CODA BAHAMAS BOUND 2025 (2)

 CODA :  Provisioning for The Bahamas 

10 January 2025

Boat is at the Palm Coast Marina, Palm Coast, Florida.  We are in Ft. Myers.   

Marc-  We know from our previous trips that it is good to stock up on staples (rice, potatoes, pasta oatmeal, flour, etc...) we need a two month supply on everything that could be rather expensive or hard to find in The Bahamas (which is most everything.  We still plan on buying fresh food (fish and bread, anyway) in the Bahamas.  Our friends, Roger Wallace and Susan DeSimone, shared their provisions list based on their voyage to The Bahamas last winter, and that is proving to be very helpful.  We agree with the rule that if we don't eat it now, we probably won't start eating it in on this trip.  We don't like spam now, so there is no reason to believe we would like it four weeks from now.  We bought ingredients with meals involved, canned chicken, tuna, salmon, ham, pasta, potatoes, spaghetti sauce, fried rice, stir fry.

This looked like a nice place to provision.

Well, maybe not such a good idea.  Captiva Island was battered by two hurricanes this past Fall: Helene and Milton, and recovery is very slow.

We had much better luck provisioning at Cosco for some of the items. 

We passed this astute fisherman at the beach.

I really like the watercolors here.

Marina decor is nice as well.  My friend Fred Lewis with foundry experience will enjoy this collection of dolphins in bronze.

Our good friends Donna and Frank Maher who helped us with the provisioning list.

Master provisioning list.

Roberta and Sue at Captiva.  The Mucky Duck restaurant is wrecked from Hurricane Milton and closed again.

Not all island businesses were closed.

The Bubble Room Ice Cream Parlor was open!

Sue:   We spent 2 days with Donna & Frank Maher in Bonita Springs, and yesterday we came to stay with our friend Roberta Parillo in Ft. Myers for 2 days.  We worked on the provisioning list with Donna & Frank, and had a great time at the Lakes Park in Ft. Myers with them.  

We went to Sanibel/Captiva with Roberta and had lunch at The Green Flash Restaurant on Captiva looking out at Pine Island Sound.  We all got crunchy grouper sandwiches, and they were very good.  Then we walked over to the Bubble Room's Ice Cream and Bakery store.  The Bubble Room Restaurant, which is still closed due to hurricane damage, is selling their famous cakes there.  We got one slice of their signature Orange Crunch Cake to share, along with vanilla ice cream.  The cake was to die for.  It was 3 layers and 8-10 inches from end to end and several inches thick - 5 inches?  I'm talking about just one slice.  It was a huge slab, really, not a slice.

Sanibel was in pretty good shape, though still recovering from Hurricane Ian (September 2022) and from Helene & Milton just recently.  Captiva did not fare as well with the recent hurricanes and still has a long way to go.

Marc couldn't wait to get to Costco.  We planned to go to one near the boat on the East Coast, while we still had the rental car.  But here we are on the West Coast, and he was itching to go.  Roberta was game for going with us, so we went.  She moved us right along and in no time we'd spent $480 and filled up the back seat of the rental car.  The next day we went to two Walmarts to get more food and stuff, and to one Publix. The Bahamas do not have big grocery stores, and their food is very expensive.  Most people who live there order their food from the mainland and it comes on the mail boat.  So we need to take with us most of our food for the 2 months we plan to be there.  We need to take the paper and cardboard packaging off of everything in order to prevent bugs from getting on board.  We need to label the cans with a marker, or we will never know what is in them--we'd have a "surprise inside" every time we opened one!