Race 3 - Day 6
Crew Diary - Cape Town, South Africa to Albany, Australia
06 November
Biscuit diaries and other matters...
The meaning of life on board has almost been solved with biscuits. Gone now are
the days of rich tea, Maryland cookies, hobnobs or, on special occasions, Clubs
(ideally orange) or Penguins.. .those days are behind us now, along with
memories of London and autumnal afternoons when its dark at 4.30pm.
No, onwards for IchorCoal... and from Rio came the
exotic coconut macaroon style round biscuit, the supersize thick choc chip
cookie with decent size choc chips, and a biscuit that while similar in 'snap'
quality to the rich tea actually tasted far better, of caramel and toffee
flavours - and frankly ridiculously moreish.
Our staples of ginger nuts (or at lest a form of
ginger nuts) and Oreos continued, but it was the coconut cookies that became
the surprise winner, the finding of another packet causing huge boat upheaval,
and a source of glee for the current on watch.
But do not let us linger in the biscuit diaries of the
past, as now we have new contestants yet again. Leaving Rio's beaches and the
coconut macaroons behind, Cape Town brought us the delights of large tangy
lemon cream square sandwich biscuits, a rather posh almond cream in rich
buttery biscuit, and some toffee style crunch biscuits. Ginger nuts again, of
course, and pretty crunchy they are too, but its the lemon creams that are
intriguing the crew currently.
Biscuit diaries will continue as we sail onwards and
reach new shores... who knows what further unexpected new experiences – and biscuity
delights- await us at our future stops?
For all of us I think the boat has brought many new or
previously untested culinary delights into our awareness, and not just of the
biscuit variety.
The skip has started eating porridge (albeit doused liberally in honey with as
many other toppings as possible, such as raisins/ banana etc), Matt has eaten
Stollen cake (and now knows what it is), items such as olives or seeds or
mushrooms previously eyed with caution or generally avoided are now -while perhaps not lovingly embraced- not treated
with the distain of previously, and are munched down along with everything
else.
The world of dried vegetables and TVP - textured
vegetable protein, basically soya mince, has been essentially new to
everyone. As the boat victualler, dried products are your best friend as they
are light, can't go off, and don't require refridgeration, which when you have
the same space as 2 shelves of a domestic fridge for 19 people for 27 days as
on this leg is a pretty crucial consideration. Now these products are used
almost daily, and the mothers' take them in their stride.
The one things that we have still not been able to
change is our favourite American's ability to handle spice - or rather, curry.
As one of our boat staples, curry appears in many different forms for dinners -
and we have some real hot-head chili lovers onboard too.
Unfortunately this can at times be too much for our cowboy Mr Schwab, so at
such times he resorts back to his own staple favourite, a peanut and jelly
sandwich. It seems you might be able to sail over 10,000 with a man, experience
the sights, sounds or tastes of new oceans and different ports, but sometimes
only the old familiar will do.
With love, though no fireworks, from IchorCoal, having
just crossed down into 40 South.
By Sarah Young