Atlantic Crossing - Part 2

Problems at Sea

On our second night, during the stronger winds, the top of the main sheet came away from the mast and was flapping and likely to tear. So the mainsail was lowered until daybreak. The uppermost traveller that slides up and down the mast had broken and needed new roller bearings. Tomasz had spare nylon bearings and was able to fix it within an hour, so we had our mainsail back again...

skipper replacing the nylon bearings in the uppermost mainsail traveller

Then after a couple of days of brisk sailing the wind died and we had to motor intermittently. On one such occasion, the engine was started and it immediately jumped into gear with a very loud clunk and stopped. There was a modest amount of cursing from our skipper but we later discovered that the linkage mechanism had broken, not the actual gearbox. So we had to engage gear and neutral from the side of the gearbox through a hatch in my bloody cabin. Starting and stopping the engine for the rest of voyage entailed our own Steve McQueen shouting instructions from the helm to Mariusz who was above the hatch, to Janusz who was buried in my cabin below. It was actually quite amusing to watch, like something from a old black and white war movie "Full ahead!" "Open fire!" "Launch torpedos!"... Well it could have been, McQueen and co were obviously shouting in Polish, so Henry and I didn't have a clue what was being bellowed. But it worked fine and the engine, that was used far more than we wanted, didn't miss a beat for the rest of the voyage.

the starboard side engine hatch cover being removed, note the sound and heat proofing...

1st Mate Roman

Roman had sailed with Tomasz on Piligrim 3 times before

Roman is about the same age as me and also retired last year. He sold his company that had been developing MRP software since the late 80s to compete with the 'SAPs' in this massive market today. His company had sold hundreds of thousands of software licenses over almost 40 years so I think 'the boys done good.' He met Bill Gates on several occasions because his office was in the same building as Microsoft's first Polish office back in 1985. They regularly swapped software engineers with Microsoft in the days of MS-DOS (for those younger readers, this is at least 10 years before the arrival of Microsoft Windows).

What an interesting guy Roman turned out to be. We had many lengthy and deep conversations ranging from the Polish social heroes of the 1980s, like Father Popiełuszko and Lech Walesa which I'd asked him about. I enlightened him to the creativity of the Scottish Stevenson family with their lighthouses, steam engines and children's novels. We shared an interest in history as well, so I learnt about their time under the Soviet Union and Poland's fights with the Nazis and Stalin in WW2. It's only when you spend quality time with people that you can broach such subjects, I never did when I was working with Poles in the past.

He noticed me reading Hemingway's novel A Farewell to Arms. Both he and Henry had read much of Hemingway's work at school because they'd both enjoyed classical educations unlike me. My reading lessons in our school library sometimes involved me and some mates racing to climb over as many of the tall bookshelves as possible without getting caught. My english teacher Mr. Packer, was a Bobby Charlton lookalike and yes, he caught and thrashed us. I did get my own back though, I bit the teeth off a plastic comb and left it on his desk, giggling uncontrollably as I watched his face go bright red. Never did like school much...

So what did Porky cook this time?

A flying fish, they're delicious with just seasoning and pan fried

Once we got below 25 degrees North, these little beauties were a very common site. They typically fly about 30cm above the water sometimes for as far as 50m. Apparently they cause more injuries to sailors than anything else at these latitudes. I warned Henry about them and within hours he caught a glancing blow from one on his neck. Luckily he wasn't injured and nor was Henry. I had to gather the flying fish from our deck in the morning before Tomasz had a chance to chuck them over the side. He didn't want to eat them!

Cheese scones made with parmesan

So what did I actually cook on this voyage, afterall, this blog is supposed to be about me cooking at sea. I wasn't able to take part in the provisioning exercise because of my late arrival to Piligrim. Note to myself, never ever let this happen again. So what are the first things you think of when you think of Polish food? Salami and sausages maybe. But what about potatoes and cabbage? There were probably 40 different salamis and chorizos but not a single potato or cabbage to be seen. Mariusz made us all laughed when he came up from his bunk one morning and confessed that he'd been dreaming of his wife's potato and cabbage soup. There was 10 kg of plain flour aboard but no yeast!!! Luckily I was able to find some seeds, oats plus the all bran that I'd packed to make loads of Irish soda bread because it does not require yeast. I made my own buttermilk by simply mixing lemon juice to UHT milk and allowing it to stand.

My Irish soda bread based upon Loretta's recipe

One day McQueen appeared with a sachet of yeast that he'd found while tidying a drawer - yippee! I nurtured a culture by constantly adding fresh sugared water and allowing it to ferment for several hours. So we did manage to have some leavened bread from just one sachet. All part of the fun of cooking at sea because there aren't too many corner shops mid-Atlantic. 

