AWAITING

By Jen

The Thermo Cooker:

Report on our dinner last night.....Well this was a beginners disaster for me and has extended my reputation as being better at just about everything else. I wished that I had watched a few youtube demonstrations first. I just didn't get the Jen and Glenn Love Stew heated to the max. and so after waiting eagerly all day the veggies were raw and the uncooked mixture was weirdly luke warm.etc. However it was all very convenient to remedy this: I just put the inner cooking pot onto the stove top and 30 mins later it was delicious. In fact that darn cooking pot managed to stay incredibly hot for ages afterwards, and I burnt two fingers. Glenn is still not convinced about it at all. Youtube says that food will never overcooked once it is actually reaches max. temperature. It will save gas too. I'll try a desert next, because I guess if it fails I can just cover with cream. It is weird having the cooking pot just sitting on the cabin's sole. (floor) I favour a position in the work shop but Glenn just doesn't like the idea. Yes ST3 has a workshop, and its all mine!

A miracle or a future washing machine?

If the Thermo Cooker doesn't work out it for us it may well be a very useful on board washing machine. It has all of the attributes: a tightly sealing lid and a convenient 12 litre size. It could swish and slosh around with the movements of ST3 and I'd only expect clean clothes at the eventual opening. Friends will know that I will be much more successful in this area of pursuit than trying culinary experimentations. I'm so glad that Glenn is developing his cooking skills.

One of yesterdays feeding troupe having a rest

Where we shelter for the night is always a very informed decision. Glenn has a life long passion (if not obsession) with weather/ meteorology. At present the forecasting of the Bureau of Meteorology is extremely changeable which causes us frustration. We have spent days reading reports of huge seas outside of Port Stephens and we keep seeking safe havens. We have been preparing for horrendous conditions and have battened down many times. The overcast skies are always a threat to our solar power intake ( yet to reach critical level) and the damp and cold conditions have sent us to our warm V berth ( our triangle shaped bed in the forward section) early each night. We set the anchor alarm or gps to check that we aren't dragging while we sleep. But weirdly at times on ST3 it feels like an alpine retreat, with chocolate drinks and wooly sox. We sure don't want snow.

It is an indoor life right now ( keeping warm and snug and dry) and I am starved of something amusing to read. The Alan Lucas book "OFF THE WATCH" is full of snippets of nautical trivia, and of no use to me at all, but I have devoured it and now have no memory of it's contents? I have never bothered to clutter my brain with bits of precise and useless detail and anyway I can't readily recall detail when I want to. But hey, if I had only read this book a few months ago before the Commodore's dinner our table would have had a chance at being the Trivia champions.( but only if the book was in my hand bag).

Useful trivia: DUNNAGE: cargo secured against shifting seas, typically by lengths of timber used to brace. Less commonly called FARDAGE.

Update on my spoon: thanks to Fiona in Cairns: George III's reign ended earlier than I knew: spoon now dated 1792, and possibly made by Wildman Smith, or William Sumner I. (presuming that the silversmith's initials were upside down.)

More exciting than most breakfast utensils

Pirates not welcome.

 

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