Admirals' Angle » Galley

#35 – The Cruising Galley

Gwen Hamlin — Mon, 20 Jul 2009 15:21:00 +0000

We’ve all seen the cutesy paired slogans on T-shirts, hats, and drinking glasses that are marketed to sailors in just about every chandlery and nautical tourist shop: You know… the stuff that reads “Captain” and “Galley Slave”. You’ve got to wonder: Who actually buys those?

I highly doubt many Admirals cruising today think of themselves as “galley slaves.” That whole “slave” thing implies that we’re there without choice. I can see how it might look that way to women just setting out, the ones who are feeling shanghaied into a partner’s cruising dream. You’re probably still clinging to the memory of that last power lunch, where nouveau cuisine was served up artfully without a thought needed to the work it took to create it and the dishes to be washed afterwards.

It’s taken me a long time to get around to writing about galleys and an Admiral’s relationship with them. Perhaps it’s my own hang-up. I didn’t want to contribute to a stereotype, where a woman is pigeon-holed as the cook.

But here’s the thing: not only do most of us in fact do the cooking onboard, most of us truly enjoy it! The moment we leave those hectic lives ashore – with all the convenience foods and fast-food takeaway, business lunches and restaurant meals – and step on board our boats, we find ourselves in a situation where meals matter again! Suddenly we have time, time to make favorite recipes, to try new ones, to actually make things from scratch, and then time to sit back and enjoy the fruits of our labors!

More than any other thing we can do, the food we cook on board is what makes the boat home. This doesn’t mean we aren’t out there trying local foods, shopping local markets, or eating in local restaurants. Far from it! That’s half the fun of our style of travel: that we can bring ingredients and tastes back home to the boat and try to recreate them – a sort of culinary scrapbooking, if you will. But experienced cruisers do provision to their own tastes and style of eating, and the effort to which we go to produce familiar meals in faraway places contributes to the feeling that we have a home hearth to retreat to. It is a luxury few other travelers share.

Beyond that, food seems to be one of the glues that bind our floating community together. We share cozy impromptu dinners in the cockpit with our favorite buddy boats, we build new friendships with the boat that just anchored nearby over an invite for sundowners and hors d’oeuvres, and we celebrate our community by including every boat in the anchorage in a dinghy cocktail raft-up or sprawling beach potluck. (If you don’t know folksinger Eileen Quinn’s song “Piranha Potluck,” you must get it! You’ll think twice before you ever bring a rice dish again!!)

On passage, of course, the meals we prepare are a matter of survival. We have no options but what we put together ourselves. It is a challenging responsibility that starts way before we put pot to stove. There is the strategy of provisioning: what meals to plan that balance tastiness, nutrition, and ease of preparation, with availability and durability of ingredients, not to mention how much to buy, how to stow it, and how to make it last. It is worthy of any business plan! And this all before we try to execute the plan in a boat heeled hard over, gyrating uncomfortably downwind or just bouncing in lumpy seas.

Good planning actually starts even before the provisioning. It starts in how we choose, lay out, and equip our galley. If we are cruising on our first boat, we often end up with a galley by default, in other words the one that came with the boat we and our partner selected for other reasons. Most of us just assume that certain inconveniences and sacrifices are the price of the cruising life. To a certain extent, this is true. It is a huge adjustment to move from a large land-based kitchen into the cramped quarters of a cruising boat’s galley.

Galleys are often laid out the way they are for reasons that are not immediately obvious, so it’s good to work in yours awhile before contemplating changes. For example, small U-shaped galleys may look unnecessarily restrictive, but tradition has shown them to be the safest layout for cooking at sea because you can wedge yourself in. Likewise, top loading refrigerator boxes must first appear to be some torture devised by men who want time to admire our butts as we delve head first into them to extract something from the bottom, but, again, top-loaders became the tradition because it was the most efficient way to contain the cold air that was so hard to achieve with ice. Furthermore, many boats currently in use for full time cruising were never conceived as liveaboards. Their designers thought we were going out for a vacation getaway and provided storage space in the galley for little more than a week’s worth of stores or gussied things up to be more pretty than practical.

