Boat Food: The Halesworth Cookie
Halesworth on Sandusky Bay, Ohio. July 4, 1986
If you point your internet browser at nearly any psychology website, you will find food. Food is a driving force in humanity. You’ve got to have it. Your brain will play tricks on you if you don’t get enough. If it isn’t immediately apparent where you’ll get you next meal, it becomes an obsession, or messes with your mood. Everybody knows somebody who gets hangry. Food is also associated with experiences. Go to a wedding, what do you expect? Food in the form of some kind of cake. How about the movies? Gotta get some popcorn.
Meal planning is a huge part of our existence, especially when traveling or away from reliable sources. Ever been on a cruise ship? There is food everywhere. Why? Food is an essential element of security and enjoyment. The cruise lines don’t want their customers to ever consider what happens when a ship, far out at sea, has a problem. The refrigeration plant breaks down, there’s a propulsion problem, a fire, or any number of things that might interfere with the customer’s next fill-up. They also know that if you tell somebody about your trip, most likely you will recount some meal or dish in that description. It’s a powerful sales pitch. In my experience, these concepts apply to sailboats, too.
Food makes the trip. If it’s good, the rest of the trip can go poorly, and everybody will still talk about the food. If the food isn’t so good, all you will hear about is the weather, the near collision with the other boat, the equipment failure, or outbreak of mal de mer.
My earliest understanding of the associations between food and sailing began back in 1984. That summer I joined Doc Boucher and the crew of Halesworth. Over the next 5 years I was on the boat more weekends than not during the Lake Erie sailing season. In that half decade I learned as much about sailing from Mrs. Boucher, who was never on the boat, as I did from the racing and deliveries.
Mrs. Boucher planned the meals and packed an ice chest with much of the food required for the weekend. She included complete meals that required minimal preparation, were filling, non-offensive to the sour stomach, and tasted good. I fondly recall her cold fried chicken and meatloaf sandwiches. Her sandwiches always included her home-made pickles. OH MY GOODNESS! You’ve never had a pickle so good as that! It was a lesson in keeping the crew happy and coming back, despite the long drive from Columbus to Sandusky, the unpredictable weather, and cramped living conditions in Tartan Ten #343.
One of the elements of the meal planning I came to appreciate was consistency. The crew could count on the selection of beverages that would show up in the cooler. For example, the beer selection usually included some PBRs or Miller Highlife. The soda always included what Doc called “something green,” Sprite or 7-up, and somehow, there was always a can or two of Canfield’s Diet Chocolate Fudge soda in the mix. I’ve never seen it in the store, then or now, but it was always on the boat.
As a teenager, you can be sure I ate my share of the sandwiches, chips, sliced veggies, and so on, but the best of the larder was the ever present two pound package of store brand duplex creme sandwich cookies. The package was usually found in the little galley sink when we were underway. Anybody going up or down the companionway steps could grab a cookie on the way by. It was an ideal arrangement, except for one thing. The cookies always came aboard in their original cellophane wrapping over a plastic tray. Once the package was opened, they only stayed crisp for about two days. On the third day, the hot-cold and humid climate inside the boat took the snap out of the vanilla and chocolate cookies. A few of the crew members wouldn’t eat them after they lost their crispness. Not me. I came to appreciate the soft texture and melt in your mouth qualities of a well aged cookie. If we didn’t eat all the cookies in a weekend, the left-overs stayed on the boat for the intervening week, and were consumed the next weekend by the hard core crew, like me.
I will forever associate the stale duplex cookie with Friday evening boat deliveries on the western half of Lake Erie. To this day, I can pop one in my mouth and immediately be transported in time and space to the rough, non-skid deck of Halesworth. I can hear the burble of the little diesel engine pushing us across the water at 5 knots, and feel the rise and fall of the bow as it sliced through the waves. In my mind’s eye, I can see Doc, tiller in one hand and pointing with the other towards some buoy or object on the surface of the water.
Food clearly has amazing psychological powers. It keeps even the grumpiest crew happy, provides a solid foundation from which to adventure out into the unknown, and it’s useful as a time travel technique, as well.