While we were away, staying with CA's aunt in North Carolina, CA planned a month's provisioning. This should get us down the Bay, the ICW, and across a short stretch of the coast to Jacksonville. There's a deep question here of how quickly we use items from our stores. We'll get back to this.

A month of food is a lot of stuff. And I forgot to take pictures of it all. It was an unholy mess of baskets and boxes and bags.

Here's the detritus remaining in the main cabin after yesterday's stowage frenzy. (It's rainy and dark today.)

We have our ordinary luggage piled all over the place.

Plus. Boxes of stuff we ordered while we were away. New running rigging. New solar panels.

There are still boxes of boat projects in the truck. We won't bring those aboard until we've sorted through our luggage, baggage, and dunnage.

But. The galley is stowed, and CA can make breakfast. Which I think is important.

The Question of Consumption

CA wants to study the rate of consumption.

CA has a spreadsheet with all of the stores. This is the basis for meal planning and reprovisioning. It's not always obvious that we've opened the last can of Amy's Organic Chili. The cans may live under the cabin sole in two separate totes.

Knowing this is the last can means we need to go shopping. But. Is the date predictable?

The trick here is to make more frequent measurements of the number of cans. A daily inventory seems like a lot of work. But. A consumption log is relatively easy. A computer is actually kind of awkward for this. We don't like to open computers when we're under way.

A Moleskine book seems to be ideal. We're partial to the 5×8 ruled hardcover. They seem to be very difficult to destroy.

We put labels on the covers so we know what they are when we pick them up.

Moleskine sells them in different colors. If we were smarter, we'd have started out using color-coded books. As it is, we have so many black ones that we're stuck with putting labels on them.

The idea is to "simply" log things that come out of storage as part of meal planning. A summary of the data from the log provides a clear picture of the rate at which we consume things. This makes provisioning a little easier because we can fit our purchases more closely with our rate of consumption.

(It's raining. So we're obsessing over details inside the boat.)