Heading for Socorro Island, then Hawaii

This week of March 20th, 2013, I'm doing the final preparations for leaving on a single handed sail to Hawaii. I've spent the winter here in La Cruz de Huanacaxtle getting the boat ready for some blue water sailing. New standing rigging, 2 new 185 watt solar panels on a new arch hooked up to a Blue Sky 3024i controller, the water maker is working like a champ after laying dormant for FIVE (5) years without being run or re-pickled. Everybody was betting money I had ruined the membranes through five years of criminal neglect, but I got lucky. It hasn't really been needed in Mexico, as Freyja carries over 100 gallons in two 50 g. tanks and it seems to last for a month or so. You can buy 20 5 gallon bottles of distilled water for maybe 18 to 20 pesos a bottle, or pull into a marina for a few days of some town fun and stock up on water, too. The plan is to leave around April Fool's Day in a two boat convoy with Double Diamond, a Lagoon 44, crewed by my pals Jeff and Melody. They're heading for the S. Pacific, but we're both shaping an initial course to Socorro Island where we plan to hang out for a day or three. Maybe we'll have a few other boats with us, we'll see. Lots of Puddle Jumpers are waiting in Banderas Bay for a weather window - the gurus are suggesting waiting for a week or so as a fairly large and intense 995 low pressure event is taking place almost right on top of Hawaii and throwing off weather all over the eastern Pacific. There are a lot of big mean waves heading south and east from the area of Hawaii, so my not being ready to go for a week or so is working out. I'm trying to figure out how much chocolate to bring. I need more coffee beans, some beer, peanut butter, tortillas (we bought 40 packs of 10 for our trip to the Marquesas, for 3 guys. We didn't eat them all and they were still good several months after we bought them, according to Emil!) Another food I'm going to try is sprouted beans, like garbanzos, lentils, pintos, etc. Supposedly sprouting converts the starch to protein or something, plus they are good for salads and stuff. Oh, yeah, a bunch of fruit and veges. And 5 or 6 dozen eggs. Cheese seems to last really well on ocean voyages. Canned tuna lasts pretty well. Tequila and rum, they don't seem to last as long. Granola. Boxes of soy milk last forever. Boxes of fruit juice so I don't get scurvy and so the rum tastes better. Apples. Oranges. Half and half for the coffee, enough to freeze some, as it will churn to butter if there is much wave action, so better to freeze so small containers of it. Jamaica, fresh dried, for sun tea. A nice cigar for the half way point, or as soon thereafter as the weather is right. Maybe some other stuff, too. Costco raw chicken thighs in those packs they sell, to freeze. I'm not going to be baking bread or making brownies. I'm thinking more of a sort of bachelor diet for this trip. Maybe a couple of those Costco frozen lasagnas or similar stuff, cut up into ziplock bags and frozen into meal size packs! just thought of that last one. Hmmm. Frozen apple pie chunks? Frozen french bread chunks? (I do have a large freezer and those huge solar panels to power it!). And now that I'm thinking frozen - Ta Dahhh! Ice cream! More later. (Not sure why my paragraphs aren't separated in the final post.)