All Piss and Wind by David Salter

Author:David Salter
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Random House Australia
Published: 2006-08-28T04:00:00+00:00

Our Bread indeed is but indifferent, occasioned by the

quantity of Vermin that are in it. I have often seen

hundreds nay thousands shaken out of a single bisket.

We in the Cabbin have however an easy remedy for

this by baking it in an oven, not too hot, which

makes them walk off, but this cannot be allowd to

the private people who must find the taste of these

animals very disagreeable.

The Endeavour Journal of Joseph Banks, 23 September 1769

OCEAN RACING IS NOT a sport for gourmands or gastronomes. The drink is usually passable, but the food can be woeful beyond words. It wasn’t so long ago that crews used to head for Hobart with little more than a huge hunk of corned beef wrapped in tea-towels, a bag of potatoes and onions, a large jar of jam or Golden Syrup, two pounds of butter and as many loaves of fresh bread as they could stuff into the one dependably dry locker on the boat. Standards have risen since those early days, but not much.

That old, tough culture of off-hand marine catering stretched well into the 1980s. I can remember helping to ready a maxi on Friday afternoon for one of the long overnight races then common in the offshore season. The owner was already loitering below with that smug, self-satisfied look most skippers exude when they’ve managed to duck off early from their office and now anticipate an extended, robust sail and not getting home until late on Saturday evening. To be polite, I ventured a standard crew question: ‘What are we having for dinner, boss?’

‘Dinner? It’s just an overnight race, mate. Didn’t think we’d need to take any food. There’s some chocolate bars in the galley. Won’t that be enough?’ (No doubt he’d come directly from a four-course corporate lunch, stuffed to the gunnels with tax-deductible food and wine.)

‘Well, skipper. There’ll be about twenty of us going, and we’ll be out there for at least fourteen hours. I reckon we’ll have to eat something.’

He simply shrugged, dug his hand into a pants pocket and thrust a fistful of crumpled $20 notes towards me. ‘All right. You better pop up to the shop and get us some tucker straight away. No time for anything fancy. Just bring back all the roast chickens they’ve got.’

And that’s what we had – for dinner, breakfast and lunch the following day. By the end of the race the whole boat reeked of chicken fat, every surface was greasy and nobody ever wanted to see another drumstick for as long as they lived.

It’s a consistent affectation among Australian blokes that they don’t much care what they eat so long as there’s lots of it and it contains cooked dead animals of some kind. Sailors tend to fit squarely within that anti-epicurean paradigm and often delight in swapping horror stories about how appalling or scarce the food was during their last passage. At the same time, a good galley slave is often the most prized member of any crew. Say ‘yes’ in answer to the standard ‘Do you cook?’ question and you’re halfway to securing a berth.

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