I don’t have a pressure cooker and have never used one. Do you think it’s worth it to get one? We will be sailing in the Caribbean and the Mediterranean. I love to cook but currently cook most things at home and then freeze them for longer vacations or bring them to the boat for the weekend. We tend to eat on the boat primarily. I am a bit concerned about having the oven running all of the time to cook in the heat of the Caribbean. Just curious about what you think are the biggest advantages to having one. Janet

Gwen Hamlin, Beth Leonard, Kathy Parsons and Lisa Schofield answer.

1) Gwen Hamlin: I didn’t use my pressure cooker as much as some people.

Not every cruiser chooses to use them, but I would guess the majority do, for just the reason you list: reducing the heat you generate in the boat.

Also for getting the most out of your propane supply. Cruisers on boats with limited propane storage and limited refrigeration use them alot. You can cook a one pot meal for several days and just bring it back up to pressure and then let it sit on the stove top. You can use it for canning. You can even bake bread in them.

I didn’t use my pressure cooker as much as some people. My charter years had oriented me more to grilling and stir-frying, and our boat carried lots of propane in two tanks, each lasting 3 months, so we didn’t have to worry as much as others about using it up. But I did use it. Particularly when I got to Fiji and became interested in curries.

I think pressure cooking is a skill you need to work at a bit to get a handle on it. It’s easy to over-cook things if you aren’t precise about about timing! But it’s very persuasive when you want to make a stew, or cook beans. It’s also nice just to have it around to use as a big pot!

If the world were perfect you would get a large stainless steel one.

I started with a smaller one to save space, but that wasn’t so satisfactory. When you cook beans, or worse split peas, you don’t want the pot too full in order to ensure the vent stays clear! I ended up with an aluminum pot from French Polynesia, and was very satisfied with it. But I worry a bit about cooking with uncoated aluminum!

2) Beth Leonard: I have never used the pressure cooker for anything else than canning.

I have used the pressure cooker extensively for canning and would not be without it for that reason.

But I have never used it for anything else. When we left on our first circumnavigation in 1992 we had a very nice one aboard, but I hadn’t used it by the time we reached New Zealand and so I sold it.

I have not taken any sort of a survey, but in talking to women on cruising boats it seems to me that your cooking style lends itself to the pressure cooker or it does not. Those who do a lot of cooking with potatoes and beans, and those who enjoy soups and stews are more likely to use it than those who eat a lot of salads, fresh vegetables and grilled meat/fish (a grill off the stern is another great way to keep the cooking heat out of the boat).

If you’re not sure which way you’ll fall, having a pressure cooker aboard as your largest pot has no downside.

But if you have limited room, I’d suggest buying a pressure cooker a few months before you leave and using it for anything that can be cooked in it. That way you can see not only how much you might use it, but whether or not you like the way it cooks things. By the time you untie the docklines, you’ll have a pretty good idea of whether or not you’ll make use of it aboard.

Pressure cooker canning: everything ready to start  (Photo from Beth Leonard’s website: www.bethandevans.com)	Pressure cooker canning: finished product (Photo from Beth Leonard’s website: www.bethandevans.com)

3) Kathy Parsons: Check out our feature article “Galley Advice from 18 Cruising Women”.

Here is some “data” for you from our Women and Cruising website. When we did our “Tell us about your Galley” project (Galley Advice from 18 Cruising Women), 9 of the 18 women participating listed their pressure cooker as one of the top 5 essential items in their galley, so clearly many (but not all) women find them handy aboard.

To read what the women had to say about their cookers, check out the contributions of  Ann Vanderhoof, Kathy Parsons, Lisa Schofield, Sylvie Branton, Barb Theisen, Corinne Kanter, Diana Simon, Marcie Lynn, and Judy Knape (Question 4: What are the 5 items that you consider essential in your galley?)

Reading through their answers, it looks like 6-quart is the most popular size, and a number of women (like me) prefer stainless steel. Another feature that I like is the ability to release the pressure by pressing a button on the top. It is awkward to have to carry the pressure cooker to the sink to run water over it to release steam, and besides it would waste water.

