Anyone who knows Larry and me is probably wondering how we’re possibly going to adapt to living with a (relatively) tiny galley and not necessarily having access to good, fresh food. For those of you who don’t yet know us, we are what many would no doubt term “food snobs.” It’s a term I particularly dislike because I see it differently: I wonder why everyone isn’t a whole lot more particular about what they eat and drink.

In any case, I’m not only a culinary school graduate and instructor, but Larry and I owned and ran an urban organic gardening business for the past five years, teaching people to grow organic vegetables and fruits. On top of that, we lived for decades in the Willamette Valley in Oregon, where just about everything grows. Portland has a very strong “locavore” food culture with an emphasis on fresh, local, organic meats, veggies and more.

So living in Portland with our large gourmet kitchen, we shopped for local and organic food, didn’t eat processed food, eschewed sodas, and so on. We bought our pastured beef, pork and chicken from local farmers. Ditto the amazing raw organic milk we drank. And with 11 raised beds and numerous fruit trees in our back yard, we grew much of our own produce. Of course, with two cars and dozens of nearby grocery stores, farmers markets and even farmers, we had the means to pick up anything we wanted any time we wanted it.

What a change, then, to move onboard a sailboat and live in unknown places on the east coast! Although we’ve only been here a few weeks, we’ve already had some real surprises. I will likely look back on this post in a few years and laugh at my naïvité, but here are a few early observations on this topic.

Finding local food
So far, we’ve been in North Carolina, as well as having taken a road trip up to DC and Baltimore. There is of course no New Seasons here, the wonderful local grocery store where we did most of our shopping in Portland. I can’t even bring myself to set foot in a Piggly Wiggly yet and really didn’t care for the Food Lion. But we did find Harris Teeter, an upscale east coast chain, and in the DC area Wegman’s, which my son aptly described as “Whole Foods meets Walmart.” There are also Whole Foods and Trader Joe’s in various places.

So there are pretty good grocery stores around, but where we are right now - in Oriental, NC - it’s about a 50 minute drive to the nearest Harris Teeter. Once we sell our car - something we’re doing in the next week or so - we’ll need to plan ahead. That’s big change number one: living without a car, you can’t just hop in and drive somewhere on impulse. (Our friends Mike and Judy just spent a day down in Mexico taking five different buses and searching through six different hardware stores in an attempt to find parts for a bath faucet.) While many marinas have loaner cars, it’s still a lot less convenient than life was at home.

The real surprise has been that just about every town we’ve seen so far has had a year-round farmers market, even tiny Oriental. No veggies at the Oriental market this time of year, but we did score some ridiculously fresh flounder, locally roasted organic Honduran coffee, pasture raised lamb and pork, and some very tasty fleur de sel caramels. At the New Bern farmers market, we found onions, carrots, potatoes and really beautiful baby greens. So I am feeling encouraged, so far. (Side note: we also found a terrific farm-to-table restaurant in New Bern called 247 Craven. We’ll no doubt be frequent visitors when we’re in this area!)

Provisioning the galley
When we first got here, we took three or four days’ worth of food to Thalia where she was docked at River Dunes. (We only planned on being there a couple of days before moving her to the boatyard where she’s presently being worked on.) Then we got hit with a huge, unexpected snow storm that left 8” of snow on our decks and made local roads impassable for four days. We were delayed nearly a week, and got pretty hungry by the time we were able to get a car into Oriental. We learned a good lesson about provisioning from that experience, not to mention how sailors are affected by weather in ways that wouldn’t have occurred to us beforehand.

No, we’re not stocking up on Spam and Spaghettios, but we have since put in a good supply of nonperishable food items: dried beans, lentils, barley and rice; canned or boxed Trader Joe’s chili and soup; canned tomatoes, beans, Thai chili paste and coconut milk; dried porcini mushrooms; various sauces and condiments; olives, nuts, roasted red peppers and marinated artichokes; pasta and a jar of tomato sauce. We bought some TJ’s whole grain pancake mix and a few other “convenience” foods we wouldn’t have bought at home.

The other big shift we’ve had to make in our thinking is that there’s no freezer aboard Thalia. We had gotten so used to having a big pantry and not one but two freezers in Portland - that’s where all that pastured meat went - but obviously, we have to think differently here. We’re looking into having a freezer installed (we have the space where an old ice box went, but it’s an expensive proposition) and even a sort of portable version we might be able to tuck into some corner, but for now, we’re just living without one for a while and seeing how we do. I suspect that if we do any big ocean crossings, we’ll have to spring for one.

Food storage on a boat
This has been another learning. It’s not that there’s a lot less storage than in our kitchen at home, which was pretty obvious from the outset - but that on a boat, what storage you do have can be in unexpected places. There’s no big pantry in the galley, or anywhere else, for that matter. If I put food in a cabinet in the galley, that takes up space where I might want to store plates or pots and pans. It’s a juggling act, and I’ve reworked it several times. (The added complication is that Larry was simultaneously busy claiming drawers and cubbyholes for tools, so we had to compromise on that too).

So now our food is divided into a small amount that I store in the galley proper along with some coffee, crackers, chocolate and other necessities, and all the rest of it, which is stowed behind the seat cushions in our salon, as shown in the photo here. This system takes a little getting used to, but it’s working OK for now.

I think we’ll likely not starve to death now… In all seriousness, our setup is a lot better than I feared it would be. And cooking aboard Thalia has been easy so far, with a sizable galley for a boat her size. We’ll continue to post our findings in various ports as we head south starting next week - weather permitting, of course! - in the direction of Charleston, SC.