Race 1 - Day 23
Crew Diary - Race 1 Day 23: Liverpool to Punta del Este
12 September
After fellow crew Catherine Foster fabulously wrote about the bunk Olympics, I will give everyone an overview about galley duty (some people decided they don't like the term mother watch) on our so well for its purpose designed Clipper Race yacht at 45 degrees! Oh and don't forget roughly 38 degrees Celsius in warmer climates. Close your eyes and imagine.... no don't!
Ok read these lines and imagine you are in a small kitchen drowned in red light (no white light on boats after sunset). The room is healed over by roughly 45 degrees. Lucky for you, the kitchen is U-shaped, so you can lean against it inside. Now imagine chopping up vegetables while every few seconds an outside force is hitting your room hard, sometimes making your freshly chopped veggies and yourself lift of the ground (Here I am talking about the waves hitting the bow in rough weathers). The bang each time is so loud, it sounds like you're in a bomb shelter. Next, you're faced with challenging cooking supplies. Having all your ingredients prepared for a delicious meal at 45 degrees in red light and on a, what feels like a roller coaster ride, you're ready to actually start cooking. Trying to turn the stove on, you realize that none of the three lighters work. Bummer. Oh well. You divert to opening your tins instead. Three can openers? Great, one of them will work for sure... or not... bummer. After a few desperate tries and a few deep cuts in your fingers, all cans are open and the fun can begin! During the cooking process, you'll approximately get hit on the head by two items falling out of the top cubby holes, while trying to find the Paprika powder. “Piiiiiiip” (our victualler) “Do you know where the Paprika powder is???”. Pip O’Sullivan gets thousands of questions regarding the food every day, people assume she knows the location of every single item on board.
Anyway, fast forward, the food is ready to serve. You had your best intentions when making it and tried hard. The more disappointing it is to see the majority of plates come back only half empty. “Errrm, not a big fan of couscous”, “Sorry it was great but...” and so on and so on. Now comes the second very tricky part of the food preparing process – cleaning up! First, you need to get rid of all that dirty water that collected on the low side inside the sink. What? How is this possible? Well, you would have thought that whoever designed this boat, would have taken the angle of the boat into consideration. Nope. Having the drain in the middle as it is standard for household sinks means that a fair amount of water can't drain on a heavy port or starboard tack. An easy solution would have been custom made sinks with two drains on each side, leading into one pipe, maybe? Oh well... this all just adds to the real experience. After approximately another hour cleaning all plates, pots and pans having to wait for the kettle to boil for hot water several times (generator broken, so no electric kettle) and a few more minor burns, you're done... Until the next dish!
Antonia