Provisioning and cooking on small yachts, especially for a long voyage, can often be overwhelming, yet with adversity, reward is never far behind.  Sailors tend to thrive on pitting their skills against or with the environment.  Lack of space, availability of foodstuffs and limited cooking facilities present many challenges which I look forward to exploring with you in future blogs. Let’s take a look at some of the more common issues I’ve come across.   I am sure you may have found loads of others so please let me know:

1. You are no longer living in a stable environment. Preparation, cooking and serving of foods is frequently at an angle and may have you clinging by your finger nails to the galley at a 45 degree angle.
2. Space – storage on small yachts is generally limited so provisioning needs to be smart don’t under or over provision, no room for too many luxuries here! Cooking implements need to be pared down to the essentials and multi purpose if possible.
3. Generally you can’t just “pop out to the shops” to replace forgotten items or replenish supplies. Shops might be several days away.
4. Marine cookers by their very nature are small (usually two or three burners) and maybe a combined grill and oven. Marine ovens are not as powerful and temperatures are not evenly distributed throughout the oven making baking somewhat of a guessing game – you really need to know your oven well before you leave the dock.
5. Not all boats have fridges as these take both space and energy to function. Hence foods need to be as non-perishable as possible.  Perishable foods need to stored appropriately and used before they deteriorate.
6. Food needs to be stored safely. Nick Ward in his book Left for Dead * relates how a can of food flying across the cabin (albeit in extreme weather conditions) hit the skipper with fatal consequences.  On a boat everything should be stored securely particularly if there is any possibility of capsize!
7. Whilst obviously a good diet is necessary to keep crew happy and functioning well food also has a huge psychological aspect on board.
8. Safety is huge. Risk of burns, fire, cuts and bruises are a daily occurance.
9. Seasickness can strike down even the most experienced sailor. Feeding and hydrating the stricken individual.
10. Hydration and dehydration can present problems on a small yacht.  Storage of water takes considerable space but has to be treated as the highest priority.  Water makers are almost essential for a long ocean passage but again take a lot of space and maintenance.  Dehydration of crew is probably more prevalent than thought for many reasons
11.  but can result in poor decision making, seasickness and general poor functioning.
12. Disposal of waste. Our planet is becoming sick from our waste.  The oceans are polluted with plastic and sealife suffering.  The mantra “Pack it in, pack it out” is sensible but what can be disposed of overboard, what needs to be returned to land and how to store waste on board.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

• Left for Dead The 1979 Fastnet Race – One Man’s Epic Story of Survival (2^nd Edition) (2011)      Nick Ward and Sinead O’Brien   Bloomsbury Publishing plc