I made dumplings for Janusz after he'd confessed that his wife was the best cook and he loved her dumplings.🤭 I had no suet so I chopped the fat off of a pack of lardons and mixed it with flour, herbs, seasoning and water to make six cheeky plump ones. I cooked them with a meatball stew and they weren't too bad but I bet they weren't a patch on his wife's... Janusz did appreciate the effort but I could tell he wasn't blown away by the result, unlike Henry.

Proper english bread made from a continuous yeast culture that I nurtured

We had fish for three consecutive evening meals but we didn't take any pictures, probably because we were too keen to start devouring. Janusz coated some fillet pieces in flour and beaten egg and shallow fried them - they were fantastic! I made a crust using grated cheeses, bread crumbs and dried herbs mixed into melted butter then allowing it to set in the fridge. Then I simply cut out strips and placed one onto each seasoned fillet with a smear of Dijon mustard. They were cooked for 20 minutes in a hot oven in a large dish with two glasses of Chardonnay swelling around them. They went down well and the skipper and crew were suitably impressed.

The most fun meal I made twice because it was requested again. These were my samosas which I love. I'd packed a 1 kg bag of maida flour and various spices so they were easy but rather time consuming. The pastry was made using the flour with some toasted (then crushed) cumin and coriander seeds, veg oil and water, rolled out into thin sheets of about 3mm. The filling was made from chopped canned meatballs, a can of peas and some cream cheese also chopped into cubes, all mixed into some thick onion gravy with just garam masala, curry powder and seasoning. I could only deep fry three at a time so the whole process took around two hours. The samosas have to be gently fried, first at about 130C and then again at about 180C, taking about 20 minutes in total. To quote an infamous meerkat, simples!

My own version of samosas, a small Indian snack that I made into a meal

Janusz the James Bond villain

Janusz in the galley - he could cook well and repair anything

The last crew member of Piligrim for me to describe is Janusz. He's a truly lovely guy and showed me a gorgeous video that he'd made of his grand daughter and wife walking and playing in a field of bright yellow rape flowers. He'd put a sound track on it too, he was moved to almost tears when he saw how much I loved his efforts, it was a truly fantastic piece of art and could win him prizes. He was the only non english speaking Pole on the boat but we  communicated well with the help of a translator, plus gestures and facial expressions. He was also a good cook and filleted our monstrous Mahi Mahi like an expert. 

He's run his own car repair garage for years and proved to be a superb engineer. When we arrived in Martinique he took the throttle/gear engage box off the helm and he managed to make a replacement metal pin from a drill bit. He put it back together and it worked perfectly after about four hours of grafting. I told him several times to hurry up because I was dying to get ashore for some fresh meat (there had been none in the provisions). He made an appropriate gesture with his middle finger and then grinned at me.

I was earwigging a conversation between Janusz and Roman because the hand actions were rather interesting and unusual. Turns out Janusz has quite a collection of guns including an AK47 and an Uzi 9mm. He shoots them in his back garden with both his wife and daughter. Although they've been modified to only semi-automatic, I could see and hear that he was a real gun enthusiast. The SAT phone does look a bit like an Uzi once its big and bulky aerial is folded out, to look rather like a magazine. You can imagine the fun I had with it, poking my head out through the hatch and mowing down the entire cockpit ensemble with sounds effects thrown in... what a laugh we had. That should read, 'what a laugh I had'.

Janusz reminded me of a Bond villain. I think Aurius Goldfinger is the closest to his looks and mannerisms. He has striking blue eyes and I asked him whether he had a white cat at home that he enjoyed holding and stroking. I loved Fleming's Bond novels that were sooo much better than the films. Janusz doesn't have a bad bone in his body, like his Polish shipments, he would do anything for us and nothing was too much trouble for him. We were so lucky to have had Janusz with us otherwise the passage could have ended very differently, having to call into Cape Verde and then all the follow-on quarantining capers.

Hope you've enjoyed reading this post that I've written from my apartment balcony overlooking the marina (Oh shut up Jeremy, they're all bathed in darkness, rain and Boris' antics)

Maybe best to read it on Christmas day when your bellies are stuffed and you can nod off after the first paragraph...🤔

Wishing you a very merry and peaceful Christmas - God bless!

The final part of this voyage will be posted over the next few days when I've hopefully figured out how to include videos. I want to share with you the Orcas that paid us an unexpected visit...