Cooking While Underway

It is often touted that a gimbal stove is an absolute must onboard a cruising yacht. The gimbal allows the entire stove to swing with the heeled vessel, keeping the contents on the cooktop level. This means that you can cook while sailing with a rail in the water.

The alternative to a gimbal stove is a fixed unit, that simply leans over with the yacht as you sail. These are touted as "only useful in port" when the yacht is anchored and sitting vertically.

The truth is, fixed stoves have been around and used on sailing vessels for far longer than gimbal stoves have. There is no denying the convenience of a gimbaled unit, but this doesn't mean that a fixed stove is inoperable while sailing.

While working on a tall ship, I had an interesting conversation with the ships cook. The tall ship has a very large fixed stove, and no pot holders! She said that cooking on the fixed stove was simple, all you need to do is use a very tall pot and never fill it more than half. As the ship heels over, the food will lean over in the pot, but the contents will not spill over. The lack of pot holders was also alarming, but apparently the friction of the pot on the iron grate was enough to keep the pots in place. Since they don't slide, they don't bother with pot holders.

I took this information back to our own boat and applied it to great lengths. Our stove is fixed, and we use it frequently while under sail. We simply only cook while sailing on port tack, as this would put the stove on the leeward rail. If the contents of the stove were to spill out, they would spill away from any crew standing by it, cooking the delicious meal.

If we are heeling excessively, we simply heave to, which reduces heel and makes life inside the cabin much more enjoyable!

Cooking on a fixed stove is nothing out of the ordinary on a sailing yacht, it simply takes a few precautions to make sure that the meal is safely created without any injury to the crew. This will allow you to cruise on a smaller budget as fixed stoves are cheaper to purchase and much easier to install.

Finding Time for What You Enjoy Most

Cruising might seem like an endless string of vacation. Each day as carefree as the last, which means that everyday allows for you to relax and enjoy what you love most.

The problem is that it is easy to get wrapped up into the same meaningless routine that you had on shore, just that you take this routine up in a new and exciting location.

While cruising, things will break, and tasks will present themselves. You can either engulf yourself in these tasks and spend your entire cruise working on them or you can take some time and stop all the madness to enjoy what you set off for.

I am a workaholic and will easily bury myself into all the projects I can invent for myself to carry out. Maddie is very good at enjoying the moment and is especially good at finding the perfect time to include me in the moment.

One day, I was busy toiling away at some meaningless job I had created for myself when Maddie called my name. I heard her voice but could not see her anywhere. It turns out she was sitting in the hammock watching the sunset.

She called for me as it was almost to the best part. The sky was still blue but it was about to turn a myriad of reds and oranges. She called me to join her in the hammock to enjoy the color changing sky, and that was the whole point of being there.

Looking back on that day, I honestly can't even remember what I was trying to accomplish, but I do remember the magnificent sunset! Be sure that wherever you end up, that you enjoy the reason you are there for! These will be the memories that you will retain for the rest of your life, not the work you had to do.

Weight Distribution

Sailboats are, by their very nature, floating. They are designed to float level and flat by their designer and equipment is placed in the yacht in such a manner that the weights are balanced around the boat to keep its trim level. Too much weight on one side, and the yacht will list toward that side. A slight list of only a few degrees is grossly apparent when you see the mast leaning over towards that side. 

Keeping the weight balanced as you load up your cruising yacht with everything you think you might need on your voyages can be tricky. Tools, pots and pans, and canned foods, all add considerable weight to the yacht and must be stowed in a weight conscious manner. If you load everything you own on the port side, your yacht will list significantly.  

Sometimes, this means stowing things in the "wrong room". I have met cruisers who keep all their cooking ware in the V berth because the stern was weight down too much by the dinghy in the davits. Every time they wanted to cook a meal, the cook would have to carefully consider what she needed and retrieve it from the forward cabin before she started cooking. This was not a long walk, by any standards, but people on land don't usually think of storing the pots and pans that are used in the kitchen in the bedroom. 

While these solid items are easy to stow weight consciously, another important item on a yacht can prove to be a bit more challenging to visualize: Water. 

Water weighs approximately 8 pounds per gallon, meaning that if you carry 100 gallons somewhere, you should rather think of it as 800 pounds somewhere! 

When your water supply is divided up into various tanks located around the yacht, it is important to consider where the tank is before you start to draw from it. In our case, we have 8 water tanks spread throughout the yacht, 4 on the starboard side and 4 on the port side. Collectively, these tanks hold 160 gallons, or 1,280 pounds. 

