It’s midnight, and I’m hanging upside down in the bilges, diesel-polluted seawater sloshing under my nose, trying to pull a greased pig through the locker hole. Or, more accurately, a dry bag containing enough food to feed 20 tired, wet, hungry people for a day. The outside is anything but dry, and I’m hoping the pasta, biscuits and tins within have survived. The boat falls off a wave, and the bag (along with my head) slams against the side. There go the biscuits.
Each night, two of our round-the-world yacht-racing crew go through this rigmarole — the start of mother watch. They will convert the contents of the sack into three square meals, served, not on the Royal Navy’s cornered plates, made to wedge on a rocking table, but in dog bowls, prized for their non-slip bases and ease of tipping over the side if you’re too seasick to eat.
Cooking is a challenge or near impossible, depending on the weather. Only winning is more important to those on deck battling 30-knot winds, 40-foot waves and tons of unyielding canvas than coming below and receiving a bowl of something that doesn’t taste like dog food, so the pressure is on. Not least because you know that tomorrow it’ll be you in the cold, tantalised by the aroma of baking bread and ‘chilli non carne’.
Jammed in the galley, the floor angled at 35 degrees and lurching up and down, simple tasks of kneading bread, boiling water and opening tins become Herculean feats. All five tin openers are ruined by rust: as each meal uses up to 20 tins, we resort to sailing knives. And plasters.
The stove is gimballed to prevent water slopping, and no pot is filled more than a third, but it still takes ages to boil on the gas ring. Only one pot fits, so a juggling act ensues, hot pans switched between stove and sink at risk to life and limb to ensure everything arrives on time. There’s only a 15-minute window for eating at watch changeover, so you can’t be late. Even washing up is tough. Your back aches, braced against the sink; fresh water has to be made from the sea, so you eke it out; and hygiene is vital: imagine 20 poisoned individuals crammed together.
But this is the easy stuff. Getting the food into those bags ready for the midnight run is where the pain starts. Each bag is lettered, with a corresponding laminated instruction sheet. You need ingredients for three meals, plus snacks, for 20, without the luxury of refrigeration. On a budget of £3.50 per person. Now multiply it by 35 days. Oh, and if you were thinking of forgetting anything, don’t. Where you’re going there are no shops. And everything you need is labelled in Chinese.
Add the complications of providing seawater-safe food that doesn’t weigh too much, won’t poison people with a range of allergies and can be easily prepared, and you have the spreadsheet, and headache, from hell.
I knew that sailing around the world — freezing in the Southern Ocean, enduring the North Pacific and threading the Sunda Strait — would be hard. Satisfying the needs of a rotating crew of 48 is harder. There’s the boredom, brought on by repetitive ingredients. Even with an eight-day, 20-meal rotation, by the end of a month-long leg, people get fed up. And despite new meals after each stopover, by the end the round-the-worlders were chewing mooring lines for a bit of variety.
Still, no one starved, and some meals were even quite popular. Spaghetti bolognese with soya mince (weighs nothing, never goes off) was a winner, so too the Smash fishcakes. Apple crumble and rice pudding for breakfast, Nutella-filled muffins and birthday cakes all met with delight. One popular lunch was sandwiches, the lumpen rolls, misshapen from abuse in a tilting oven, stuffed with jam or corned beef (or both). Exotic stopovers provided new ingredients, most more successful than the pickled vegetables from Qingdao and dried beans from Rio.
Healthy competition kept the mothers trying to outdo each other, and invention was king: trifle in a tin mug, naan bread from scratch, 4 a.m. custard. If things went irrevocably wrong, there was always tomato, sweet chilli or bang bang sauce to cover it up. And if a crew sails on its stomach, we must have been the best-fed boat in the fleet, because, after seven legs and 35,000 miles, we won the race.
Seven months on, and Penny still can’t face the tinned vegetable aisle. clipperroundtheworld.com
Recipe: Pasta Marinara
A popular choice on board (consistently requested in the end-of-leg polls; people now make it at home), the benefits include economy (sardines are cheap all round the world), bulk (fill ’em up with pasta), and ease (open tins, boil).
Serves 20.
8 packs dried onion
One large bulb of garlic, chopped
2.5kg tinned tomatoes
100g tomato puree
10 tins sardines
4 tins black olives
Herbs, chilli flakes, black pepper
2kg pasta shapes
Boil water in largest pot. Add half pasta, boil for five minutes, cover and put aside for ten minutes. Open tins and store in sink to prevent spillage in high seas. Add tomatoes, puree, herbs, chilli flakes, onions and garlic to second-largest pot and cook down. Add olives (remove pits to avoid emergency dental work). Debone sardines, throw bones straight in sea to avoid smell causing seasickness below, add fish to sauce and heat through. Stir sauce through pasta to coat, and serve with more sauce on top. Cook rest of pasta for off-coming watch.
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