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DECEMBER 2012 CARIBBEAN COMPASS PAGE 32
GOOD GUIDES ARE TIMELESS
Until Don Street wrote his first guide in 1964,
the guide he used was Norie and Wilson’s
“Sailing Directions to the West Indies”, published in 1867.
Real sailors use Street’s Guides
for inter-island and harbor piloting
directions, plus interesting anecdotes
of people, places and history.
Street’s Guides are the only ones
that describe ALL the anchorages
in the Eastern Caribbean.
In 1980 Street said in print that if
anyone could come up with an
anchorage safe for a boat that
draws seven feet that he has not
covered in the guide he would buy the drinks.
Thirty-two years have gone by and he has never had to buy drinks.
Real sailors in the Windwards, Leewards and Virgin Islands circle in Street’s Guide
the anchorages that are NOT described in the other popular guides.
Do the same and you will have quiet anchorages.
HURRICANE TIPS! Visit www.street-iolaire.com for a wealth of information
on tracking & securing for a storm
Street’s Guides are available at Island Water World and Johnson Marine Hardware
in St. Lucia, Sully Magras in St. Barts, and Blue Water Books & Charts
in Fort Lauderdale, or contact channelsales@authorsolutions.com
BOOK REVIEW BY HEATHER HAMILTON
Taking Your Kitchen to Sea
I admit it: I’m a foodie. I love food: buying it, cooking it, eating it. So moving onto
a boat, leaving behind my tricked-out kitchen and trading it in for a dinky galley, was
a bit of a system shock for me. I considered buying new cookbooks — I’m always
looking to expand my collection — but the selection of boating cookbooks available
at the time gave me little new information I didn’t already know, and the recipes were
simplistic at best, a throwback to the bland food of the 1950s at worst. So I muddled
along, improvising and relying on my trusty, dilapidated copy of The Joy of Cooking
as we worked our way through the Caribbean.
Then, through a twist of fate fate, my stepmother reconnected with he
her old cruising
buddy Carolyn Shearlock, who writes The Boat Galley blog, and had just completed
a new cruising cookbook, The Boat Galley Cookbook. One read of the 33-page “sneak
peek” (available in PDF at http://theboatgalley.com/cruisers-cookbook) convinced
me that I simply had to get a copy.
For starters, the book, which Carolyn wrote with her friend Jan Irons, is — simply
put — an indispensable guide to the transition from a land kitchen to a boat galley.
With over 80 pages detailing how to equip a galley, provision in far-away ports of call,
substitute equipment and ingredients, plan for a passage and cook underway,
Carolyn and Jan give even the most newbie cook — or the experienced gourmet —
the basics on how to manage the new environment of cooking aboard. You’ll learn
how to troubleshoot oven hot-spots, cook using a thermos, bake on top of the stove
or on the grill, gravity-fill propane containers, defrost a marine refrigerator/freezer
and buy and store food, with or without refrigeration.
But that’s just the beginning: The Boat Galley is packed with over 800 recipes, wellorganized
with a section listing recipes for one-pot meals, five-minute appetizers, hotweather
meals and even recipes for cabbage. There are chapters with meal recommendations
for passages, potlucks and holidays, and each individual chapter crossreferences
similar recipes, say, other soups and stews, found in other areas of the
book. There’s also a comprehensive list of substitutions, including how to construct
mixes for popular items such as ranch dressing and taco seasoning, as well as fromscratch
recipes for ricotta, cream cheese and yoghurt made from whole-milk powder.
Several of the recipe chapters begin with basic techniques and tips for the galley,
from instructions on how to cut up and bone meat to step-by-step instructions on
grilling — including instructions for making pizza on the grill. The seafood chapter
is particularly useful for those inclined to catch their own dinner, with detailed
descriptions of how to fillet fish, buy and prepare shrimp and crab, and harvest and
cook lobster, clams, mussels and scallops.
While the cookbook is an excellent resource on cooking aboard, it’s not geared
toward the gourmet cook. It excels in the basics, providing instructions for making
favorite foods you might not find while cruising — such as bagels, English muffins,
or barbecue sauce — and provides lots of options for the inevitable use of canned
meats and veggies. However, for the most part its recipes tend toward the simple
side, and some are strangely Americanized, such as the recipe for goulash that
doesn’t contain paprika. The section on provisioning — and many of the recipes —
rely on the authors’ backgrounds cruising Latin America and miss the opportunity
to discuss provisioning challenges elsewhere and to provide recipes using local ingredients
from other parts of the world. For example, there is only one recipe using
mangoes (black-bean mango salsa), and no recipes for other frequently found tropical
fruits such as papaya, guava or plantains — but there are seven recipes containing
peanut butter. Similarly, the authors assume you will be able to find tortillas
locally and don’t provide recipes for making flour or corn tortillas from scratch — one
of my go-to recipes during my time in the largely tortilla-free Eastern Caribbean.
Those small quibbles aside, The Boat Galley Cookbook is an outstanding resource
for any boat cook, a comprehensive guide I know I’ll be consulting frequently. In fact,
right now I’m off to make no-bake, no-refrigerator granola bars for my upcoming
passage — YUM!
The Boat Galley Cookbook is available in print form and the electronic versions for
Kindle, Nook, etc. will be available shortly. The Book Depository (www.bookdepository.com)
provides free shipping to 90 countries worldwide.
Heather B. Hamilton spent 15 years in Washington, DC trying to save the world
before packing it in, buying a sailboat and setting out to see the world in November
2010. She and her husband, Pip, are currently cruising the Caribbean on Picaroon,
their 40-foot Hardin Sea Wolf ketch. Heather is the author of numerous articles and
book chapters, including articles in Cruising World and Blue Water Sailing. You can
follow their adventures at www.picaroonblog.com.