BOAT REVIEW
BOAT JOURNEY
ISOLATION AFLOAT
FENDING FOR YOURSELF IN COVID-19 By Karen Oberg for Pantaenius Insurance Rob thinks this Thai poached Nannygai is the best fish dish Karen's ever cooked
KAREN OBERG and her husband Rob have been live-aboard cruisers since 2011, and have sailed through South East Asia, the Mediterranean and the UK. They are currently cruising the Queensland coast on their Whitby 42 ketch ‘Our Dreamtime’. In this excerpt from her blog, Karen reflects upon how living on board provides the skills to fend for yourself, and shares some onboard provisioning and cooking tips. “Fend for yourself” means to take care of and provide for yourself without depending on anyone else. It is a good feeling to know that you can “fend for yourself”. In recent world developments relating to COVID-19, I realised how well prepared we were for self-isolation. Sure, we haven’t totally cut the umbilical cord to society as we will still need supplies, diesel and petrol eventually. However we can sustain our living on the water for months without the need to come into “town”. This, of course, is not a new concept or way of life. Sailors of the past, farmers and people from areas where remote living is essential have paved the way for us.
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Learning to be self-reliant takes a whole new way of thinking, and we are still learning. Provisioning on a boat is not about loading the shopping trolleys full of your favourite foods and heading off to sea. We have to be very choosy on what goes aboard. We do not have the luxury of walk-in pantries, large refrigeration and wine cellars. We have to think carefully about weight distribution and what is truly essential. So, chocolate and wine first .... but to be serious ..... We left Brisbane and isolated afloat for 73 days before we had to head into Coral Sea Marina at Airlie Beach to get our watermaker repaired. (Naturally, we took the opportunity to restock our fresh supplies in preparation for venturing even longer next time.)
three we had added more meals on the boat than we had consumed. Between fishing and crabbing, we had replaced what we had eaten plus added further to our food bank. Supplementing our boat stores this way enables us to stay out even longer, and gives us a great range of healthy meal alternatives. When provisioning for long trips, we rarely buy packaged goods, preferring to purchase the raw ingredients to make our food. It is easier to carry flour for bread, pasta, pizza, cakes and biscuits, than it is to carry individual packets that have a ‘use by date’. It means we make it as we need it and it is fresh. However, some packaged goods are unfortunately unavoidable.
A big help to our sustainability at sea was that by week
We stock the food pantry wisely. Filling the cupboards with dozens of cans we probably do not need will just waste space. We concentrate on a sensible supply of essential dried items like flour, pasta, rice, quinoa, legumes and oats that can form the basis for lots of meals. We also stock up with frozen veggies and cans of useful items like tomatoes, and lots of tuna. When it comes to longlasting but versatile pantry staples, it does not get much better than canned tuna. The light, flaky, high-protein ingredient keeps well and adds both heft and nutrition to salads, sandwiches, pastas, and more. Its mild flavour means that you can incorporate it into a wide variety of dishes without
Wide Bay bar
Relaxation personified
We set out for this time of self-isolation with enough food, we estimated, for at least 12 weeks: 84 breakfasts, lunches and dinners for two. We reached day 57 before starting to run out of fresh supplies. We had a grand total of 7 apples, 8 oranges, 1 1/2 pumpkins, 6 sweet potatoes, 7 onions, bucket loads of garlic, 3 lemons and 1 not-so-great pineapple left. But do not fear. We had a well stocked pantry that included the staples, and canned vegetables and fruit. They may not be as good to look at as fresh, but they supply all the nutritional values that we need.
OCT - DEC 2021
