Much has been written about food storage on boats, some of it by people who sail in arctic waters or among the angels, where you can leave a zucchini lying around the cabin for weeks on end and it will suffer no corruption. Following is our warm weather fruit and veg preservation process. But first a note about our refrigeration system. It’s basically an expansion plate chilled by the Waeco “Coolmatic” air-cooled compressor that came with the boat. The section of the refrigerator box closest to the cold plate we call the “freezer” though it’s a term that can be applied only loosely. It won’t keep ice cream but if we cram a piece of meat against the cold plate, it’ll freeze within a day.

In general the key is keep things dry and cool. Cool is actually easier than dry. We individually wrap some things in newspaper and keep them in the fridge. We change the wrappings every third day or as they get damp (take a stack of newspaper!). The key is to examine the stuff in the fridge every other day at least. K can often be found in a pile of food disgorged from the bowels of the fridge, palming the fresh dry vegetables from hand to hand whispering “Yes, my precious!” We individually wrap the following in newspaper and keep them in open ziplocks in the fridge:

Avocados (buy green and get them out of the fridge a couple at a time to ripen in the air)
Tomatoes (buy green and get them out of the fridge a couple at a time to ripen in the air)
Zucchini
Green peppers
Lettuce
Carrots

The following go in the fridge without wrapping:
Limes (buy green and get them out of the fridge a couple at a time to ripen in the air)
Mangoes (buy green and get them out of the fridge a couple at a time to ripen in the air)
Apples (in the warm part of the freezer side)
Pears (in the warm part of the freezer side)

These float around in the cabin hanging here and there:
Limes (a 3-day supply)
Cabbage in newspaper
Oranges
Cucumbers (these seem to do about as well outside the fridge as inside)
Potatoes
Onions (white ones seem to rot much faster than yellow ones)
Garlic
Chaote squash/chistophene (a nuclear grade vegetable that last forever without rotting, they will eventually start to grow though.)

The consumption process for all this ticking time-bomb food is to select the saddest looking specimens for dinner, so although you’ve provisioned with the finest looking fruit and veg in the land you are still eating the most corrupt and barely salvageable every night. At 15 days out we are actually running out of fruit and veg before it has rotted on us (the definition of “under provisioning”). Bananas are always the first to go, zucchini is next, and we had a load of avocados outside the fridge that all ripened on the same day.

Cheese gets wrapped in vinegar-soaked cloth, zip locked and sent to the coldest parts of the freezer. Eggs stay out in the cabin and get turned every day to prevent the yolks from ever resting too long and getting bed sores (I don’t know, something like that). We left with 3 gallons of fresh milk and so far we’ve drunk 2.5 gallons of that (always dig around for the latest dated jugs at the back of the dairy cooler, they are usually several weeks ahead of the sell-by date when they first stock them).

We have some type of meat every other night and leftovers in between. We carry enough fresh and frozen meat to go at least three weeks this way. After that its sausage, canned fish, canned chicken, canned ham and caught fish. Most everything gets done in the pressure cooker to save fuel, heat and time.

We had a bet on the duration of our fresh provisions. S predicted that we will be hallucinating about food by 21 days, looking at each other and seeing steaming drumsticks in the place of our beloved. Running out of material for a nice luncheon is one of her most deep seated fears. K is convinced that the gendarmes will have us heaving fresh vegetables and meats overboard when we clear customs.