The Challenge: Cooking on Board

So take one shelf of your average sized house-hold refrigerator. Next, angle the shelf so that only one jug of milk and one jug on orange juice will stand upright. Then, place a ten pound block of ice in the middle. The remainder of the room is what you have left to store everything that must be refrigerated. Thus begins the challenge of cooking onboard. As we now prepare most or our meals on board, the limitations of our galley become readily apparent. We've taken several cookbooks but the recipes invariably call for ingredients that we don't have on board. Anybody know what arrowroot is? But the really cool thing is that our refrigeration system can make ice. There are some drinks that just don't taste the same without ice; ice tea for one. But such are the sacrifices.

After one month, here are the top ten things we miss from living ashore:

1. A convenient shower
2. Ready access to a grocery store
3. A full size bed instead of a V-berth (that you have to contort yourself to crawl into)
4. Access to the Internet
5. A convenient phone
6. A life-sized kitchen
7. Not having to conserve every drop of water
8. A toilet you don't have to pump
9. Unlimited ice
10. A place to lock the cats when they wake you up at 4:30 am.

It'll be interesting to see if the list changes as we extend our time aboard!

This week we've made our way to the Choptank River. Along it's banks include the noteworthy destinations of Cambridge, Oxford, a back door to St. Michaels and further up the Tred Avon, Easton. Our agenda includes viewing the annual cardboard boat race and getting ourselves in a spot for a rendezvous with Joyce's family.

During this week we weathered our first bad storm, holed up in an anchorage in San Domingo Creek. In tribute to modern technology and the Weather Channel's web site, we were online in the St. Michaels library watching the progression of the storm on the Doppler radar screen. When we saw the leading edge of the storm at the western edge of the bay, we knew we had to hustle back to the boat. Well we made it back with just minutes to spare, enough time to batten down the ol hatches and check the anchor rode. The first gust sent us hurtling back 180 degrees in the opposite direction. The next gust had us wondering whether our anchor would hold but third gust had us holding on as the boat heeled. And then the rain came. Even though we have a 50 foot lighting rod sticking up and boats do get struck by lighting, the mast supposedly provides a cone of protection for those inside. The main concern when at anchor is whether the anchor will pull out or the rode will chafe through. Its common for the wind direction shifts at the leading edge of the storm and the winds gust often over 40 mph.

The storm brought a relief from the humidity and the next day we continued on to first Broad Creek and then later Island Creek. On Thursday, we made our way to Cambridge. While I've often seen the route 50 side of the town, we motored into Cambridge Creek in the heart of the old down town section. Much of the industry is now gone leaving the town struggling. Many of the stately mansions along the historic district, in various states of disrepair, highlighting the once affluent city. Subtle signs indicate that things may be changing and it still is an interesting place to visit.

Saturday was the day of the cardboard boat races in Oxford and what a hoot. Some of the boats looked so professionally done that we had to look hard to convince ourselves that they were really made of cardboard. But there were still a sufficient number of shall we say unconventional designs that proved ultimately unseaworthy in the mix to make for some fun. There was so much duct tape on some boats that I'm surprised the 3M people weren't here! All good fun and all to benefit the Special Olympics.