We took off out of the Pitons in St. Lucia, cruising across the smooth as glass waters and as I looked up at the beautiful conical mountains I thought to myself, this day is like no other, there will never again be a day like this, I should appreciate it. I don’t know why this thought went through my mind, but after an extremely trying week, it seamed like a good thing to focus on; all the possibilities that lay ahead… We pulled into Soufrere, a tiny, French fishing village with storybook architecture and winding streets – it looked like a movie set, or a lost town in the South of France. A rasta on shore helped lift my bags out of the tender and grabbed his friend, Raymond, to take me to the airport.

The taxi wound through the mountainous rainforest en route to the capital city of Castries. We passed through amazing little towns that although run down, were full of life and color. Street vendors with mountains of banana’s and alien looking local produce, women carried bags of laundry on their heads, little children in their Sunday best walking down the street, and brightly colored houses pocked the mountainside – it was just what I always imagined the Caribbean to be. As we wound through the hills, I couldn’t help but notice everywhere I looked were enormous, bushy mango trees bursting with the largest, most plump mangoes begging to be picked, and bigger than any I’d seen on the islands so far. I hadn’t eaten any breakfast that morning, or even had a proper cup of tea so I was lusting over the thought of just being able to pick and eat. My lucky moment came when the taxi ground to a halt in front of a Rastafarian on the side of the road selling coconuts and mangoes and with a live boa constrictor in his hands. The taxi driver and the rasta chatted away in their thick accents in island Creole and soon we were parked. I hadn’t made any mention of being breakfast-deprived, but the taxi driver must’ve read my thoughts for as soon as we were parked the rasta wielded his giant machete and lobbed off the top of two coconuts and handed them to us to drink, and when we finished, he hacked them in half, creating a spoon out of a piece of husk and showed me how to scoop out the young, sweet flesh to eat, all the while playing with the wild boa he had in his hand. As we all stood around chatting, the rasta and the taxi driver were friends and somehow in the course of conversation the boa (named “Daniel”, by the rasta) ended up wrapped around my neck as I held its head at a safe distance. After some joking and picture taking, he handed me a mango and said, “dis is for you, lovely lady”. Then, it was time to continue our journey to the airport….

As we made our way around the mountains and through banana plantations, I studied my mango and thought about how I should go about eating it. “Peel it wit’ your teeth, mon” and so I did, biting through the skin and then ripping the peel away with my fingers. The fruit inside was bright gold and juicy and the pulp was like custard. I gnawed and chewed at the pit and the fiber to get every last ounce of fruit. Like a four-year-old, I had juice running down my chin and my fingers were a goopy, sticky mess – which I vowed to lick clean so not one drop would go to waste. As I slurped away at my fingers, the drivers friend who was travelling with us looked back at me and laughed, and thankfully handed me a towel. “That was the best mango I’ve ever had”, “there are 52 different varieties of mangoes on St. Lucia”, the driver declared, “Great, I’ll have to come back to try them all!”. This was living…

We’d pulled into the cul de sac on Union Island that afternoon with the intention of digging a pit and making our own barbeque. But when we arrived to the beach, a man who called himself “Shark Attack” was set up with everything for barbequing, including dishes, silverware and a hot grill. We chatted over rum punch and planned out the evening. I brought him a sack full of lobster and watched in awe as he pulled out an enormous specimen of a machete and proceeded to split 4 lobsters clean in half – like a hot knife thru butter – right down the center. He nestled the lobsters into a cozy bed of hot embers and slathered them with a thick layer of “Shark Attacks” homemade garlic sauce. I was able to procure a recipe from him – lots of grated fresh garlic and ginger, the venerable ‘all purpose ‘Green Seasoning’ found throughout the Grenadines and butter. Honestly, I was distracted. Yes, by the smell of the ganja – but also by the irrepressible concern that the lobsters were being overcooked. I’d done everything right thus far with the guests and I couldn’t screw up now by having the lobsters overcooked!

