The idea of wasting food while on a long sea passage is unspeakable. Tom lists a few tips and tricks to make sure the crew don’t go hungry
TOM CUNLIFFE Tom has been mate on a merchant ship, run yachts for gentlemen, operated charter boats, delivered, raced and taught. He writes the pilot for the English Channel, a complete set of cruising text books and runs his own internet club for sailors worldwide at tomcunliffe.com
I was shocked to read recently that 9.5 million tons of food are thrown away every year in the UK alone. My answer to this is along the lines of WS Gilbert’s Mikado, making the punishment fit the crime. While the Emperor of Japan planned to have those convicted of cheating at billiards play for evermore ‘on a cloth untrue with a twisted cue’, I am determined to send food wasters to sea in small yachts with no refrigeration. Food’s a bit like water on a long passage. Unless you have a water maker or are an expert fisherman whose luck is permanently in, once it’s gone, it’s gone. So, waste not, want not.
Those who live on the sea, even for short periods, soon become experts at recycling food. My wife Roz and I spent so long on the oceans without a fridge that, although we’re based ashore at last, we still can’t bring ourselves to bin anything we could put in our mouths.
When we made our home moored on the piles in mid-river off Beaulieu following an extended cruise, our eight-year-old daughter used to scull ashore to the village school in the morning. She’d hop down into the dinghy togged up in official pullover and skirt with her lunch box tossed onto the stern seat. I don’t know what her classmates carted along to munch at mid-day, but Hannah’s creations showed initiative. Occasionally it might be conventional cheese or ham. More often it was the remnants of last night’s dinner – the shepherd’s pie sandwich was a favourite. Binning the remains is still against our religion.
We’d a big boat in those days and made our passages with a full crew. At sea, we’d follow the lead of the great HW Tilman and offer the left-overs from dinner the following morning. Tilman once stirred an already mutinous crew into open rebellion by serving curry for breakfast. He doesn’t say in his book whether he had directed the cook to prepare it specially to give the day a red-hot start, but in our case curry for breakfast was a not-infrequent entry on the bill of fare. Generally, we got away with it. My curries have been described b
