So, I’m going to write a blog. Oh dear, terrible start, must try harder. Why is the first sentence always so difficult? I have thousands of ideas of things I want to write about in future blog posts, but this first one seems so much harder to compose.
Now I’m assuming pretty much everyone reading this will either be yachting friends or members of my family, but on the off chance any of you don’t know me personally, I will introduce myself. My name’s Abbi, I’m 27 years old and for the last year I have been living and working aboard a world travelling sailing yacht. My role is to maintain the interior of the boat and keep the crew well fed. It’s that second part of my job that I want to focus this blog on (because really, would any of you want to read a blog about me cleaning toilets and oiling wood floors??!).
Our crew size ranges from 4 to 7 people depending on where we are and what we are doing. Now, it would be fair to assume that cooking lunch and dinner for those relatively small numbers of people would be an easy task, but you would be surprised how much is involved! I have to work around the boat bouncing and leaning over at silly angles when we are sailing, ensure I keep enough vegetables alive to survive several weeks at sea and provision in countries where I don’t speak the language. Not to mention the more obvious challenges of thinking of what to cook twice a day and catering to fussy yacht crew used to high standards of cooking!
Prior to this job I had never cooked professionally and bar a 1 month intensive chefs course in Devon, England (which was incredible by the way) I have no formal culinary training. Which means that with no experience or training to fall back on I have had to do all my learning by a process of trial and error, asking other yacht cooks and of course, searching good old Google. Now I know the industry is relatively small (I believe there’s about 6000 superyachts in the world), but I was still amazed to find very little information about how to do my job! I found a few blogs about how to provision for an Atlantic crossing – mostly aimed at smaller boats doing the passage for fun – but that was about the extent of it.
So I decided to write my own!
I make no pretences of having all the answers (or even any answers! I’m honestly mostly crossing my fingers and winging it…), but I have definitely discovered some things along the way which may help someone else starting out. And I would love to share all the new things I have yet to learn! So whether you are a “yachtie” in a similar role to me, you are interested in cooking on a boat, or are simply one of my many family members regularly asking “Abbi, how do we keep better track of you??”, I hope it will be an interesting read. And if it really is just Mum, Dad and Nanna that reads this, then at least I’ll have had something to do to keep me occupied during long passages….
Speaking of passages, as I type, we are currently underway on a trip through Patagonia, which has to be the most awe-inspiring, beautiful place on earth. The weather today is incredible. Clear blue skies with not a breath of wind so the ocean is like a mirror (not great conditions for sailing but for once I don’t mind motoring!) and all you can see in every direction are giant snow-capped mountains and the occasional seal or dolphin swimming alongside the boat. We are however having issues with our internet so I probably won’t actually be able to post this for several weeks yet!
Nevertheless, post this I will and we can begin our little blogging journey together – isn’t that exciting? Yes? Good. I’m excited too. Now I shall let you all get on with your day as its 17:30 here and I probably need to go start preparing dinner for the boys. We have a lovely South African delivery crew member on board so in honour of his home country I think I’m going to make the traditional “saffa” dish Babotie. YUM.