I returned to the table, took a sip of my Planters rum punch – sweet and strong, walked back to the bbq and in my most calm, collected voice said, “hey man, you sure they need 5 more minutes”? “ya mon – 5 more minutes”. I stood by and watched and now I just figured the man must know what he’s doing. The smell of roasting garlic filled my senses and put me at ease. Intuition, that’s how I know how my cooking is coming along and I had to pay Shark Attack my respect and know that he uses his senses too, and knows how to cook a lobster.

“You’re a popular man” I joked with him, as the can-can number played on his cell phone over and over again. He took a rip from his never ending joint, “ya mon, but I have the choice not to answer it”. He smiled and laughed and one by one, pulled the lobsters off of the bbq and piled them onto a platter. I ferried the platters to the table and served the enormous half tails to the guests, as well as to myself, and to our first mate.

I took my first stab at the half-lobster in front of me, it that was the length and width of my forearm. For one more brief moment I was skeptical, but my taste buds rejected my fear as the buttery, garlicky sweetness of lobster, tinged with smoke, melted in my mouth. You couldn’t have bought a better dinner at the finest restaurant in Manhattan – to say the least about the ambiance. An almost full moon, casting a magical glow across the mountainous landscape of Union Island, lighted the sky. The white, sandy beach shined, the stars sparkled, the ocean provided the background music of its gentle waves crashing upon the shore, and the finest earthly aromas filled the air.

Wine flowed like water, and soon – and completely unexpectedly – the ganja did as well among this group of guests whose identity I have sworn to complete and total secrecy. The lobsters were spectacular and soon after the lobsters came a plate of bonito, heavily spiced and bbq’d. We’d brought along a crock of foie gras, German potato salad, mixed greens with local tomatoes and a cheese platter of raw milk camembert, Roquefort and Chaumes, all perfectly aged, fresh baguette and several bottles of Geourge De Boufs Boujaleaise. It was feast fit for the Crown.

I could’ve shoved all the dished to the ground, cleared the table, climbed on top and fallen asleep in a state of gluttonous satisfaction – but that would’ve been totally inappropriate in front of our guests. Instead, our first mate and I cleared the table of the glassware that belonged to the boat, left everything else and went to fetch the tender. I’d say, our BBQ on the beach was a complete and utter success.

All was not lost on the charter with the bonafide movie star and malfunctioning galley. When it got to the point where I could only use the stovetop, I decided to bust out the pasta maker and spent an afternoon in the galley making fresh linguine – for which I was accused by said movie star of showing off. But from her, I will take that as a compliment.

I had found two bags of Italian semolina pasta flour in one of the cupboards. The flour was from Italy and based on that fact alone, I assumed it must be good. Not having a pasta recipe, I decided to wing it. There’s one great thing that I love about homemade pasta, even if it’s not perfect, it’s still heaps better than any dried pasta from the grocery store… So, with that, I piled the soft, yellow flour into a mound on the counter top adding a bit of wheat flour, as I’ve found that straight semolina flour can sometimes be a bit more fragile to work with as it doesn’t have the glutens that wheat flour has. I created a well in the center of the flour and added 4 egg yolks and two whole eggs – for no other reason other than the fact that I couldn’t recall whether pasta is usually made with whole eggs or yolks – then, a pinch of salt and some olive oil and proceeded to smoosh it around until I had a nice, soft, kneadable dough. I kneeded and kneaded until the dough was smooth and pliable, soft, but not tacky.

I started to set up the pasta maker on the tiny counter. But this was a little sailing yacht (my mom always laughs when I say “little” – 80 ft., that’s little by mega yacht standards) and there was a lip around the counter tip which created a challenge using the vice grip that secured the past maker to the counter… but with extra cutting boards, lots of non-skid, and a little patients I made it work and set to the task of cranking 2 heaping trays of linguine.

