Raft-UP: Two-Toned Task Management

"Yeah, I see it. I just can't tell
where it's coming from."

WANTED: Mature couple experienced in all aspects of world cruising. Must be skilled in route planning and navigation, weather tracking, clearance procedures, diesel mechanics, marine electrical systems and electronics and sail repair. The successful candidates will also possess extensive handy-person aptitude and be completely trilingual (English, French, Spanish), with competence in at least one Germanic language. Additional duties will include, but are not limited to: provisioning, menu planning, cooking, cleaning (inside, out, and bottom), laundry, dish washing, and general straightening. Only those interested in paying their own way and living in a dinghy need apply.

In the meantime...

Raft-up: Step Away from the Broccoli

This month, the raft-up bloggers grapple with that oh-so-necessary aspect of the cruising life, provisioning. And a funny thing happened on the way to my writing about it: we changed our lives--for the better, me suspects.

When I volunteered to report in for Team JOY on this month's topic, I planned from the outset for it to be another in our inexhaustible series of hapless cruiser articles wherein I illustrate with a profundity of wit that we have no clue what we're doing. But alas, at times even I tire of our chronic ineptitude. And then there is my poor beloved who has with great forbearance waited for me to get over my need to confess publicly all our inadequacies. She needn't worry; there could hardly be enough time for that in just one circumnavigation.

If it weren't for the avocados, the others probably wouldn't stand a chance.

In light of wanting more admirable facts to work with, I posed a question to both of us recently. As a prelude to what was bound to be yet another rotely assembled grocery--er, provisioning list, I asked us to think back over the previous week's meals. "Forget what we bought to eat," I said "what did we really eat. Cause that's what we'll eat again this week and next and the week after. That's who we are". In truth (there I go again), it's who we've been singly and collectively since birth.