Race 11 - Day 10
Crew Diary - Race 11 Day 10: Panama to New York
13 June

The “How to Prepare Your Home for the Pink Panther Experience” Series

Episode 1: Prepare your kitchen

This is the first in what we hope to be a short series detailing how to turn your home into the Pink Panther and experience life on a Clipper Race yacht on land. As anyone reading our blogs, or speaking to our crew members will have noticed, the first thing you must do is to change the name of everything, so from now on, the kitchen may only be referred to as the galley.

Warning: Pink Panther crew members take no responsibility for any injury or damage sustained as a result of these galley modifications.

Now we actually have a galley, the first adaptation is to angle it – somewhere between 30 and 45 degrees should do it. If you want the full experience, make sure you add the optional “lurch” and “bump” functions so that every now and then the galley moves unexpectedly from, say, 30 degrees to 45 and then to flat and back to 40 degrees to have you staggering around like a toddler on E numbers, and / or (because these things are not exclusive) the entire galley lifts and falls suddenly, banging your hips into the counter edge. If you are feeling particularly intrepid, trying dropping butter or olive oil on the floor for the skating rink effect.

Your cooker must have a gimble, but don't worry if it does not move the full 45 degrees of tilt of your galley – ours doesn't either. Try to replicate the efficiency of our hob by using only 3 of the 5 available rings – either they won't work anyway, or the pans will be too big to fit more on. And don't bother turning them up to full power either – minimum is more representative. Clear plastic splash screens are useful – attach them alongside the hob to catch flying items (pots, pans, utensils, boiling water, Bolognese sauce etc.) before they hit your dinner guests. You may attach fiddles to the cooker top to prevent the heavy pans from sliding too far, but remember the lids are supposed to be like Odd Job's bowler hat threatening to decapitate someone as they fly off, and frying pans ought to pass underneath the fiddles testing your reflexes when they attempt to deposit their contents all up the splash screens. Your oven should only open when the galley is flat, so practise both timing (flat is only an occasional state of being), and holding the gimble flat (the bolt is broken) whilst also holding the oven door open (the catch is broken) and sliding the oven rack out and removing the food tray. If that sounds like it requires more hands than you have, try employing a galley buddy to stand over you on the skating rink and carry out some of those tasks for you.

Next, get a friend to decide what you are going to eat for the next month, put the ingredients into several black bags and spread them around your house. Labelling the bags is optional - it will have rubbed off by the time you need it anyway - and knowing where anything is actually stored is just plain cheating. In fact, why not get a selection of different friends to grab a few bags each, thus ensuring that you have to ask all of them where the juice might be, and look in at least three places before it can be found. Whilst we are on the subject of food storage, replace your fridge with a cool box and ensure that it has a certain whiff to it irrespective of how often it is cleaned. We find a semi-opened block of blue cheese ideal for such a task. Then put the cool box in a slightly tricky location, preferably on the far side of your dinner guests in order to maximise the chance of falling on them should the “lurch” or “bump” functions of your galley activate when you are trying to collect another butter. Also, remember to modify your freezer so that it is half its current size for roughly four times the number of meals, and, at random intervals switches itself off.

Make sure all the cupboards are covered in netting, and at least half of them above head height for the more vertically challenged amongst you – being able to see what you are searching for is so overrated. Your galley buddy can be useful here. Either go for a tall model who can reach things more easily for you – commonly referred to as a “reacher” - or go for a model you work well with so that one of you can be rummaging in the (hopefully correct, see previous comment about stowage) cupboard whilst the other is holding them up / jamming them in place to counteract the “lurch” and “bump” functions. Beware of falling items, they can cause injury (those jars of spices are hard when they hit you in the head), and extra work (11 bottles of ketchup make quite a mess on the floor).

Invite 20 dinner guests, split into two sittings, and seated along either side of the galley for maximum noise, ensuring that only part of any request shouted at you from any angle can be heard (we recommend ignoring anyone sat behind the splash guard, since, although they appear see-through, are in fact one-way screens to block vision and sound). Throw your excess plates and bowls on the floor to break them; 8 bowls to feed 20 people is perfectly adequate, you simply must double use a couple. Work out your fastest eaters and feed them first in order to free a bowl to be washed for a second guest. Unless you accidentally created a meal that was both delicious and in excessive quantities, or very unfortunately selected your “mediocre food” enthusiast (“I like mediocre food best because nobody else wants seconds so I can have them all” - yes, someone really did say that), seconds should not be requested and this tactic should work. Don't forget, the gap between sittings is to be of varied length (determined by unidentified factors, but you can guarantee that if you need to boil more water it will not be long enough, but if there is any chance that the food may spoil by being left it will be interminably long) and the brief lull between sittings must be filled with frantic washing up before the chaos is repeated. Oh, and in case you get over excited, restrict the quantity of lukewarm water available for washing up.

It is perfectly acceptable for one of the guests to shout “tack” at any point during food preparation or serving. This is your 1 minute warning to secure as many items as possible before your galley does a full tilt to 45 degrees in the opposite direction. Prioritisation and fast decision making are key here: don't forget, if it can move it will move. Should you grab the sharp knife to stop it from flying across the galley; are the splash guards up to stop the boiling water depositing itself over the dinner guests; can you hold the frying pan on the stove, keep the chopped onions in the bowl, stop the bread falling into the bilge and prevent 6 coffees from spilling; and which idiot left the netting over the ketchup cupboard undone?

Full instructions and modification kits are available upon request, but please be patient, given the appeal of the Pink Panther Galley, we anticipate high demand.