I made a sauce of local Caribbean lobsters, porcini mushrooms, leeks, white wine, cognac and a bit of cream one of the best sauces I think I’ve ever made. I served a half lobster tail atop the pasta, which was greeted with a boisterous round of applause. The guests departed early the next morning, I immediately went to the dive shop and signed up for a few dives in Antigua – then it was off to join another yacht…

Buffalo Mozzarella Napoleons to Start

Gold Plated Chocolate Mousse for Dessert

Friday afternoon: The produce delivery from the provisioner arrived. Bags of fresh basil, mint, chives, beautiful baby bok-choy, zucchinis and eggplants so fresh and gorgeous, the best produce I’ve gotten on the islands thus far, everything practically glowed. The provisioner has their own shipments flown in weekly, so they aren’t dependant upon the deliveries coming in by freighter to the grocery stores which often arrive in a sorry state of despair; sagging and wilted lettuce, over-ripe fruit – everything at least 2 weeks old before even hitting the shelves. I sorted and packed my groceries into my mini-refrigerators, washed my herbs and lettuces and wrapped them in paper towels to prevent spoilage. Broke down some of my produce to make room – but hardly an inch of space remained and I still had lots of locally made yogurts and goats cheese arriving on Saturday which I had know idea how I would make fit. I’ve been pleasantly surprised this season by the abundance of local produce in the market place. A lot of islands in the Caribbean have given up their farming culture, in the name of industrialization and convenience, and made way instead for mass produced, factory farmed produce from the States and elsewhere – but this season I’ve found beautiful local lettuces, tomatoes and herbs, as well as a lot of produce native to the Caribbean – green papayas, pigeon peas, miniature bananas (they are called “figs” by the locals – but they aren’t the figs that we know of back in the states – they are actually sweet little bananas that taste almost like a strawberry!) – but all of this that I’d found on my own had to fit, along with everything the provisioner brought.

There was a mix-up though with the provisioner, another yacht already departed had received my meat and fish order, so now my meat and fish delivery would not be arriving until Saturday and the guest pickup was Sunday. No problem, I told myself, there was still time to prep between grocery shopping trips.

Saturday morning: My Antiguan made yogurts, goats cheese and ice-creams arrived, a tough squeeze into the spare corners of the fridge. The yogurts were amazing – creamy, tart and fresh, no preservatives or stabilizers – I was thrilled. Good yogurt can be hard to find on the islands. Often times what is available is some brand loaded with thickeners and stabilizers that give it an almost grainy texture and lacks tartness. I’m finicky about yogurt; it’s one of my favourite foods. The local goat cheese was also amazing; creamy and sharp.

As I put my order away I noticed two of the three refrigerators weren’t keeping very cool. My sandwich meats and cheeses were nearly room temperature. I let the captain know that something was wrong. He pulled everything out of the refrigerators, a fan that feeds both of them had blown – no worries, another one is on its way, 15 minutes – island time. Then he got a phone call, sorry, no fan until Sunday, the day of our pickup – yup, that’s island time for you. I hoped my ingredients would last through the night. Two more half days of prep lost to refrigeration repairs.

Saturday afternoon: the provisioner said she’d be here by 3pm. 3pm came and went, as did 4pm. At 5pm she finally arrived – dropped the coolers on the dock and said she’d be right back after she made another delivery. Totally overwhelmed, my inexperience with yachts this small was apparent, three oversized coolers filled to the brim with lobsters, sushi grade tuna, filet mignon, scallops, rack of lamb, etc. sat menacingly on the dock. How would never fit everything in my limited freezer space, I thought I’d be lucky to fit half… I hastily began sorting through everything, separating what I would take and what I’d return to the provisioner, when the captain appeared. I gulped down the lump in my throat and said, “I think I over-provisioned. It won’t fit, I’m going to have to return some items”, I was sure the captain would have my head. “No worries”, he said. The captain disappeared into the galley, re-organized the freezers and amazingly fit everything, absolutely everything in!

Sunday: The day of the guests arrival and I felt totally unprepared. I wasn’t able to prep much in advance because of the refrigeration being torn apart (and everything splayed across my limited counter space) and now their was hardly room in the fridge to store anything even if I had prepped more in advance. But still, I’d made a few desserts, sauces, pestos – so I was slightly ahead of the game.

