TransAtlantic Day 13: Swishy Butt and the Queeze-a-Palooza
With just three days and barely 400 miles to go, we are all achatter about the things we want to do as soon as we get there.
For me, I’m psyched about getting into wifi range because there are some things I really need to do for work that require, I don’t know, the internet?
While at sea I can still be productive as long as I prepare in advance. Before heading off, like stocking your freezer with things you’ll be making through the passage, I line up tasks that I can do off line.
And before you think, your boss is a real jerk for making you do this, what a slave driver you must work for, and what a total crap company, well it’s my company and I’m the boss.
I started it 16 years ago and have grown it by being scrappy, doing what we can with what we have to survive and thrive. I have employees in 4 US states that I love and enjoy interacting with everyday. So its less like I work because I have to, and more like I work because I get to.
Work, and The Queez-a-Palooza
Working on Amari does make me ill, not figuratively but quite literally. There’s a particular confluence of conditions that totally weird out my vestibular system. It’s a queeze-a-palooza and I can feel it coming from a mile off.
The sailing condition that does this every time just so happens to be the one we’re on now: Swishy Butt.
Swishy Butt is a very technical term I just made up that happens when you have large following seas. As they roll past under you from stern to bow they lift your hull up, back side first. But as they set you back down on the other side of the wave, the butt slides down the wave as a different rate of speed than the bow.
So in your mind picture being in the cabin below, staring at some document and your world tilts you forward then backward and sideways at mysterious time intervals and angles.
And that’s when your vestibular system throws a Nausea Scud Missle into your gut and you’re in trouble.
If I’m up in the cockpit I have zero issues with swishy butt, and my visual system says “whoa there, inner ear dudes. It’s not a problem. Put the nausea down and chill.”
So it’s the combination of swishy butting, being underneath, and looking down at the computer that makes my body want to void of everything in my stomach.
Thankfully the brain gives you a bit of warning before hitting the eject button on your ramen noodles.
But if you do not respond to the nausea nudge quickly enough, your body goes to def con 5 to initiate countdown to go nuclear and launch projectile vomiting. If you have not made it to the little bottle of pink anti-nausea pills before that time, you’re toast.
Now that I’ve given you a solid case of sympathy seasickness, let’s move on to the food section of this post! Get over it, you know this is your favorite part.
Notes of a Galley Slave
As you know we’ve almost run out of fresh stuff, so now it’s time to punt to things like pasta.
Inspired by Ottolenghi (again), I made Chili Fish with Tahini, mainly because of the total food porn pic he has leading the recipe (his book is called Simple, by the way). The pic shown is his.
It was perfect for pasta night, because we had one last viable packet of the Dorado catch, and also perfect because umm, tahini? That’s weird and cool all at the same time!
This sauce required 2 kinds of peppers, chilis for heat, and dried anchos for smokiness. You sautee the peppers with garlic and the cumin seeds to get all those capsaicins out into the sauce. Then finish your red sauce with cubed firm white fish.
But my man Ottolenghi has you top this with a tahini and lemon juice sauce that’s totally weird at first. But the smoky flavor that has infused all into your sauce combines perfectly with the nuttiness of the tahini.
This ancho Thai chili sauce is robust and bursting with flavors, the ideal medium for the fish that has been in the freezer for a couple of days.
Only two more dinners to go – I’m almost sad to see it end.
Almost.
