CATHERINE LAWSON ON PROVISIONING
FOILING MINI 6.50 • ASYMMETRIC MODES AND TRIM • TWO-HANDED TACKING
Versatile peanuts (actually a legume, not a nut) are cheap and widely available for blitzing into nut butter or creating peanut satay sauce
Fresh herbs can be grown in a micro-garden onboard, and preserved by solar or oven-drying
P rovisioning a yacht for a long period away from conventional shops, with limited cold store space, dry goods stowage and galley facilities, can be daunting. In a beautifully illustrated new book, The Hunter & The Gatherer, long-time liveaboards Catherine Lawson and David Bristow explain how they provision, shop, forage and cook while cruising tropical and remote waters.
The couple have been cruising for more than two decades, and are currently exploring Indonesia and south-east Asia on their 40ft catamaran Wild One with their daughter, Maya, seeking out remote anchorages as much as possible. That desire to be far away has shaped their food mentality, which Catherine explains is for, “ocean-loving foodies striving for better health, greater self-sufficiency and a tiny footprint on the sea.”
Here, Catherine shares her advice on how to provision your yacht before departure.
GALLEY STORES
We stock our boat with all the things we like to eat in bulk quantities that will sustain us for three months or more at a time. We stop and shop wherever we can, replenishing fresh, marketbought produce and trading with locals whenever those friendly exchanges present themselves. We also enjoy our daily attempts to catch, spear and forage for seafood. There is immense freedom in living this way, and I rarely feel bound to the shore. Every sailor’s pantry looks different to the next, but here’s an overview of the items we strive to carry on board:
Carbohydrates and grains
Whole grains and processed grain-based foods form the backbone of any sailor’s stores. Mine includes pasta, rice (basmati, brown and sushi), quinoa, rice noodles, tortilla chips, couscous and long-life flatbreads for quick-cook pizzas and lunchtime wraps. I carry rice paper sheets (for fresh rolls), crackers, frozen pastry and plenty of flour for baking sourdough bread, which I turn into croutons and breadcrumbs too. We basically store a little bit of everything and restock with whatever is locally available in the towns we sail into. As many grain-based foods generate an excess of plastic waste, especially the convenient ones, when we can, we buy from bulk supply stores and markets that allow you to refill your own bags and containers.
Vegetarian proteins
We don’t eat ‘meat with feet’ but catch fish whenever we can. If the fish aren’t biting we coo