Today, cruising women are expecting more from their galleys and so are making decisions about galley design, equipment and provisions that the original builders never imagined. To boats built in the 70s and 80s, cruisers have added solar panels, generators and inverters, allowing them to squeeze in refrigeration, freezers, microwaves, or bread machines. Where shelves were constructed to secure four sets of stock plastic tableware, cruisers now want to fit in nice plates and stemware. And where lockers and bilges were enough to hold primarily canned food, today’s cruisers want to bring along a variety of produce, products and condiments to ensure a diverse and interesting menu.

Are we stuck with what we’ve got? Only to a certain degree. Budget and ingenuity available for refit will have their impact, as will, of course, your personal knack for organizing things. Some people go in gangbusters, rip stuff out and rebuild from scratch. Others find that small, carefully-considered additions like lift-up counter extensions, shelves in lockers, or spice racks can meet the need we all have for “just a little more room.” Like most things nautical, there are many different considerations to weigh when putting it all together. Wouldn’t it be nice if we could see how experienced cruisers do it!

Well…. now you can. It’s the latest project from the ladies at www.womenandcruising.com. To help you consider prospective galleys as well as to help you make the most of the galley you have, we invited eighteen cruising women from a variety of boats and cruising styles to give you a look right inside their galleys and to share insights and tips about cooking aboard. It’s almost as if they’ve dropped the hook beside you and invited you over. They are coastal cruisers and world travelers, they sail monohulls and catamarans, they cook simply and gourmet. They work in U-shaped galleys, in-line galleys, galleys up and galley down. Whether they were full-time Moms before they went sailing or had professional careers, they cook now for their partners, families, friends and a few even for charter guests. But, almost to a woman, they find the cooking they do onboard one of the particular pleasures of their cruising experience.

About that Captain/Galley Slave thing: It’s been said that “Captains are a dime a dozen; good cooks are hard to find.”

This article was published in the June 2009 issue of Latitudes and Attitudes.

Related articles (on this website)

Galley Advice from 18 Cruising Women
Bev Feiges makes her case for an electric galley aboard (Women and Cruising blog)
Little Things Make a Big Difference (Admiral’s Angle column #29)

#29 – Little Things Make a Big Difference

Gwen Hamlin — Fri, 23 Jan 2009 20:39:00 +0000

Much has been written about what a boat needs to make it safe for cruising, but not so often is much said about what things make a cruising boat pleasant to live aboard. I posed this question to the Admirals a while back and received a flood of input. More than I’ve ever received for any other subject! This may be because it is easier to think about this than heavier subjects, but I think it is also because we all love to share little discoveries that are (sometimes disproportionately) important to us.

The leading category for “little things” making a difference in a cruising woman’s life is in the galley. The more time we spend out cruising the more we realize how important is not stinting on good galley tools. “Good sharp knives, great pots and pans, and my Fagor™ pressure cooker,” states Sandy of Columbine, and she is seconded in that by several other Admirals. Mary of Camryka says, “A stainless steel pressure cooker costs more initially, but it’s one of those lasts-a-lifetime items, so it pays to buy a good one.” That was exactly my thinking I when I splurged on stainless-steel nesting pots, and I wish I’d spent for a Calphalon™ square griddle. My cheapo Teflon-coated aluminum one is the most used and abused pan I own, and I can’t replace it out here.

Electrical gizmos have much more of a place aboard than in the old days, requiring an inverter and, as Yvonne of Australia 31 says, “enough battery power not to scrimp.” It may surprise you to learn that almost half the responding Admirals use a bread machine. New models even remember where they are in the cycle should someone switch the inverter off! Several Admirals are surprised how much they use the microwave, and several people mention vacuum-sealers, either the larger Foodsaver™ models or a simple little device that has a mini-heat strip to reseal plastic food packages – the Euro Sealer™ (“as seen on TV”) – that Katherine of Sangaris recommends.

Judy of Ursa Minor has long been an advocate of plastic cutting sheets; “They take next to no space, are super easy to clean even in a small sink on a boat, and make it much easier to have a clean cutting board handy as I switch between cutting veggies and meat.” I’ve also found them handy to place across shelves to keep stuff tumbling out when accessing lockers underway. Judy also has neat salad-spinner bags; they fold away flat, but do as good a job as regular spinners. I’ve found them at Bed, Bath & Beyond in the US.

