16 July 2007, Monday, Day 10
Makemo is gorgeous with its white sand beaches, coconut palm trees and clear waters. It is postcard perfect. Only four boats are in the anchorage and the conditions are fabulous. Why go anywhere else we have discovered heaven!
Enjoyed a day of just being at home: catching up on boat projects, chores, school and reading. Replenished the sour dough starter and made a batch of very sour, sour dense loaf of sliced bread.
Today, we reached the point were I had only a few fresh vegetables aboard-a few carrots, the last of the lettuce, a cucumber, one tomato and a small cabbage. Time to start my sprout farm. Over our four years of cruising, I have not had the greatest success with sprouts, but I'm not one to easily give up. I started a new batch of sprouts (mung beans, broccoli sprouts, clover, and daikon radish seeds). Again, I had more failures than successes. Most of our sprouting seeds are old and dead; they seem to only have a shelf life of one year in these hot temperatures. Refrigerating the seeds upon purchase seems to be essential and buying in small quantities worth the extra expense, unless you want to toss the bulk each year. My greatest success has been the use of a hemp bag (made by the sprout lady: 1.800.777.6887 and a gift from our friends, Lee and Dan). I spouted clover seeds in the hemp bag. I have learned that carrying three liters of ground water from the Islands makes for a much stronger sprout than using and rinsing the sprouts with the pure water made in the watermaker or rainwater. And the more rinsing I do, the better the sprouts. Reusing the nutritious sprout water for our pressure cooker bean meals or to add to the bread recipes has been a good way of water reuse and reaping additional benefits from the necessary rinse water. We may not be in a drought, but water conservation is a way of life. For Anya when she returns home, conservation of water and electricity will be a norm.
Enjoyed the evening with s/v Purrrfection where Captain Sam had spent the entire day brewing up an incredible meal of Indonesian Fish Cakes, Red Thai Curry Fish Stew, and Coconut fudge. A few bottles of homemade ginger beer and we were all very happy campers.