Week Three (plus one day)

Week Three (plus one day)
A series of notable events occurred during the course of this week. One of these is that this is the longest period either of us has been at sea at any one time. Our Atlantic crossing way back in 2006 took us three weeks. We’re on our 23rd day of this passage now, which leads me neatly on to one of the other events: the international dateline. On the afternoon of Sunday 8th July we crossed this ‘time border’ created by man long ago, and it’s confused me ever since. One minute it was 2pm on Sunday, and the next it was 4pm on Saturday 7th July, so we’d effectively sailed into yesterday. Suddenly all the time differences I’d committed to memory were altered; since we’re now in the Western hemisphere we’re 12 hours behind the UK, on the delightfully-named Pago Pago time zone (New Caledonia). As someone keen to get to Seattle as quickly as possible, this was a bit demoralising to say the least. I had to write Sunday 8th July twice in my journal and wait a whole day before I could cross Sunday off the calendar! I’m trying to consign this confusion neatly into the past now and concentrate on the future time changes (there are four more hours to add on before we reach Seattle). It’s a hard life out here on the Pacific 😉
Anyway, this week has also seen us pass the halfway mark and at the time of writing we’re almost two thirds of the way across. After a couple of days of slow progress with little wind and arduous side-to-side rocking, we’re making up for the lost miles by racing along at speeds of 8 – 10 knots; quite exhilarating if a little hard on mobility. The weather is best described as being grey, or grey and white, or light grey and dark grey. The few times I’ve poked my head up out of the cabin hatch, meerkat-style, I’ve been confronted with the image of a high, grey wall of water, white or grey skies and sometimes a sheet of thin drizzly rain. It’s been cold too; cold enough to have the heating on most of the time and to clad up in thermals under a duvet and blankets (well that’s mainly me but I’m always cold outside of the Tropics). This has meant that unlike the Atlantic crossing, I haven’t been up in the cockpit enjoying the sunrises and sunsets, or the phases of the moon, and watching for sea life on a flat calm sea. We did see a shark go gliding past last Friday on the last calm day before the cold and the high waves arrived – a slow-moving black and grey fin slicing the surface just a few feet away from us.
Paul reports daily on the progress of our journey and its details. I spend a good deal of time reading or listening to books on Audible so there really isn’t much for me to report on, especially as the cold is confining me to barracks. People have asked about food and meals so I thought I’d write a bit on that subject – without pictures. I don’t want to turn it into an extended ‘this is what we had for dinner’ social media post 🙂
So far there has been only one evening when it was too bouncy for me to make any dinner. I’d made a couple of attempts to get into the galley but felt too nervous to tackle hot pans after struggling to stay upright. Paul stepped in and managed to cook omelettes while the side-on waves did their utmost to throw things and people onto the floor. We still have a plethora of food on board, although we had our last fresh mixed salad a few days ago. I could have bought more tomatoes in fact because they kept surprisingly well, as did the iceberg and romaine lettuce and peppers. All fresh produce was stored in the fridge which is fairly spacious fortunately. We still have potatoes, carrots, onions, apples and oranges which have all kept well. I was a lot more regimented regarding meals and provisioning for the Atlantic. My instructions then were to allow for 3 or 4 weeks and to consider that the fridge and cooker might break down. We were also recommended to make meal plans for breakfast, lunch and dinner. Experience revealed that we really didn’t need three meals because we weren’t doing enough to justify that amount of food. This time, I merely wrote down a few ideas for easy to prepare evening meals and stocked up with pasta, ready made sauces, rice and noodles – as well as tins of tuna, baked beans, tomatoes, soups, peas, eggs, and ready-made curries to name but a few of the staples. We have a camping stove in case the cooker breaks and if the fridge breaks…well placing things safely outside will probably do the job of keeping things fresh: it’s that cold out there!
The bread in Japan, though marginally better than the loaves in Malaysia, wasn’t up to much taste-wise but it did keep for a long period, and when you just want some toast or a sandwich, it served its purpose. We bought (and still have) lots of chilled longlife naan breads and pitta breads, along with some pizza bases which are great heated up with some pizza topping and mixed herbs for lunch. Those are all fine but don’t cut it when you fancy some toast and Marmite. Once you start thinking of freshly-cooked bread, nothing else will do so I finally made some yesterday using the tried and trusted Jamie Oliver recipe. I embarked on it with one trepidation considering the rocky conditions. Apart from one spillage at the crucial runny stage, I managed to produce dough for two loaves, but as we’re still cautious about using too much gas with two weeks to go, I couldn’t let the oven heat up too much before baking. I’ve made better but they were pure luxury after so long making do with sugary doughy white slices.
We tend to keep to a 7 o’clock evening meal time and as Paul has pointed out, it becomes something to look forward to in the long days on board. I enjoy having the luxury of time to prepare and plan, and since I can’t contribute fully to the sailing tasks (it just doesn’t work for me), I’m happy having the galley as my domain on passage. I tend to let conditions dictate the type of meal we’ll have but even with my mostly vegan diet, I’m pleased with the variety of dishes we’ve had so far. Paul will mainly have what I have, with the odd addition of chicken breast (vacuum-packed), ham, tuna or meat-based sauces. Obviously he’ll be catching fish galore soon so that will be his meals sorted each night ;-). For the first week our dinners consisted of various salads with tuna, tofu, cheese, new potatoes; home made vegetable soup; stir fries and fresh ratatouille. All these we had with with baguettes which were crisped up in the oven and the last of the more wholesome bread.
During the second week I made a roasted vegetable tart using puff pastry, with new potatoes and baked beans; Spanish rice with tortilla wraps (Paul had tuna fillets with those), tofu and vegetable curry with leftover Spanish rice, soy burgers in tomato sauce with fried onions, peas, mushrooms and mashed potatoes; and homemade carrot and coriander soup. One night neither of us felt like eating due to the rough conditions, and another night we had pot noodles, which are tricky to prepare when it’s as if you’re wearing roller skates so, unsurprisingly, some of the contents ended up on the floor. I will often start preparing things in the afternoon, or when there’s a lull in the rocking. Doing things gradually is more manageable – not as daunting as trying to do everything within an hour. One afternoon I made some wholewheat pastry and used it for making vegan cornish-style pasties. These were handy for ‘grab’ snacks instead of sandwiches. It can be hard work getting stuff out of the fridge during extreme side-to-side rolling to create a sandwich. You need more than one pair of hands to stop spread, knives, cheese, jars etc from slipping and rolling around. Pasties, hard boiled eggs and slices of pizza bread are ideal to grab when you’re peckish and it’s rough (along with chocolate, cereal bars, biscuits, and crisps of course).
The boat has lots of storage space for things such as cans, bottles, packets and tins and they are duly stowed all over the place. To ensure we don’t forget what is where, I’ve made an inventory (written in a notebook, the old-fashioned way) which I try to remember to annotate whenever I move anything. Now that we are over halfway there, looking at what is still in the cupboards and lockers, I’m certain we won’t have to do a ‘big shop’ for the first couple of weeks after we arrive. My main concern at the moment is that I got my wine calculations wrong and it looks as if I will have to ration myself until we reach Seattle or Canada.
Apart from that, all is well as we hurtle towards our destination (it would have been nice to have found hot water bottles in Japan, though). I’m reading quite a few books about America at the moment, including the one Paul recently finished by Jonathan Raban which has some interesting passages about the area we’re going to. I’ll include some of them in next week’s blog. One last notable event – I’ve beaten Paul in the last four games of Scrabble :-).
Kathy