I was told the oven could be a bit temperamental – this would prove to be an understatement of epic proportion. I realized this the first morning the guests were on board. I had started to preheat the oven while I assembled my ingredients for banana bread. The oven went out 3 times before it finally decided to stay lit. The banana bread took almost an hour and a half to bake. I guessed that it may have been some sort of airflow issue and stuck a spoon in the door to allow air into the oven while it warmed up. 70% of the time, this worked. For the remainder of the charter the oven would prove as reliable a provider of heat as rubbing two sticks together. No, correction, rubbing two sticks together would be more reliable. Muffins in the morning took nearly an hour to bake, my puff pastry turned to sunken little puddles of molten butter and flour, my lamb steamed. I nearly tore my hair out of my head to get my mind off of the agonizing pain being inflicted upon my soul by this insidious, evil oven that could only have been created by the devil himself to torture me.

Then, there was the stove. The stove has four burners; three that provide just enough heat to bring a pot of water to a simmer and one just big enough to light the little Frenchman’s cigarette that built the yacht. On the third day, a burner on the stove decided to stop working – in the middle of putting out dinner. It wasn’t the cigarette lighter-sized burner that went out, it was the big one, of course. Oh, and let’s not stop there. I mean, why, after all, we’ve just gotten started? Also on the third day one of the freezers decided to go on the fritz. Fortunately it was the one with mostly bread and pastry in it – but the other freezers as well began to teeter on the verge of not-quite-frozen. On the 5th day, the odds of getting the oven to work were 100 to 1 and so the captain asked me if I could limit my meals to things that only need to be cooked on the stovetop – on the two-burner-one-cigarette-lighter stovetop. Having my eyeballs gouged out by tire irons would be a more enjoyable and satisfying experience than cooking in this godforsaken galley.

And, of course, all of this couldn’t happen under worse possible circumstances. We have a legend on board; a real-life, pinch-me-I’m-dreaming, bonafide legend. Not some tacky, Hollywood here-today-gone-tomorrow starlet. But a real legend, someone I grew up watching in the movies, someone I respect and admire and my galley is on the brink of total collapse. I am “gutted”, as the Brits would say. Crestfallen. But I put on my cheeriest face and do my best, and when no one is looking – I click the heels of my bare feet together and say, “there’s no place like home, there’s no place like home”…

Not much air can circulate in this slit of a bed, so immediately upon manoeuvring myself into it – I begin to feel overheated, claustrophobic and restless, but if I sleep semi-diagonally so that my head sticks out into the room, I can breath. The real problem is this, no matter how hard I remind myself that I can’t sit up, inevitably, my alarm goes off and I shoot straight up out of bed and I conk myself on my head. HARD. EVERY MORNING. Not a fun way to wake up and I think I’m beginning to see an indentation forming – in my forehead! Then, there are the nights that I flail my arms around, probably dreaming (a nightmare, really) that I’ve fallen into the works of a sardine packing machine – packed tightly into a tin, next to all those hapless fish and the machine is just about to seal the top. I flail my arms for help and knock them on the ceiling above me hard enough to wake me up. It’s like being buried alive.

The 6’, 4” inch tall engineer aboard the previous yacht that I worked says, since joining the yacht world, he has become Cro-Magnon Man – a hunched over, knuckle dragger. I’m 5’5” and a majority of the time I find crew quarters to be so extremely uncomfortable, I can’t imagine being a foot taller! Yacht designers and yacht owners should be forced, FORCED to spend a month in their crew quarters just to get a taste for what it is like – because 99.9% of the time, the quarters are designed for midgets, halflings, or Nicole Richie. To be comfortable in the quarters I am in right now, I’d have to be so thin I’d be transparent; and some considers these particular quarters ‘good’!

Perhaps they are called crew “quarters”, because they are a quarter of the size they should be. Or, perhaps it’s because a quarter is all the owner would spend on the space the crew would be living in. Maybe they should be called crew “dimes”. Crew quarters, uggg.

