Captain Scott's Log ~ Thursday, July 17th, 2008

Yesterday we went into downtown Osaka and spent most of our time in Osaka Castle. Also yesterday started our final preparations for the crossing to Alaska. Much of the preliminary stuff had already been done---new running backs made and put on, mainsail reworked at the sail maker, injectors rebuilt. Now we defrosted and cleaned the freezer and refrig. We were crossing with a veteran crew of 5. But Pat Montgomery backed out and I had insufficient time to find a replacement--so we are 4 guys. OK for sailing but not so good for eating.

Now comes the really scarey part--it falls to Jeff and I to provision and store everything on board. Imagine 2 men who have no idea of how to cook going through a supermarket and trying to buy for 4 people for 4 weeks. Lots of peanut butter and tuna fish. But wait it gets worse---everything is in Japanese. "Is this a can of tuna fish?" Don’t know but the picture sort of looks like octopus. Yeah, so how about this one? Might be sardines or salmon. Yeah, well, we could use 12 cans of tuna fish (since we don’t know how to use anything else) so let’s take 12. Hope you like sardines! We have cans of orange round things and cans of purple stringy things. And we never did find bread or sugar or or....
Jeff and I need to go on a diet anyway.