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.
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