Stowage and the Vacuum Machine

by Nancy Knudsen on 15 Feb 2007 Whether you want to stow a spare motor, the lamb chops or keep the weevils out of your cereal, the Cryovac or Vacuum Pack Machine is a brilliant way to guard against the intrusion of salt air or bugs both visible and invisible.

There are two ways of going about this.

Before you leave on your extended cruise, you can make your butcher you second best friend and try to have him vacuum pack goods other than the meat he sells you. This is the way we started on Blackwattle. We started asking him to cryovac our flour and cereals. He good naturedly did this for $1.00 a bag, and it seemed like an excellent plan. However, the day that Skipper Ted walked into the local butcher, crowded with customers, and handed over a windlass motor with the query, 'Could you cryovac this for me?' was a memorable day for him, both for the expression on the butcher’s face and those on the faces of the surrounding customers.

'I know I know,' said Ted later ruefully, 'I should have waited until the store was empty.'

We ended up, therefore, purchasing our own cryovac machine, and it has been most useful. Ours is about 40cm X12cm X 5cm. These are becoming more easily available around the world. If you can’t purchase one in your local area, there are websites now that sell them.

Some items that are vacuum packed in the strong plastic bags that are supplied with the machine, last almost indefinitely in their pristine state. We have had tremendous success with items such as flour, cereal and bread mix. For ease of use, we pack the bread mix in loaf-sized portions – half a kilo – and then it is a simple matter to open a pack each time you wish to bake bread.

However, for spares that could suffer from the intrusion of salt water, or humid salty air, the machine is invaluable. We have, for instance, a spare starter motor and a spare windlass motor stored this way, secure in the knowledge that they are not deteriorating in deep storage. However, only your imagination limits the number of items that can be kept rust free for use by virtue of vacuum packing them.

As for meat, on Blackwattle we have a deep freeze, so we do not have our meat vacuum packed. However, we have many cruising friends who use their cryovac machines to store meat for much longer periods than would be possible otherwise.

Skipper Suzie O’Hagan of Australian yacht True Blue, currently in Turkey, says: ‘Sure cryovacing meat is brilliant and we bought an Italian machine in Oz. It’s so good my pilic (chicken) butcher in Turkey wants me to order him one so he can on-sell to the yachties in Finike marina!

‘We keep meat very cold but not quite frozen and reckon to get 4 weeks from chicken, 4 from fish freshly caught, and 4-5 weeks from other meat We used to use it for beef steak and it keeps for AGES, about 8 weeks plus I recall.

'THE TRICK IS NEVER TO INCLUDE ANY BONES IN MEAT, AS THAT MAKES A HUGE DIFFERENCE ABOUT HOW LONG STUFF KEEPS.

'Your nose will tell you if all is well as soon as you open a packet. A teeny bit whiffy and the meat and fish can be washed and all will be well and smelling sweet, but anything more 'on the nose' I throw away.

‘Green veggies tend to go soggy I think, but herbs can be successfully processed. I use the inverter on board and it only takes a few minutes to package and stow a great mound of meat and fish..enough for us for at least 6 weeks every time I do it.

‘We never bother with salamis etc as they swing free in the forepeak and get tastier as the weeks go by! Hungarian stuff is wonderful even a year later!’