I find Aubrey, in English Harbour, the local fruit man with the miniature Antiguan pineapples that I’ve been told I simply must try. I greet him with a big hello and jokingly inquisition him to make sure he’s the Aubrey I’ve been told about. He is, but nothing breaks his matter-of-fact, business like demeanour and until he knows exactly what I want his hands don’t stop moving – cutting ripe galleon melons and pineapples into chunks and bagging them up for his customers. I look longingly at the perfectly ripe fruit he’s cutting, “can I try? can I try?”, I plead with my eyes but don’t dare say it out loud. I admit, I’m slightly intimidated by his stoic persona. I pick up a tiny pineapple, not much bigger than my palm and I ask him, “are these sweet?”, “yah mon” he replies in his thick island accent, “very sweet, very good, how many you need?”. I tell him I don’t need them until Monday or Tuesday, will they last that long or can I buy them tomorrow or Saturday? “No ma’am, maybe no more after today. Pick out what you want now, I hold for you and you come back again”. Someone else asks for papaya – he says tomorrow, I’ll have to come back again tomorrow for those too. In the meantime I pick out 10 little pineapples, perfect for serving underway, 3 of the most beautiful galleon melons; bright gold, and smelling sweet and ripe. He holds them for me, and as I walk away he says, “here miss” and hands me one of the tiny pineapples, peeled except for its leafy top, which I grip like a popsicle. I take a bite, core and all, juice rolls down my chin and fingers– it’s as sweet as honey. An “mmmmmm” escapes my lips between bites (they’re really only about 2 or 3 bites big) and Aubrey looks pleased. “See you tomorrow miss”, and without skipping a beat he returns to his task of peeling and chopping fruit.

I head back out to the main road, this time to catch a taxi to the big grocery store in St. John – 30 minutes and a $50 taxi ride away. My feet melt into the pavement, an all-too-gentle breeze teases the air, not enough bring relief, but more of a reminder of just how hot it is…

Chrome and white shine against the teak deck and the backdrop of Folmath Harbour, the tender is hoisted up on the bow, white canvas awnings stretched taught to provide shade to the cockpit with its teak settee and highly varnished captains wheel. I stub my toe on a wench and I’m instantly reminded that there is inverse relationship between the size of yacht and the multitude of things one can stub a toe on, bang ones head on, etc… I wince, step into the cockpit, stretch over and around “things” and make my way towards the entrance.

“Hi captain!” I say as I look through the port and step onto the ladder extending down to the salon, “oh hello, yes, yes, do come in” he says in a proper British accent. Sporting white blond hair, blue eyes and elongated, British features I can instantly picture him in a grey suit and tie, and with a dour and dry persona examining loan papers at a bank. But on the contrary, he is laid-back, easy going and, like his Kiwi girlfriend (the stewardess), as cool as a cucumber. His girlfriend shows me my bunk. I’m on the bottom, she’s on the top and he’s on a cot that pulls out of the wall. Like I said, it’s a small yacht…

I drop my bag, get right to business and head towards the galley. I’ve already got a list together of my staple ingredients and now I’m just looking at what the yacht has and doesn’t have to tick it off on my list. Fortunately or unfortunately, small yacht = small storage space. Easy to examine, tough to store. Two tiny cupboards under the settee, a few tiny cupboards in the galley, and storage underneath 4 trap doors on the floor make up the extent of it. Plus, 4 small refrigerators and 2 small freezers. This galley makes the galley of the yacht I just got off of seem almost imposing! I compared the oven of the last galley to that of my Easy-Bake oven I had when I was 7, well, this one runs more along the lines of a dollhouse. I almost expect to look inside and find a tiny, plastic turkey with all the fixings, moulded out of clay and intricately painted…

