27 June - eating on the high seas

Saturday, 27th June

By Clare Johnson, a very well fed and happy scientist (PhD student at SAMS)


For my blog contribution I have decided to tell you about a very important aspect of life onboard a ship: the food!  Every day, come rain, shine, birthdays or force nines, 50 hungry scientists, crew and officers onboard RRS Discovery need feeding.  Without fail at 7.20am, 11.30am and 5.30pm as the eager hoards descend the food is always laid out and ready to go.  As someone who is a usually-make-something-edible-but-not-that-great kind of a cook it is fantastic having yummy food appear three times a day, and even better that the washing up done for you!

Being onboard a ship somewhere in the world’s oceans, where a Tesco is not just round the corner, means supreme organisation.  The food shop for Discovery is done every six months and arrives on a lorry ready to be stacked away in one of the many stores or freezers tucked away at the front of the ship.  Fresh fruit and vegetables are bought more often meaning that even though it is two and a half weeks into this trip there is still fresh salad, apples and oranges (no worries of scurvy on these ships!).  Then of course the food has to be prepared, cooked, and served altogether on time!

At the moment the weather is fantastic and it hardly feels like we are on a boat, however it is not always that way!  Bad weather makes life much more difficult.  All the tables in the mess (dining area) are fitted with removable edges that in bad weather are turned over to create a rim to the table and water is poured on the table cloths to stop your plates moving around so much.  Even so, you and your plate can go flying, and it is best not to fill your bowl of soup too full!  Cooking must also be much more problematic.  On another ship I sailed on a crew member opened a fridge as the ship rolled the wrong way and ended up decorated with the contents!

So thank you to the wonderful galley staff: John, Jeffrey and Wally who keep us all fed, contended and stoked up to do our work!

PS for all that are wondering – it is 10 minutes until dinner time, and tonight is curry followed by gateaux – yum yum yum yum! :D

Picture captions:
Our Saturday night curry cooking away.                               
The  meat freezer, one of  the many food stores on Discovery.