Provisioning in Nukuâalofa
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 Vavaâu was
âprevious crews have opted to relieve the captain of galley duty, and
itâs up to you guys if you want to follow suit.â Having lived off of my
fatherâs cooking on bike tours when I was younger, and not to say
anything against Zatarainâs 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, Iâve unofficially taken on the role of cookâs mate with Pete as
the cookâs mateâs mate. Mind you, Iâm not the shipâs cook proper, as my
deckhand responsibilities still take priority.
Hereâs the order of operations that Iâve 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 donât
already have.
4.All of those groceries have to go somewhere, and the provisions (like
everything else on Rover) are meticulously catalogued as theyâre stowed
in various compartments and cubbies and hammocks and bilges.
5.The actual cooking of the food, carefully timing around the crewâs
hunger and the captainâs schedule to make sure the meal is served on
time (this is the step Iâve struggled the most with).
6.Galley duty: cleaning up from the meal and subtracting the ingredients
used from the records of the boatâs stores.
To reiterate what past crews have written in their blogs: Roverâs
incredibly well stocked. A lot of care went into the pre-trip
provisioning and Iâm pretty sure thereâs at least a month or twoâs 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 Roverâs stores. As for whatâs possible to
find on shore, itâs 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 Neaifuâs Main Street while
provisioning in Vavaâu, but peanut butter (which Iâd 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, Iâve had a couple factors to work
around outside of the availability of ingredients. Generally, weâve been
shying away from meat: we donât have a lot of confidence in the
consistency of the refrigeration on shore, so we mostly eat either
vegetarian or canned meat. Weâve also been avoiding fresh fruit and
vegetables that arenât peeled or cooked prior to eating. Despite those
limitations, though, Iâve been able to come up with (what I think is) a
pretty varied menu. Iâve 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 Roverâs little galley.
Having sailed with several sea cooks in my time on the tall ships, Iâve
always had a lot of respect for the position (and most of the cooks
themselves) and had never really considered doing it myself: itâs a lot
of hard work and planning and I didnât know if I was badass enough to do
it at the level I felt like the crew deserved. Roverâs 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.) Iâve 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: itâs hard work and, if anything, my esteem
for the cooks Iâve 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: yâall 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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