We were tied up in a marina one day and decided to take advantage of the unlimited water we had access to and chose to flush out our water tanks. The last place we filled up had some unpleasant tasting water, but it was all that was available and we were forced to fill up with it. In an attempt to rid ourselves of the remainder of this water, I began draining the water tanks to then refill them. 

As a meticulous person, I naturally began at tank #1, and worked by way through them in sequential order until I reached tank #8. It wasn't until I began draining tank #5 that I noticed we were heeled over! The list was not too severe, only 3*, but it was still very apparent to us inside the yacht. While Maddie instantly knew why we were listing, it sadly took me a moment to realize what I had done! 

Emptying all the port tanks meant that the starboard side of the boat weight an additional 640 pounds! Upon filling everything back up, the list was eliminated and we were once again level, but at that moment, it was rather alarming. 

The valuable lesson to be learned is, when using your water supply while cruising, be sure that you draw on tanks from both sides of the yacht. If your tanks are located fore-aft, draw in a way that will not cause trim issues. If your tanks are located arthwartship, draw in a way that will not cause heel issues.  

Our typical method for water consumption is to draw on one port tank, and then the analogous starboard tank. This will cause very minor listing issues as we cruise, but not enough to justify any alarm. 

As far as using your water tanks as ballast while sailing, this can be tricky. If you are going to be on starboard tack for the next few weeks, you might be inclined to use the water on the port side as it will help level out the yacht as you sail. This might be true for the time being, but should you encounter foul weather and need to tack or jibe, your yacht will now be vastly lopsided and this could enhance the negative effects of the storm on your yacht. For this reason, I would still suggest using the tanks evenly so that in the event of a storm, your yacht will respond normally and predictably. 

Itchy Feet

No, not that kind! I'm referring to the feeling that you get when you have been someplace for too long. 

When we arrived in the St. Mary's River, the white sand beaches followed by the tall pine trees made me fall in love with this river. The bottom offers great holding and the trees give wonderful protection from the wind.  

We spent our days rowing to shore and relaxing on the beach as we watched the world pass by. This was such a wonderful place to be and to relax.  

Then after a few weeks here, we both got a bit anxious to move on. We had been in these wonderful and protected waters to wait out a series of serious thunderstorms that were passing by. Now they have and we are itching to keep exploring! 

Deep in the river, there are no waves, as there is wonderful protection from all directions. Wisdom hasn't rocked or rolled in two weeks! The stillness has been working on our nerves and we soon found ourselves longing to leave in search of new waters. 

It is funny how the little things will egg you on to keep exploring. Something as insignificant as the rocking motion we usually experience can make us leave such protected waters in search of new places with new wave patterns. While we do love this river, and will look forward to sailing in her waters again when we return from our travels, at the moment, we just want to continue on! 

This is why cruisers are constantly on the move. They will discover a wonderful paradise, somewhere that they could happily live out the rest of their lives, and yet they will leave this paradise one day. Their feet get itchy and the only cure is to start traveling again in search of the next wonderful paradise. 

Finding the Time to do the Things You Love

Cruising might seem like an endless string of vacation. Each day as carefree as the last, which means that everyday allows for you to relax and enjoy what you love most.

The problem is that it is easy to get wrapped up into the same meaningless routine that you had on shore, just that you take this routine up in a new and exciting location.

While cruising, things will break, and tasks will present themselves. You can either engulf yourself in these tasks and spend your entire cruise working on them or you can take some time and stop all the madness to enjoy what you set off for.

I am a workaholic and will easily bury myself into all the projects I can invent for myself to carry out. Maddie is very good at enjoying the moment and is especially good at finding the perfect time to include me in the moment.

One day, I was busy toiling away at some meaningless job I had created for myself when Maddie called my name. I heard her voice but could not see her anywhere. It turns out she was sitting in the hammock watching the sunset.

She called for me as it was almost to the best part. The sky was still blue but it was about to turn a myriad of reds and oranges. She called me to join her in the hammock to enjoy the color changing sky, and that was the whole point of being there.

Looking back on that day, I honestly can't even remember what I was trying to accomplish, but I do remember the magnificent sunset! Be sure that wherever you end up, that you enjoy the reason you are there for! These will be the memories that you will retain for the rest of your life, not the work you had to do.