Day 13 to FP - Going Bananas

:lat=-15.30:lon=-117.65:
Time: 2330UTC, COG 240T, SOG 7.0kts, Distance Remaining: 1102nm

Every cruiser on passage from the Galapagos to French Polynesia seems to
write a blog about bananas. Why? Because they are supposed to last forever
when green and they play an important role in our food intake the first week
(if you're lucky two weeks or if you are the banana expert, three weeks) of
the journey. You buy a whole stack of them while they are green and careful
planning follows. Nevertheless, cruisers report, they all turn yellow at the
same time and you are forced to indulge them until you turn yellow yourself.

While most people buy a whole stack of about 100 or so bananas, we decided
half of that would suffice. I tried to count them, but lost track. There
must have been over 50, some of them ripe, so we could start eating them
immediately instead of staring at them being inedible for a week. To me this
was also an indication that they didn't turn all at once. They were of the
thick and heavy kind. The whole bunch, on a massive stem, must have weighed
40 pounds! All for the price of $3.

We started off with a banana each for breakfast, adding another one in a
shake and consuming a third one as a midnight snack. Soon, the color green
was totally replaced by yellow and we couldn't keep up. Irie's cockpit had a
sweet banana fragrance. Mr. Gecko was in heaven with his new "bug
attractive" hide-out. Mark and I had a banana eating contest and when the
last third of the stack turned brown, we were in trouble! We had to become a
bit more creative real soon.

In a normal situation, we would have made banana pancakes for breakfast,
sliced bananas as a side dish with fish curry, and some banana-based
dessert. We would have come up with some interesting and fun dinner recipes,
but the sea conditions were too rough to do much in the galley (kitchen).
Instead, our shakes turned a bit thicker, consisting two bananas and I
braved some sea sickness, making two banana breads. They are so tasty, that
the first loaf disappeared within 24 hours! We ate it for dinner (with a
last shake), as a midnight snack, for breakfast, and for dessert after
lunch, currently the big meal on Irie. Not sure how we will survive the rest
of the trip without our banana fix... If we are careful with the other loaf
of banana bread, we might just make it!