Cindy of Tashmoo loves her Pampered Chef™ food chopper as a substitute for a full- bore food processor, Mary advises good kitchen shears to be kept exclusively for galley work as well as a top-opening can-opener that leaves no sharp edge, and Bette Lee of Quantum Leap puts a vote in for silicone bakeware, colanders, and measuring cups. “They save loads of space, and don’t rust or rattle.” And speaking of small joys, I suspect there isn’t an Admiral alive who doesn’t appreciate quality paper towels and Ziplocs™ wherever we can find them and green Evert- Fresh™ bags for keeping veggies fresh.

Decent dishware and flatware – so that you don’t feel you are camping out – is brought up by several Admirals. Ellen of Cayenne III likes her new Corelle™ plates, while Lisa of Lady Galadriel actually has a stash of real china for entertaining. Since I’m partial to plain white plates, I actually prefer the upscale plastic-ware with non-skid bottoms from the Galleyware Company™, marketed in most boating stores. For passages, Judy recommends double-bowled dog dishes that can’t tip! Woof!

OK! Out of the galley! The next most commonly mentioned category is good lighting, especially for reading in berth areas, salon and cockpit. Also, “a boat can be a small space for one person to have a light on to read while the other tries to sleep,” says Mary. “A book light minimizes the disturbance.” These days many people are using LED headlamps for this, especially ones with a red light for night passages, which you can also us for running lights in your dinghy! On Tackless we have a tiny orange LED light wired into the head compartment as a night light, which is about as small a joy as they come. Elsewhere, I’m rather partial to Alpenglow™ daylight fluorescent lights. And speaking of not disturbing sleepers, earphones for our computer/ DVD setup means I don’t have to listen to my husband’s videos shoot up the world!

On board email is important to most cruisers, whether they connect by SSB, an amplified Wifi antenna, or sat phone. Satellite radio is also something many cruisers enjoy these days. “We started our cruising with XM Radio™ but lost the signal once we got south of Cuba so now have Sirius™,” says Cindy. “It is nice to keep up with news and sports and have the variety of talk, story and music that it provides. We love listening to the old time radio shows when we are on passages.” Where satellite radio doesn’t reach, iPods™ fill the breach. Judy says, “While on watch at night I find that listening to audio books or podcasts I’ve downloaded helps keep me awake.”

Comfortable bedding also got multiple mentions. Terri and Kimi of Delphinus put in a strong vote for the The Froli Mattress System™. Not exactly a small thing, they insist, “That is our purchase of the year. It’s as comfortable as a Tempurpedic™ mattress, but the air circulation beneath has eliminated the daily battle to dry out the moisture that used to collect between cushions and the wood below. Sore backs and necks are gone!” Similarly, Mary votes for feather pillows. “Contrary to speculation, they really haven’t gotten any more moldy or damp than foam — and I sure sleep better.”

One of the neatest ideas mentioned also came from Terri and Kimi. “Someone prior to us put three little bulkhead-based flower holders in our boat – three-sided teak boxes that hold a little plastic vase We buy a bouquet of fresh flowers every so often to divide between the vases. There is nothing as surreal and wonderful as smelling roses or lavender when bobbing around on a warm day.” A potted basil plant in the cockpit can be similarly as great for its brush-by aroma!

Several Admirals insisted on including a few nautical items. “Without a doubt, it’s having a cockpit VHF radio (or radio with a cockpit mike),” says Linda of Serafin. “A VHF in the nav station is useless when the engine is running and you can’t hear or reach it to talk.” Jane of Cormorant votes for their “Watch Man” night-watch timer/alarm. “The timer lets me read or listen to a book without risking getting so involved I forget to keep watch. If the person on watch doesn’t push reset within one minute, it emits an ear-piercing scream, so the person sleeping can relax knowing that the one on watch can’t have gone asleep or–worst scenario–overboard.”

I haven’t been able to include all the suggestions I received, nor are all the ones included strictly “little things,” but the fact that so many of these were shared by Admirals cruising different parts of the worlds suggests that they do, in fact, make a big difference in our lives.

This article was published in the December 2008 issue of Latitudes and Attitudes.

Related articles (on this website)

The Cruising Galley (Admiral’s Angle column #35)
By Dark of Night (Admiral’s Angle column #34)