Rover

Provisioning in Nuku’alofa

29 August 2023
Teddy
One of the first things the captain told me and Pete during our
orientation on Rover when we arrived two-ish weeks ago in Vava’u was
“previous crews have opted to relieve the captain of galley duty, and
it’s up to you guys if you want to follow suit.” Having lived off of my
father’s cooking on bike tours when I was younger, and not to say
anything against Zatarain’s brand instant red beans and rice with
kielbasa, (and also having since spent a decade working in food
service,) Pete and I agreed to follow the established precedent. Since
then, I’ve unofficially taken on the role of cook’s mate with Pete as
the cook’s mate’s mate. Mind you, I’m not the ship’s cook proper, as my
deckhand responsibilities still take priority.

Here’s the order of operations that I’ve adopted in my new (unofficial)
role:

1.Figure out what provisions are already on the boat and figure out what
provisions can be obtained on shore.

2.Using those two categories of provisions, plan out every meal until
the next time provisioning is possible.

3.The provisioning run: getting everything you need that you don’t
already have.

4.All of those groceries have to go somewhere, and the provisions (like
everything else on Rover) are meticulously catalogued as they’re stowed
in various compartments and cubbies and hammocks and bilges.

5.The actual cooking of the food, carefully timing around the crew’s
hunger and the captain’s schedule to make sure the meal is served on
time (this is the step I’ve struggled the most with).

6.Galley duty: cleaning up from the meal and subtracting the ingredients
used from the records of the boat’s stores.

To reiterate what past crews have written in their blogs: Rover’s
incredibly well stocked. A lot of care went into the pre-trip
provisioning and I’m pretty sure there’s at least a month or two’s worth
of food still on the boat from when it left San Diego. Some of those
stores are ingredients that are incredibly useful and would be hard to
find in the South Pacific like textured vegetable protein (TVP), which
is a great shelf-stable meat substitute. Spices, shelf-stable foods, and
staples are all abundant in Rover’s stores. As for what’s possible to
find on shore, it’s varied widely. On the one hand, I was only able to
find three cans of beans (which I had thought would be ubiquitous) after
scouring all half-dozen stores on Neaifu’s Main Street while
provisioning in Vava’u, but peanut butter (which I’d thought was a
mostly American staple not consumed widely elsewhere) was well stocked
in every one of those stores. It took several trips of walking around
town to get a good feel for what was available in Neiafu.

As far as the meal planning goes, I’ve had a couple factors to work
around outside of the availability of ingredients. Generally, we’ve been
shying away from meat: we don’t have a lot of confidence in the
consistency of the refrigeration on shore, so we mostly eat either
vegetarian or canned meat. We’ve also been avoiding fresh fruit and
vegetables that aren’t peeled or cooked prior to eating. Despite those
limitations, though, I’ve been able to come up with (what I think is) a
pretty varied menu. I’ve cooked up corned beef hash, pad Thai, French
onion soup, Spanish rice with beans, and a couple of other pretty tasty
(if I do say so myself) dinners in Rover’s little galley.

Having sailed with several sea cooks in my time on the tall ships, I’ve
always had a lot of respect for the position (and most of the cooks
themselves) and had never really considered doing it myself: it’s a lot
of hard work and planning and I didn’t know if I was badass enough to do
it at the level I felt like the crew deserved. Rover’s not a tall ship
and the scale of everything related to cooking on Rover (the crew, the
stores, the schedule, the galley, etc.) is a fraction of the tall ships,
but I feel like a.) I’ve done a pretty good job so far, b.) being in
charge of the galley and giving sailors good food is hella gratifying,
and c.) I was totally right: it’s hard work and, if anything, my esteem
for the cooks I’ve sailed with has only grown with this experience.
Cheers to all of the good sea cooks that fed me on the Hawaiian
Chieftain and Lady Washington: y’all are badasses. The next step is to
see how I do cooking offshore on our ~5 day passage to Fiji. We leave
tomorrow! Morale remains high!

--
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Comments
Vessel Name: Rover
Vessel Make/Model: Valiant 42
Hailing Port: Seattle. WA
Crew: Eric and Linda
About:
We're making a big change to a cruising lifestyle. Eric retired in 2012 after 32 years in R&D (mostly) at HP. Previous passions included flying and bicycling. Linda will retire in 2013 from Oregon State University. She's been active in Zonta, was a Scoutmaster, and is a champion baker. [...]
Extra: Linda was barrel master and Eric participated in the Jackson Street Vintners; a group of friends that made wine from 2000 to 2013
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