By the way, Pam Wall and Gwen Hamlin also mentioned that they had one aboard. Amanda Swan Neal didn’t mention the pressure cooker but I notice she is cooking with a pressure cooker in one of her photos!

On the other hand, both Heather Stockard and Sheri Schneider said that they initially carried pressure cookers but never used them. And 4 women didn’t mention them so we don’t know if they use them.

These days I use my pressure cooker mostly for beans, chilis, stews and stocks (fish and lobster!). All of these would use lots of propane and create lots of heat in the galley if I cooked them without pressure. I am one of those women who find them very useful!

4) Lisa Schofield: I am in the “absolutely must have and use one aboard” category.

Oh, boy – anytime someone asks me a cooking and cruising question, I get very excited. And, pressure cooker’s is right up there among my favorite subjects. I am in the “absolutely must have and use one aboard” category.

Now, having said that, I do realize that there are folks who just don’t and won’t use one, or who have memories of Grandma’s cooker exploding in the kitchen, leaving dinner on the ceiling. These days, there are lots of safety features and those accidents are not a worry.

The Captain bought me one about a year before we departed, and it sat for a year in the cupboard at home before I moved it aboard about 10 years ago. I had never used one before, and although my mother had one, she only used it as a big pot.

Fortunately, my husband had also gifted me a pressure cooker cookbook, so once settled aboard, I started perusing the book. It was actually some yummy recipes that initiated me, and once I discovered how easy and fast it actually was for traditionally long cooking meals, I was sold. I remember regretting that I didn’t use it while I was working!

Although I tended to use it less in the very warm places, mostly because soups and stews were less appetizing in those conditions, when I did use it, I was extremely happy that I didn’t have to use the oven, or run the stove as long as I might have with a regular cooking method. In those conditions, I use it for hummus, tuna and white bean salad, spaghetti sauce, curry and risotto, among other things. I find that I prefer the traditional method of preparing risotto, but the pressure cooker method is a reasonable substitute, especially when you don’t have the ability to stand and stir. Provisioning with dried beans versus canned saves weight and space. I even know of people who bake bread in it, although I haven’t yet tried that. When you are in areas that don’t have the finest cuts of meat, the pressure cooker will give you a tender and tasty product.

Now that we are in the cold water climes, I use my cooker so often, I don’t even put in away in the locker. Those type of dishes really hit the spot when you are chilled. We tend to use more propane in British Columbia so my pressure cooker helps with conserving. I’m looking forward to trying some desserts in it this coming season, with bread pudding taking about 1/2 the time it takes in the oven.

Using a pressure cooker (mine is an 8 qt stainless steel Fagor) is also very helpful and convenient during a passage. Food is contained in the pot in bouncy seas, and I usually am able to keep the leftovers in the cooker and transfer back and forth from the frig, just bringing back up to pressure before serving again. The pot is great for steaming seafood (with or without pressure) and I have even “roasted” a whole chicken in it.

Last year, I bought a second pressure cooker to keep at home, so I have one to use during the “off” season!

Read also on this website

• Galley Advice from 18 Cruising Women
  

More information (external links)

• Pressure cooker canning. An easy way to have great meals when the shops are few and far between. By Beth Leonard (pdf)

Do you use a pressure cooker aboard?

Let us know. Email kathy@forcruisers.com or leave a comment below.

We have not had to do any major renovations to the galley on Key of D because we were very careful to design it to suit us at the outset.

However, we have owned 5 other boats and have a few ideas for some simple things that can be done in almost any galley to make it easier to use.

These are not really “renovations” just the little things that anyone can do quickly and inexpensively.

1. Drying Rack

A drying rack is a nice addition to a galley as it cuts down on wet towels, makes dishwashing easier and prevents plates from sling around in rough weather but a drying rack is bulky to store.

Shop around and find one that fits your sink or, if you are replacing the sink, buy one in which you can store a drying rack. That way the rack is out of the way unless you are washing dishes in which case you will have it out anyway.

