Fish Food

Our daily existence on the boat is underwritten by the ocean and the sky. Together, they guide our activities and inform our moods. They provide food, drink, motion, colour, wonder, cool escape. An ceaseless, interactive canvas to talk to. That talks to us. Schools of flying fish like cheese falling out of a grater. Coral reef heads a foot underwater that appear and disappear with the angle of the sun. Meandering turtles. Iris blue, metallic blue, blinding white sunpatches. Oilskin wrinkles in late dusk. And then the stars come out…

This organic soap opera is a twofold reminder:  Firstly, that we are damn lucky to have the opportunity to participate in such an infinitely breathtaking universe in the first place, god or otherwise. Secondly, of the futility of attaching too much importance to that participation. The result of this knowledge, for us at least, is much pottering around, like winnie the pooh at a honey tasting conference, trying this and that with a jolly curiosity, and stopping often for a snack. Also like the fish on the coral, now I come to think of it.

 

I usually wake at dawn and plop myself down on a pillow to meditate. Some time is spent thinking back in vague bewilderment at any dream I may remember, and some of it is spent wondering who is going to make the pancakes for breakfast and the resulting topping implications. Occasionally though I slip into the zone: breathing slows and my inner dialogue is surrounded in a soundproof glass cube that I can detach from and observe bouncing around my consciousness like a Windows ’95 screensaver. It feels good.

And then I go and see if anyone has started breakfast.  

If anything is taken seriously on the boat, it is food. Breakfast is usually pancakes, occasionally semolina, both spread with sunlocked mango or papaya jam made by tom’s mum in the marquesas, or coconut molasses with lime juice, or shredded coconut with homemade chocolate sauce. The rest of the day’s eating is determined by whether or not anyone catches a fish. Spearfishing is a communal task, and as fun as it is difficult. Arming the gun is a technique in itself, and then you have to find the fish, get in range of the fish without freaking the fish out, shoot the fish in such a way that the spear get deep enough to prevent a wriggling escape, and then get the fish out of the water and into the kayak before any nearby sharks show up.

Fish look bigger underwater...

My first few attempts were pretty hopeless, more experimenting than hunting, but then I got into it and, whilst my technique is no high art – more smash and grab than clinical assassin – I do occasionally contribute a fish to the filleting board (the one in the picture is significant because it is my first, not because it isn't laughably small).

The two unexpected things I have really got into since arriving on the boat are repairing ropes and filleting fish. Who would have thought it? A description of rope repair even Douglas Adams would be hard pressed to make interesting, so I won’t go there, suffice to say that it is deeply satisfying to repair something using half millimetre thread that is then able to hold a huge sail in place against a strong wind. Fish filleting on the other hand fucking fascinating, and would be great reality TV. Different fish are best filleted in different ways, and the aim of the game is to get as much meat off the bones in as large chunks as possible whilst avoiding bones, organs, skin and the worst case scenario of ruptured intestines/bladder/stomach. And to do this using as few knife strokes as possible, feeling for right place to cut with the tip of the knife and then gliding along the ribs, or the stomach lining, or dinking around the top of the head or the cheeks.

 So fish for lunch, with anything else we have fresh, perhaps bread or sprouted beans, though usually everything else is tinned (veg) or dried (rice/pasta). There are fads: we might bake bread every day for a fortnight, or eat nothing but noodle soup with fresh veg when we hit a town, and I have worked out a dozen ways to get my sugar fix without actually eating plain sugar. My current two favourite Sugar Delivery Systems are 1) hot chocolate thickened with corn starch or coconut 2) baked coconut with butterscotch. Another thing I have learnt on the boat is that lots of things I thought were fiddly and longwinded to make from scratch are actually really easy – bread, caramel, sweet and sour sauce, tartar sauce, cake, chapattis… and all without eggs or dairy.

Cooking, cleaning and infact all tasks are rotaless and lie on anarchist principles: the priority is the good of the community, and there is an unspoken trust that each individual will help achieve this good in their own unique and autonomous way. We know that we can’t be individually content the community is not balanced, and so we enjoy our share of tasks and the resultant solidarity. Easily replicable in any household, workplace, revolutionary faction in my opinion. Just needs good communication. It helps that you can wash the teatowels by holding them above your head and diving into the 28 degree lagoon.

Tom reckons he has had around 180 crew in the 11 years he has been with karaka. We are just the latest incarnation. Recipes in the ever expanding ‘Karaka Cookbook’ offer insight into both the places she has been and the people who have inhabited her – Taro cakes, plantain cookies, Polynesian sweet and sour, caraway sauce, ‘Kimbap experience’, Cocktail ‘L’ambiance’ . And:

‘Easy Easy Dip – One tin beans. One onion. A lot of cheese. Tomato paste and chilli’

Mmm. The library (all four shelves of it) is also the sum of its readers, morphing and focusing over the years. The theory and practice of alternative, assertive living are well covered – radical politics, philosophy and economics; deep ecology and self-sufficiency; spiritual liberation. Between them, they cover the emancipation of the community/society, the environment and the mind. Plus a range of practical manuals from ‘the art of the sailmaker’ to ‘the pressure cooker bible’ to ‘methode facile pour accordeons’. Two ancient books of sea shantys and a good selections of books written by sailors about their voyages consistently give the impression of sailors as tough as nails but with intense camaraderie, deeply embedded customs and a constant awareness of both mortality and the immortal.

The fiction section is even more telling, and shows me the influence that books have had on my life: Steinbeck, for a long time my favourite author, has more than half a dozen of his titles represented here. Dog eared, purchased in all corners of the world, full of characters and stories that mine at the coalface of the human condition and hold the Journey up as the most glorious and ultimately desolate of all things. There is plenty of Hemingway, smatterings of Orwell, Kerouac, Hesse, several volumes of Roald Dahl’s short stories, choice Sci-fi morsels.  It is like meeting someone at a bar, getting on famously with them, then going back to their house and realising they have the entire Levellers discography on CD and being like ‘ah, that’s why our paths have crossed and we are vibing so hard!’. To the maxims ‘you are what you eat’ and ‘you play what you hear’ can be added ‘you do what you read’. Funny!

So we read. And talk about what we have read over pancakes. And write. And go on excursions, many of which are documented elsewhere in this blog. This morning was very calm, and at slack tide we rowed out of the lagoon to the Drop, where the ocean floor slides dramatically from 15 metres down to hundreds, perhaps thousands of metres (the deepest surface point on the planet, the Mariana Trench, 8000 metres below sea level, is a few hundred miles away). We tied a rope from the boat to some coral just before the drop and snorkelled about. These atolls were originally huge volcanoes, and the effect is of hovering above the lip of a volcano and looking down into an endless void. Dramatic as fuck. Big, ugly fish swim out of the rich, impenetrable blue, have a look at you, and wander off with a dismissive flick of the tail. We looked for lobsters in holes but didn’t find any, then lay in the dingy and relaxed our muscles over the gentle swell. Then the tide began to come in and we drifted back through the pass to the boat and a spot of lunch.

Afternoons are long and lazy and then sunset comes, perhaps with some playing of guitar or drinking of rum or hot chocolate. Bedtime is early. Well done everyone.