April 12, 2023

Norm spotted this beautiful rainbow this afternoon as we sailed from Mozambique to our next port which we will reach on Friday – Mayotte, French Comoros. This will be a new port for us.

The usual sea day activities are happening today, enrichment lectures (the one about elephants was wonderful as was the one about birds). They were done by Dr. Ann Carroll Burgess, our naturalist on board with us for this part of the cruise. We expect several more on the sea days.

We had a great show last night. I usually go to all of the shows and they have all been good to excellent on this cruise. As for Norm, he goes sometimes but did go last night. Last night it was a duo called Wayne and Morgan who won British The Voice in the past. They did an amazing Motown show that had people singing, dancing (although not as well as Wayne and Morgan did) and clapping through the whole show. They will do another one in a few days. All of the guest performers perform two shows and once in a while they work with the other guest performers who happen to be on board and do a variety show.

I thought I would give some of the information we received about worldwide provisioning on our ship. Many times we have wondered how they get and store all of the food, so maybe the readers of the blog do too. Unfortunately cruise ships no longer allow visits to crew areas of the ship. We would love to see the kitchens and storage areas, but it’s not allowed.

On an average cruise (so multiply this for a 180 day world cruise), here is how much food guests consume. You can pretty much assume that this is for one 15 – 20 day segment of our world cruise. We have about 600 passengers on our ship.

36,000 eggs, 6,428 pounds of beef, 2,720 pounds of shrimp, 20 tons of fruits and vegetables and 800 pounds of chocolate.

The Procurement Manager together with the Food and Beverage Director and Executive Chef begin to prepare food orders for the cruise about 2 months before passengers board.They use the onboard computer system as well as their experience procuring worldwide on Oceania Cruise ships and are able to forecast the usage of about 3000 different food items for future cruises and about 2500 of other items such as in suite amenities, linen, glassware, silverware and china.

Major deliveries of food items take place in predetermined ports that are chosen according to facilities and the quality of service provided. Orders are divided into categories of “dry goods” such as flour, sugar, pasta, etc, and frozen items. There is enough space in the store rooms for up to a two month supply and these items are restocked every second cruise by ocean containers from the US or Europe. Perishable items including fresh vegetables, fresh fruits and dairy products last about 14 days and are stocked at the beginning of the cruise segment.

The managers visit local markets in ports to price and purchase local foods. We love when they bring fresh fish on board and grill it out on deck or in the Terrace Cafe.

The term “storing” is used when large shipments of food, bonded items (alcoholic beverages and tobacco), durables and sundries are delivered. An especially large storing consists of as many as six 40 foot containers or up to 250 pallets of products- each pallet weighing up to 2 tons. With the help of our own forklift it takes 7 hours to take everything on board! We have watched parts of this process and sometimes it starts when we leave on a tour and is still continuing when we return.

Hope you find this information as fascinating as we did. I can say that they never seem to run out of food!