Melissa on slow-boat Galapagos checking in. It is finally bathing suit weather again out here on the rolling Pacific. I was telling Michael the other day that I can see why people can be content to just sail around on the sea all the time down in these warmer waters. When it’s good it’s a little heaven on earth. Water that is an indescribable shade of blue, albatrosses, flying fish, catching Dorado, warm sun in the cockpit, brilliant sunsets against graphite clouds. If it weren’t for the fact that the Covid 19 economic crisis has hit our family pretty hard, Michael and I might be content to just sail around out here in these pleasant light winds, spinnaker flying, making our slow but steady way toward Hawaii. Unfortunately worries about family at home , whether because of social isolation, job loss, or business collapse, keeps me wanting to make progress towards home, or at least cell service. So we try to eeek as many knots out of these sails as possible without turning o n the
engine. We have done a good job of conserving fuel so far, in case we need to motor for days at the end. Winds are supposed to be very light for the next couple of days so we are enjoying the lack of engine noise while we can.

We have decided, based on the recent experience of other cruisers who just landed in Hawaii, to skip the big, more populated islands and go directly to Hanalei Bay on Kauai, a bucket list location for us. It makes our trip about two days longer but we have friends there who have blazed a trail for us to check in on line. The authorities know we are on our way, so the stars are aligning in that direction. We have found that during a world crisis, staying away from the more populated areas is better. And it’s nice to have friends who are offering a shipping address and a place to do laundry.

Anyway, today we have lovely, if slow, sailing again and the boat motion is easy so it’s trash day. On a cruising sailboat, trash management is kind of a big deal. Think about it. We have been without a trash dumpster since May 2. How much garbage does your household generate in 4 weeks? If you had to manage your own trash (which many people do, even on land), what would you do differently?

Our trash management starts at the grocery store when we are cruising. Next time you are in a port city like, say, San Diego, and you see two shabbily dressed people taking all their groceries out of boxes, decanting things into reusable containers and filling the nearest trash can with the refuse, don’t assume they are crazy. They are probably just traveling by boat. As much trash as possible gets left for the local garbage man.

Everything else has to be dealt with on board. Organics like vegetable peelings get cut small and thrown overboard. Cans, which are almost always lined with plastic now, get rinsed, flattened, and stowed in a bin. Glass jars get reused or stowed with the cans. It’s the plastics that are the real issue. Have you noticed how much plastic trash you generate daily? It seems like every single thing has plastic from the medications that come in plastic bubble packs to the plastic wrap on a granola bar. Even Q tips have plastic sticks.

So on trash day I get the trash bag and sit in the cockpit, sorting and compacting the plastics where they take up as little space as possible. It’s a soothing task, really. I can fit a week’s worth of plastic inside a plastic water bottle. A large yogurt container can hold more than that. Sometimes I will cut things into tiny pieces to make them take less space. I mean, what else am I going to do with my time out here? In the end I have a week or more of plastic trash stored in a small container in one of our lockers. When we get to Hawaii the Dept of Agriculture will tell me what to do with them.

Hey, our fishing luck has turned around. We have landed two lovely Dorado in the last two days. Loving this beautiful ocean out here as much as possible as we make our slow but steady way.

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We have had several days of absolutely brilliant sailing out here. Aside from the little rain showers that mess with the wind a bit we haven’t had to tweak much in the way of sails. Yesterday it was fascinating to look around and realize we were in the middle of 360 degrees of little rain showers and yet we were in the sunshine. Our wind had died but it dawned on us that maybe it was because all these, little systems were cancelling it out somehow. Weather gets to be the most fascinating subject when it’s driving your train all day long. Our wind soon picked up as the showers passed in front of and behind us. We are grateful for our Pro Level Predict Wind weather software and for our professional weather router, The Weather Guy, out of Hawaii. We download fresh weather forecasts at least twice a day.

We have been unlucky in fishing so far. We had something bloody huge on the line that actually I am thankful got away because we surely would have had fun landing it. Then we have caught 3 Dorado. Two were too small and we let them go. Last night we got a good sized one but he threw the hook at the last minute. We use a single hook as it gives the fish a chance and because it’s easier to remove and does less damage if it’s something too small to keep. Anyhow, no fish in our galley right now.

Less than 750 miles to go now. When we hit 500 miles to go we are celebrating by baking chocolate chip cookies. I have a stash of actual chocolate chips, hard to find in Mexico, in the freezer. I have been saving them for months; as in ” you are not eating those chocolate chips no matter how much your brain screams because they are earmarked for a special occasion. ” Some days are harder than others.

As promised, here are our galley wins of note. I do think many will be useful even in a regular kitchen.

1. Preserving sliced bell peppers in salt water in the fridge. Brilliant! After two weeks they are still crisp. How many peppers went bad on me before I thought of this? Too many.

2. Oatmeal breakfast cups. I just cannot get into cooking breakfast when the boat motion is crazy. These are yummy and flexible. In a container with a tight lid, put oats, fruit, liquid to cover, your sweetener of choice if you like. I use unsweetened coconut milk and use enough to generously cover the oats. You can add a bit of chia seed if you want to. I use craisins and frozen fruit like blueberries. Any milk will do, any fruit will do. Put in fridge overnight. I also add flavorless protein powder to mine. Delicious. Easy.

3, Ginger tea concentrate. I made this by happy accident as a by product of making ginger candy. Peel and slice a couple of good sized roots of ginger. Pour two or three cups of water over it and boil it until the ginger is translucent. Let it boil away longer if you want the liquid more flavorful. Now you can use the ginger to make candy if you like but the water is now a concentrated ginger tea. Keep it in the fridge to add to other teas or make your own ginger lemon honey tea. My favorite is to add it to Alpine Hot Cider mix. I should have bought more of those. Apple ginger cider? Oh yeah.