We have a double sink so the drying rack can be used in the large sink and when the small sink is used for small wash-up jobs.

2. Work Surfaces

Most galleys are limited in the space available for preparing food and laying it out ready to serve, especially when it is your turn to entertain a few other boats.

We have had a cutting board made that fits over the sink with tabs to prevent it sliding off. This works especially well if you have a double sink as you can still use the small sink while the top of the big sink becomes a sizeable work surface.

In a similar vein, many stove manufacturers provide a wooden top that fits over the burners on the stove so that you can use the stove-top as a work surface when preparing cold food. If your stove did not come with one it is very easy to make.

The sink top and stove cover can be stored under the stove, on edge in a cupboard or just left on the counter top and used as a work surface there when not being used on the sink and stove.

3.Wall-Mounted Dispenser

Another cruiser recommended that I try a wall-mounted unit that holds a roll of paper towels, a roll of cling wrap and a roll of aluminium foil.

It has made more space available in the galley drawers and the towels, wrap and foil are available instantly whenever I need them.

4. Spice Racks

Although we designed a spice rack that holds 20 bottles as part of the original galley we have begun to use more and more different herbs, spices and seasonings as we pick up new recipes and ideas from the places we visit.

I have recently bought a second rack that holds an additional 18 bottles and mounted it on the inside of a cupboard door where it makes good use of otherwise wasted space and is easy to access.

5. Lighting

It can be difficult getting enough light into the galley at night to make cooking and cleaning up easy.

We found an inexpensive and handy answer in the form of little LED lights that run for months off 3 AAA batteries. I have stuck these under the cupboards over the counters to light the areas that used to be shadowed. (We liked them so much we also put them in the hanging lockers.)

We first found them at Ikea and subsequently at a bargain store called the Reject Shop in Australia.

About Truus Sharp

Truus was born and raised in The Netherlands where she learned to sail on traditional tjotters, the boats that look like large wooden shoes with leeboards. Her husband, Steve Sharp, was born in Canada where he learned to sail on the Great Lakes in the 1940s and 50s.

Together they are the 2 “Sharps” that form the signature for the Key of D.

They are leaving the South Pacific and heading west to cross the Indian Ocean.

See also on this website

• Refitting the Galley: 12 Experiences
• Truus’s contribution to our article “Galley advice from 18 cruising women”

Do you have any ideas you’d like to share? Leave a comment below or email us: kathy@forcruisers.com

Question:

We are planning an 8 day catamaran trip to the BVI’s.  This is a first sailing trip for my boyfriend and I, and my sis and her hubby.  My boyfriend and I love to cook, grill, prepare, etc. My sister and her husband prefer not to bother.  So here is my question, do you have some recipes that you could share that are fun and easy to prepare, but may just knock their socks off?  What should we take with us that we can not purchase there but are simple to pack?

Any other advice that you have would be appreciated.  We depart in just 7 days!

We forwarded Deanna’s question to Gwen Hamlin since she used to run a charter boat in the Virgin Islands. Here is Gwen’s response:

These days, most everything you could want to cook with is available in the Virgin Islands, thanks to the thriving crewed charter industry.

Your choices would be better in the US Virgin Islands, which is where I worked out of, but Tortola is pretty good too.

Road Town is the main city of the British Virgin Islands, and when I was there (a while ago now) there were two big supermarkets and a Gourmet Gallery specialty store catering to the charter boats.

Prices will be more than you are used to, but it really isn’t worth quibbling over.  Vacation is vacation.

Most charter boats have BBQ grills, and using the grill is a great way to divide duties, keep the heat out of the inside of the boat, and to produce very tasty meals that fit the ambience.

No matter how much you like to cook, no one wants to spend all afternoon inside a boat galley when you could be lounging enjoying sundowners and sunsets.

Plan lots of nice hors d’oeuvres for happy hours.

