Race 3 - Day 22
Crew Diary - Race 3 Day 22: Cape Town to Fremantle
22 November
Mother Watch: 1 crew member from each watch comes out of their respective watches and cooks the meals for the rest of the crew for a 24 hr period. That means Breakfast, lunch and evening meal.
I have been on Mother Watch twice on this leg and have had the good company of the young whipper snapper Jack from Melbourne who is using this leg of the race to complete his Gap Year trip around Europe to get back home to Oz!
A 06.30 wake up call to the galley to prepare the staple Clipper Race breakfast of Porridge! A big pan of water, some sugar and the oats - now that is the simple bit - 20 minutes later and the porridge is ready to go. The strange bit is what everyone wants on top of their portion: the galley is laid out like a delicatessen! Here are a few of the choices:
Nutella, strawberry jam, marmalade, peanut butter (smooth and chunky), honey, golden syrup, raisins, chia seeds, almonds, cranberries, prunes and sesame seeds.
Everyone is different so 17 portions are constructed in situ for consumption.
That is not the end of it: the last duty of Mother Watch is to prepare 2 loaves of bread for the following morning. This bread is consumed at breakfast after the porridge course so the question is: What to have on your bread?
So, you can see the choices above but there are a few additional ones:
Nutella is the most popular followed by peanut butter. Marmalade is there as is strawberry jam, and peanut butter and jam (jelly as our US cousins call it), plus Marmite is a big hitter but for me on this leg, it has to be Peck's Anchovy Paste - a South African delicacy - to which I was acquainted way back in the mid 90s. Fair play, no-one else seemed to like the salty sharpness of the rust-coloured fish paste, yum yum!
After breakfast there is the wash up and lunch preparation and, once done, the chance for some downtime until 12.30 for lunch cooking. Today we are having pasta / pesto, which is quite a simple dish, but due to the amount of pasta and the fact that it congeals into a pasta ball the longer you leave it, today Jack and I are going to prepare 2 pots of pasta to coincide with the ongoing watch eating and 30 minutes later the off watch eating. Pasta tubes, 4 packs of pesto, 400g grated cheese and some pasta juice and hey presto, lunch for 17!
After lunch clean up there's a bit more downtime, time to write stuff, have a baby wipe shower, freshen up, listen to some music or go and grab a few hours kip.
Tonight's dinner is chicken curry and rice. The chicken needs dicing up and 2 kilos of rice to prepare. Tonight's selection is number 35 at my local Indian takeaway: Chicken Jalfrezi! 6 packs of sauce with sachets of spices, Bay leaves, cloves and cardamom seeds make it quite authentic. 2 kilos of rice ensures there is plenty to go around, which is what you need coming off a 6 hour watch in the Southern Ocean. All goes well and after the clean up, all that is left is the bread making which takes half an hour. Those are left to prove for a few hours and they'll be baked by the oncoming Mothers in the morning!
Now the best bit of Mother Watch: 10 hours straight sleep time until the 08.00 watch in the morning:)
Goodnight!
JC
- Our American crew would like to wish everyone back home a Happy Thanksgiving. The crew will be celebrating with a lovely morning meal of porridge.