The World Cup of Cricket is going on in the Caribbean right now – basically an opportunity for all the colonies of Great Britain to sock it out in a sporting and civilized manner. Up until now I had only thought of cricket as that annoying little creature that rubs its wings together making a racket enough to keep every living thing awake at night within miles of the little bugger. But no, apparently it’s a game too – similar to baseball, only they call their pitchers “bowlers”, the bats look more like the paddle my brother carved when he was rushing to get into a fraternity at USC, there are two hitters instead of one, they have sanctioned “drinks breaks” (leave it to the British!) and they eat their hotdogs and French fries with Branston Pickles, call them “sausages and chips” and prefer to drink their beer warm. This also means that I have to get my order in today to the provisioner because tomorrow is a national holiday, declared just for the cricket match, and everyone on the island, myself included, will be watching Britain and Australia duke it out on the playing field…

At 10am the provisioner I’ll be using drops by the yacht with lists of ingredients, I’m to fill them out and get them back to her by 3pm. I’ve sorted most of the cupboards and drawers, have put together my provisions order and am working out the details of my menus based on the guests preference sheets. At 11am, I begin to fix lunch for crew from whatever I find in the fridge – green coconut curry with veggies and fish and basmati rice. One pot wonders are really practical on small yachts and I know I can always make crew happy with curry… Plus, I have too much to do to be messing around with anything complex. The Roti Lady comes by the yacht, damn, I have to make lunch for the new crew but I haven’t had a roti yet this year. She came by last year as well and the rotis were always delicious. Warm, thin bread (like a tortilla) filled with curried potatoes, shrimp, chicken, peas… There’s always Wednesday…

At 2pm the flower lady arrives and I talk to her about what flowers I would like for garnishing plates and fruit platters. She suggests some tiny orchids and she is going to bring me some banana leaves and other tropical leaves from her backyard on Saturday (our guest pickup is on Sunday). She tells me about a local company making fresh yogurt and goat cheese on the island (Yao brand). I have to try some, so of course, I place an order. I find some coconuts aboard, left by the previous chef, and the captain and I discuss how we can cut them with a band saw and fashion them into bowls to serve something out of, that will be Wednesdays task.

3pm the provisioner is back to collect my list and discuss delivery dates and times. I give them to her and continue to work through the details of my menus and making up lists of what I need to prepare in advance (deserts, flavoured oils, sauces, etc.).

7pm and I meet up with the crew of the yacht I’d just departed, for sundowners and a bbq. Life is good.

Our guest is someone very, very special and that’s really all I am obliged to say right now. But, this should be a really, really cool charter…

I’m glad to be getting some exposure to another chefs cooking, it gives me some good ideas and it’s great to be able to see how a real mega yacht runs without the responsibility of figuring it all out on my own… Although, I do confess, it’s humbling to not be the one in-charge. Also, I’ve learned that my fears and apprehensions about being a chef on a yacht of this size were grossly over blown. I don’t think I would have any trouble moving into a head chef position on a boat this size – as a friend of mine said to me, the only thing I lack is not skill but confidence.

This week we have been chartered for the Antigua Classic ~ a classic sailboat regatta. We’ve been chartered by the owner of a beautiful J-Class yacht named Ranger that won the America’s cup in 1937. Endeavor, another well-known (in the yacht world) J-Class has also been chartered by the owner of Ranger and is docked right next to us. We are basically the mother ship to two beautiful sailboats for the week and we’ve been having barbeques and parties all week long on the boat – so I’ve been running ragged…

It’s the end of the season in the Caribbean and the yachts are pouring out, heading to the Mediterranean and the East Coast of the United States. I was in St. Martin last weekend and the marinas are ghost towns– everyday another boat leaving. Even the people from the crew placement agencies are heading out for the season…

Everyone I know in the industry, myself included, is looking forward to a change of scenery. It’s been a great season and an absolutely amazing experience – but after a while “island time”, Caribbean food, and Caribbean customer service begin to drive you a little crazy…

I look forward hitting the Mediterranean; sitting in a café, enjoying a glass of wine (it’s been ages since I’ve sat in a decent café and had a glass of wine!), reading a book and people watching. Culture, “foreign” films (because all that is available to rent or see in the Caribbean are big, boring Hollywood blockbusters) and museums – its’ been ages! I’m also a bit homesick, and land sick. I miss my couch, my neighbor’s cat, friends and family – all things warm and familiar but I won’t be getting home now ‘til September. That’s life…