My charter menu was basically

• grilled swordfish with mango salsa,
• grilled lamb kebabs (with a curry marinade),
• grilled jerk chicken,
• grilled filets mignons,
• blackened or stir-fried or ginger shrimp,
• and zesty grilled pork.

It was easy for us to make special marinades because we did charters week after week.  You may not want to purchase all the ingredients for a single charter to make your own.

A medium Patak’s Mild Curry Paste, for example, is a good substitute for the marinade I used to make.  Or Pataks Tikka Paste mixed in yogurt makes a great and spicy marinade for chicken breast or parts.

You might find those there, but bringing them would be safer. These are the kind of substitutions I made when I shifted from chartering to cruising.  We still ate well.

The key to doing something unusual is using “tropical” vegetables.  Ironically, the Virgins don’t produce a lot of their own produce, so “local” veggies aren’t necessarily easy to find.

A favorite cookbook we used a lot on charter on our boat was Jay Solomon’s Taste of the Tropics, which includes recipes from the tropics from around the world.

Pumpkin and spinach are good tropical tastes.  You will surely find a prepared Jerk marinade in the BVI; My recipe came from Taste of the Tropics.  See if you can order a copy from Amazon overnight.

There is also Jan Robinson’s Ship to Shore Cookbooks that are collections of charter yacht recipes.  The newer the volume, the more exotic the recipes are likely to be, as they reflect the improved shopping choices available.  You will probably find these books for sale in the BVIs.

Also, you might want to pick up Ann Vanderhoof’s An Embarrassment of Mangoes. It is a travelogue of the Caribbean laced with recipes.

I have a bunch of recipes on my website (www.thetwocaptains.com) under Galley.  Take particular note of 3, 5, 6 and 20, especially 20, which are very traditional Virgin Islands recipes.

I would attach some of my recipes here but I don’t have  the MasterCook program on my new computer yet! (I use it to store and organize my recipes.) So here are some quick suggestions:

• My zingy grilled pork is on the website under #23.  Serve with couscous cooked with reserved marinade and pineapple brushed with same marinade and grilled alongside.
• I dressed my filet steaks with Pickapeppa Sauce, pepper and brown sugar rubbed in.
• Stir-fried (or grilled on skewer) shrimp is olive oil, red pepper flakes, minced garlic, minced parley & cilantro, salt & pepper, marinated for an hour or two (or blackening seasoning). Serve on rice with black beans.

Have fun.

In my day a dinner out at Foxy’s was one of the best restaurant options, especially the Friday or Saturday nite BBQ if you like ribs.

Try a West Indian Roti somewhere, and if you get to Anegada it’s a good place for lobster or fish.

I’ve been gone a long while so there are sure to be lots of great new places to eat out.  But there are some stinkers, too!

Have fun!

Gwen
formerly sv Whisper and sv Tackless II

About Gwen Hamlin

Gwen Hamlin, one of the hosts of Women & Cruising, writes the Admiral’s Angle column for Latitudes & Attitudes Magazine and maintains an extensive web site of their travels at www.thetwocaptains.com.

A former charter captain and dive instructor in the Virgin Islands, Gwen and her husband Don Wilson have spent the last 10 years aboard their CSY 44 sailboat Tackless II slowly cruising the Caribbean, Central America and the Pacific.

Gwen & Don are currently taking a break from cruising to spend time with family in Florida.

Related articles by Gwen on Women and Cruising:

• Gwen Hamlin’s advice on setting up your galley and cooking onboard
• Gwen took her SCUBA passion cruising
• www.latsandatts.net/magazine (for Gwen’s current Admiral’s Angle column)
• www.womenandcruising.com/admirals-angle/ (for the complete set of Admiral’s Angle columns)
• What Gwen Hamlin likes most about cruising

Other Related articles on Women and Cruising:

• Food is Ann Vanderhoof’s route into Caribbean life
• Galley Advice from 18 Cruising Women

More info:

• Gwen Hamlin’s Galley recipes
• Gwen’s website of their travels: www.thetwocaptains.com
• Jay Solomon’s cookbook Taste of the Tropics
• Jan Robinson’s Ship to Shore Cookbooks
• Ann Vanderhoof’s book An Embarrassment of Mangoes

Do you have any questions for Women and Cruising?
Let us know. Email kathy@forcruisers.com or leave a comment below.