1. Debbie Meyer Green Bags for storing produce. I do not know what kind of magic Debbie puts in her bags but they really work. Yesterday I spent a couple of hours processing the last of our fresh vegetables. I stocked the boat on April 27 so I have been storing all the fresh stuff since then. Yesterday I chopped our last two tomatoes. These were stored in a cabinet. The jalapenos look like I bought them today. These were in the fridge. I am impressed. All produce is washed and completely dried before storing. Unblemished or unbruised items store best.

1 cup sourdough starter
1/2 cup warm water
1 tsp sugar
1/2 packet yeast
1 tbsp salt, depending on your taste
2 1/2 cups, more or less, flour
Olive oil

Proof your yeast with the sugar and water in a small bowl. In your mixing bowl put your starter. When the yeast is ready, add it to the starter. Do not spill the proofed yeast when a wave hits the boat and then use sailor language. Add a couple of pours of olive oil, glug glug. Add 1 cup of flour and your salt. Stir briskly until your arm gets tired. Rest. Stir again until your arm gets tired. Keep stirring until the batter is stretchy and hard to stir and you have developed extra muscle. Then start adding another cup of flour. Use the other arm.
Basically the amount of flour depends on how liquidy your starter is. Add enough to make a moist and sticky dough that almost holds shape. Remove from the bowl and knead it with a little more flour. It should be soft but not overly sticky. If you use too much flour it will be denser and less tender. Let it rise in a clean and greased bowl. Once it rises knead it a bit more and then divide it into pieces depending on the size of the flatbread you want. Roll the pieces flat using only enough extra flour as needed to keep it from sticking to the rolling pin. I make money maybe 1/4 inch thick. Then let the dough rounds rest. Let them rest while you clean up the galley, about 10 minutes. A little longer is OK. Heat a skillet with no oil. It should be very hot. Place flatbreads in the skillet and let cook on one side until they develop nice bubbles. Then flip and brown the other side. Eat hot off the skillet.

1. One more win for the Trader Joe’s fans. Their taco seasoning packet makes excellent chili. Really so good! Here’s how I did it.

1 package beef deshebrada by Sukarne (about .75 pounds of shredded beef seasoned with salt) About 8 ounces leftover marinara sauce
1 can stewed tomatoes with liquid
1 can diced tomatoes with ,liquid
1 small can corn with liquid
1/2 can tomato paste
1 1/2 cup black beans
1 1/2 cup garbanzo beans
1 diced onion
1 packet Trader Joe’s taco seasoning mix
Enough water to make the whole thing the right consistency

Pressure cook on high for 5 minutes to cook onions and bring flavors together. This makes a big pot of chili. Add more chili powder if you want extra spice but we thought it was perfect.

Another day of sailing ahead. Counting down the days till we can say Land Ho!

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Today is our two week anniversary of this passage and we are celebrating by clicking off the miles under sail, in the right direction. Even the sun is shining for us and the further west we go the warmer the weather gets. I am back to wearing shorts. Hoo rah! We have had a few very slow days due to light and variable winds; the kind where just when you get the sails up again and give a sigh of relief at turning off the engine, the winds die to nothing and the sails flog themselves to an early death. The motion of the boat has been horrendous and yesterday we made less than 100 miles. Ugh. So slow. This makes days like today even sweeter; may it last for hundreds of miles. Tomorrow we will have less than 1000 miles to go.

Anyway, I have time and energy to give potential cruisers an update on some of these galley tricks I have tried. Turns out I have learned a lot about preparing for this long kind of passage making. Let’s get the failures out of the way first.

1. Fresh cilantro in oil. TERRIBLE. Awful. So disappointing. Next time I will try freezing. If you tried this idea because you, too, were excited about the prospect of preserving cilantro, sorry.

2. Bimbo Bread Pudding. In Mexico they sell this stuff that’s basically bread-shaped-foodlike stuff made with a lot of preservatives and then dried. They call this toast. I call it a giant tender crouton. But since you use dried bread to make bread pudding I thought why not give it a try? I will save you the trouble by asking if you think bread crumb pudding sounds wonderful. If so, then by all means go buy some 99 cent Bimbo toast and go to it. Crumbs held together with what should be custard but somehow isn’t. I am over this experiment.

3. Storing sweet potato sourdough pancake mix in the fridge to use another day. Nope. The word ‘sour’ is under used here. Your mouth will pucker and your eyes will water. Then the fish will be fed, one way or another. Word.

4. Using the pressure cooker to make a casserole using packaged potatoes au gratin, sliced up chicken apple sausages, and frozen broccoli. Delicious sounding on paper, this does not translate well to the plate and is, in fact, a disaster. My crockpot would have made it delicious but…

5. My crockpot, the mainstay of my cooking while cruising, has been all but useless on this passage, leaving me at a loss for how to make so many of our favorite recipes. I must use the inverter to run it and because we don’t have enough sun, even on a good day, to keep the batteries topped up with solar power, the engine must be on. That’s because our boat is always facing the same direction right now and generally at least half of our panels are shaded one way or another. Also the crockpot does not have a locking lid. And this is how our African Sweet Potato Stew ended up on the floor a couple of weeks back. I miss this simple and effective galley tool and am working on a solution to that lid problem.

As an aside, I now use my pressure cooker all the time. But it just doesn’t do everything well and I am still learning how to make best use of it.

I will save the next post for the galley wins.

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