nicer with all of our polishing, did all of the routine maintenance and servicing, and replaced some parts which would be past their best in the not to distant future.
But still there were some things missing…
One was our crew, needed to help Sea Dragon across the Atlantic, whom I’m pleased to say have arrived.
We had a quick shakedown cruise to double check everything, we even had a little swim:
Just as Sea Dragon needs wind, her crew needs feeding. This is possibly the best kept secret of Sea Dragon – the food!
The amount of food required to feed a hard working crew all the across the Atlantic is not trivial. As with all the other things on board provisioning is taken care of with care and attention, so to start with we double checked our existing inventory:
We had a lot, possibly even just enough for our purposes, but that would never be good enough,
so we have stocked up with a hefty amount of fresh produce from the local market.
Which is the other things that grow in the Canaries that I mentioned in the last blog post.
The reason I’m excited about this is that the produce from Tenerife is very good. I hear that Iitcan stay fresh and edible all the way to the Caribbean, we will have to wait and see…
What you might notice is a lack of meat in any of these photos. This is because Sea Dragon is vegetarian. On first learning this I was a little bit apprehensive. Can you really feed a crew for weeks at a time with nothing but veg? Well going on previous Sea Dragon experience yes, yes you can.
Not only that but from the point of view of trying to keep food then meat is trouble on a boat, especially in the tropics. Unless of course you just don’t bring any to begin with. Then you’re good to go.
So how exactly do you feed all these people across an ocean with out any meat?
Well you’ll just have to wait for either the sea dragon cook book, or the next blog post.
So now we’re fueled up, crewed up and fully stocked. We’re ready to go. Our next blog post should be coming to you live from the Atlantic.