Bev Feiges wrote the following for us after reading Galley Advice from 18 Cruising Women on the Women and Cruising website. In that article, we asked 18 cruising women to describe their galley for us, and tell us what they considered essential aboard. Although several of the 18 women participating in our article have generators aboard, and a number have some electrical appliances, none have a truly “electrical galley” as Bev does aboard her power boat. Thanks, Bev, for sharing your experience with us. – Kathy Parsons

I just read most of the interviews of the 18 women and their galleys, and I was so surprised not to hear one person, including the woman on the 68 foot motor boat, speak up for an electric galley, or having a generator. You may not want to hear the other side of the story, but I feel someone should make the case.

We started our cruising life aboard my parent’s sports fish, cruising, and fishing the Florida Keys, and the Bahamas. I can’t think of a boat of this type that isn’t equipped with a generator, because they will have freezers and refrigeration, (necessary to keep the bait and the fish you are going to bring home with you) and in those climates, where you spend your time in marinas, even air conditioning is essential.

We would get to the marina, fuel up – they burn a lot of fuel- go to the dock and plug in, so we could turn the generator off, and also connect the hose, since the whole boat was scrubbed down every night. Being in a marina in the tropics was usually hot and buggy, so the air conditioning was also turned on, and we ate, and slept in comfort.

This certainly had its impact on our want list when we finally decided to buy our first cruising sail boat in 1977. We knew we wanted air conditioning, which would necessitate a generator, we knew we wanted a freezer, (freezing food is my husband’s business), and with a family of five kids, I didn’t want to have to eat canned foods while sitting in remote anchorages, with no grocery around.

We bought a Cal-46-3, and it came with all these things. It had a microwave, a propane gimbaled stove, a single sink with a large stainless drainboard, a combination chest-type frig and freezer. All of this fitted into the passageway leading to our back cabin. No worry about being thrown anyplace. We immediately put a port above the sink, so we could pass food up to someone sitting in the cockpit, and dirty dishes could be passed down to the man at the sink. Shortly thereafter, we made a separate freezer, twice the size of the original.

In 1989 we brought the boat back from the Caribbean to Florida, and “geriatricized” her. Included in the changes was removing the old microwave, which took up all the space to the left of the sink, and the gimbaled stove, which burned the bottom of everything baked in the oven before it would bake the top half, and was impossible to clean behind. Instead, we put in a two burner electric cooktop, gaining all the space below for a garbage pail cupboard and a tray cupboard and a drawer for utensils. Above the burners we put a combination microwave/convection oven, and where the old microwave was I gained another cupboard and a lot more counter space.

That galley worked great, and we never missed searching for, and lugging back propane bottles, in out of the way places. This worked for the next ten years, and we repeated the formula, when we outfitted our much smaller live-in horse trailer, except we went back to propane for the cook top, since everything, including the generator and refrigerator ran off propane. But then we had two very large bottles, that we drove to the fill up places.

When we bought our second boat, a 60 foot motor boat, it came with household appliances from Sears, stove, microwave/convection oven, toaster oven that can bake or broil, dishwasher,  trash compactor, and disposal, and of course, they were all electric.

We have a large refrigerator/freezer, (16 cu. ft.) in the galley, and another freezer in the saloon, (6 cu. ft.), where the former owner had an ice maker and a compartment he hoped would stay at freezing from the spill over. The idea didn’t work; we turned it into a total freezer.

Because of our inverter, we can run everything except the stove, one appliance at a time, and if we don’t want to start the generator to use the cooktop, we have a single electric plate, that Dave says someday he will mount in one of the four burners on the stove top, since I never use all four. It’s against my work ethic.