One thing I am really looking forward to is meeting up with a fellow blogger and regular reader of my website! I’ve been swapping emails with a woman that is a stewardess in the Mediterranean and she’s been reading my blog since I first began back in September. We’ve actually become friends, and yet we’ve never met! She’s shown me pictures of the markets in Antibe, France where we will be docked. She is based there as well and will be giving me a market tour when we arrive! So, we leave NEXT WEEK, April 29th for France and will be at sea for two weeks with possible stopovers in Gibraltar and Spain. Our first charter will be at the end of May in Monaco for the Grand Prix. Rumor has it that Rod Stewart might be on board. Of course, I’d prefer Franz Ferdinand or perhaps the Flaming Lips – but hey, Rod is a celebrity in Japan or something right?! Ha ha. Just kidding.

So, bear with me. I’m just a little tired, burnt on the Caribbean, looking forward to catching up on my sleep on the crossing to the Med and waking up to a change of scenery – then I assure you there will be many more stories to be told!!! Just two more weeks and I’ll be posting from the Med!

I watched in horror as culinary tragedy after culinary tragedy unfolded before my eyes…

The theme for dinner the night the guests arrived was Mardi Gras and the table looked gorgeous with peacock feather masks, colorful beads and brilliant flowers. I was thinking Shrimp Etouffe, Gumbo, Bananas Foster, staples of New Orleans cuisine. But no, hacked up grilled chicken breast and fried shrimp served on brown lettuce leaves and garnished with a tomato and a sprig of parsley was passed off as “chicken and shrimp cocktail”. What the heck is chicken and shrimp cocktail?

The main course was “creamy noodles” with pan-seared mahi-mahi. Is this supposed to sound appetizing? Creamy Noodles sounds like a Rice-a-Roni flavor. The sauce came from a packet, not surprising since I never witnessed the chef actually prepare anything from scratch (the galley never even looked cooked in)! Even worse, the fish was seared off three hours before the 12 guests sat down at the dinner table! As this so-called chef plated he asked for my help in picking the seeds out of the giant chunks of lemon that were garnishing the plate. I could hardly contain my frustration as the rest of the crew (myself included) had run our butts off all day long preparing for the guests arrival as this guy sat in the crew mess surfing the web and couldn’t be bothered to pick the damn seeds out of his lemon “chunks”.

Dessert was “tempura bananas” with the chefs special touch – the “tempura” batter was the consistency of the white paste we used to eat in our third grade art class, topped with pistachio ice-cream that had fluorescent green lumps in it because the chef didn’t bother to properly mix in the cheap-o flavorings he used in his ice-cream base. The garnish was a strawberry that looked like it had been violated by a can of whipped cream.

It was truly unbearable to watch.

Shortly after this writing I learned that a new chef will be joining our boat – we shall see what is in store for our International Girl of Mystery…

In the meantime, I have back-to-back interviews all day today for yacht chef positions heading to the Mediterranean. The most promising so far is a sous-chef position aboard a 55m (175 ft.) super yacht leaving for Monaco in just a few weeks. The boat is one of the busiest charter boats in the Caribbean and Med. (meaning lots of big tips) and has an excellent reputation in the industry for treating the crew well. There are 14 crew which I would be cooking for and then assisting the head chef with the preperation for up to 12 guests. Since I’ve never worked in the Med before this would give me the opportunity to learn how and where to provision, build up my confidence, learn from an experienced mega-yacht chef how the big yachts really work and it would be an excellent stepping stone as after this I would be able to basically choose any boat I could possibly want to work on. I meet the rest of the crew and the chef this afternoon (I interviewed with the chief stew and captain yesterday) and see the galley…

Other than that – been snorkeling in St. Barth and Anguilla, went to Moonsplash (a big reggae fest in Anguilla – and if you like reggae you should definately check out Muju Banton and Bankie Banx!). Averaging 3 calls a day for chefs jobs… So yeah, life’s a beach…

More food posts coming soon.

Peace out.