The final day before departure is always a pretty manic one for me for both sides of my job. With my stew hat on, I have to get a load of laundry through (sheets, towels, clothes, tea-towels) as we aren’t able to use the washing machine when we’re sailing, make sure everything is secure and won’t fly when we start heeling, check everyone has the appropriate uniform for the passage, give the boat a good clean as it’s not always that easy to hoover or dust when you’re tilted over at a stupid angle etc etc. In chef mode I have to do the final fresh shop and pack it all away, plus make lunch for the gang somewhere in amongst that.

As we are not usually in places used to superyachts, I often get some funny looks at the checkout when I’m wheeling over 3 trolleys one after the other. I do try to explain that I’m shopping for a sailing passage but as my Spanish is not that good, I’m pretty sure the lady today had no idea what I was talking about! As I mentioned in my previous post, I have a fairly good handle on the numbers of things needed now, so I felt like I was going a lot quicker than previous shops – until I looked at the time….. FOUR HOURS!! No wonder I was exhausted. It was a pretty successful shop though and I even managed to ask the bakery (in Spanish, get me!) for some of their frozen croissants from out the back. You can’t beat a warm freshly baked croissant on a morning watch and my pastry skills just aren’t good enough to make them from scratch.

Anyway. Shop done. The next stage is getting it all on the boat. Thankfully all the boys helped out ferrying it down the dock and all my bags were on board in no time. Now the fun part – packing it away for passage. All the dairy and deli stuff goes in the fridge in organised labelled boxes. There are also fridge boxes for tomatoes, salad leaves, green veg, mushrooms, broccoli (after a failed experiment of keeping it in water outside the fridge), cucumber etc.  Things like spinach, rocket or herbs, I wash, dry and put in a ziplock lined with kitchen roll – this seems to keep them alive so well I’ve started doing it even when we’re on the dock. 

Now it’s the remaining veg/fruit that are more faffy and took me a good couple of hours to put away this afternoon. Everything gets dried fully, individually wrapped in newspaper and put into labelled bags that are then stored in a cabin with the aircon turned right up and all the blinds kept down. It might not sound like that long a process, but when you remember the quantities – 50 carrots, 40 peppers etc – it does take a while! Then there’s all the rules to learn:

• Citrus near apples make the apples ripen too fast
• Onions near potatoes make the potatoes sprout
• Bananas near anything (including other bananas?!) make everything ripen too fast
• Potatoes like to be in the dark

Any veggies that have slipped through my checks at the supermarket and have even the slightest hint of damage or starting to go off, get taken out and usually used for dinner that night.

It’s then just a case of strapping everything down so it can’t move, making sure it’s all labelled (everything looks the same wrapped in newspaper!), turning off the lights, shutting the door and sticking a sign up reminding everyone else that this cabin is now essentially a fridge so please don’t just wander in unless needed!

After all that, I’m usually ready for a nap! But more often than not it’s about time by then to cook dinner for the troops…. 

No rest for the wicked eh?