All the refrigeration runs off the batteries, and only consumes about 100 amps a day. We are able to run all of this, along with all the other electrical items we are used to having in a our homes ashore, by running the generator between two and three hours a day. We spend about 95 percent of our time at anchor.

Have we had trouble keeping it all going? Like everything in the cruising life, if you have the skills to “fix” things, there is no problem. In 32 years of cruising, we had two days without the generator in our first year, and half a day with the second boat.

For Dave, who never really liked walking beaches, looking for shells, fixing things was his passion. Once he said to me, after weeks of nothing going wrong, “If something doesn’t break pretty soon, I’m going to be bored to death.”

Our galley, note the size of the fridge and freezer, designed for people who live in the mountains off the grid. On the other side of the galley you can’t see, is a table and L shaped settee, where we can easily sit six, and we have crowded in 8. We can sit 8 to ten in the salon, where the table pictured flips open to seat 8 to 10, and on the back deck is another table that nicely seats six. We are equipped for lots of entertaining, and we do it.

So please, don’t scare every would be cruiser into thinking they must give up life as they know it, if they can afford to do otherwise.

In a small boat, a combi microwave convection oven still takes up less space than any kind of full stove, and can be run off an inverter. I use my microwave more than any other method of cooking.

You also made no mention of things like slow cookers, or the old electric fry pan, which again can be run with an inverter off the batteries, which can be charged with wind or sun if you don’t want a generator.

Even generator technology has improved so there are very small, very quiet ones, that almost anyone can fit on a boat. There are just so many things happening right now in the technology field, that even we are old fashioned, but to me, reading about the galleys you featured was like stepping back in time, a time before even our first boat came on the market.

About Bev

After a quarter century of sailing and racing fast, mostly Inland Lakes Scows we switched to a Cal-46-3 sail boat in 1977, what you might call a life defining moment. And what a life it was.

We sailed for 21 years, never letting grass grow on our keel, until I said one day, “Life on the slant isn’t fun anymore.”

I was just too creaky in the joints to continue to enjoy it, but remove the slant, make it more comfortable, (you might think of it as an old folks home for cruisers) and we were able to continue doing the parts we loved.

We moved aboard our second cruising boat, a 61 foot custom Krogen design, and we have been living full time aboard since 2002. We have no other home than the boat, and so far, it is still as good as it gets.

I would put ourselves in the category of “coastal cruisers”, which allowed us to cover the entire eastern seaboard from Grand Manan, Canada, to half the western coast of Florida, all of the Caribbean excluding Cuba, from Hispaniola, (both coasts of the Dominican Republic) through all the islands and the coast of Venezuela as far west as Bonaire, and Honduras, Belize, Guatemala, and Mexico in the western Caribbean.

Since I am a coastal cruiser, and want to see it all, and since my motto has been, “Never, never sail at night, always keep the land in sight,” we have probably anchored more times that most people who have circumnavigated.

We covered a lot of the Med, from the Balearics to Turkey, and south along the coast to Egypt, through the Suez Canal, as far south as Abu Tieg. We spent five summers and three winters in the Med, but of course, Dockwise took care of the ocean crossings.

Now that I am older and much lazier, and not experiencing the joys of sailing, I find it easier to do some of those longer jumps, say 36 to 48 hours, rather than plowing up the ICW, but I am very careful about the sea conditions when passage planning. I saw the injuries our older sailing friends had, from that instability we all have happen as we age, and I am doing my best not to let it happen to me, or Dave.

Bev and Dave Feiges
Aboard Cloverleaf
Chesapeake Bay

Read also on this website

• Galley Advice from 18 Cruising Women
  
• Bev’s contribution to our article “Refitting the Galley: 12 Experiences”
• To Have or Have Not? (Admiral’s Angle column #31)
  Equipping your boat with an eye to striking a balance between simplicity and complexity
• The Cruising Galley ((Admiral’s Angle column #35)
  When cruising, meals suddenly matter again, and, for many, cooking becomes a pleasurable adventure rather than a stereotypical chore.

More info

• Read Bev Feiges’s blog, “Cruising with Cloverleaf“