Velux 5 Oceans - Freeze dried food, the reality of eating at sea

by Velux 5 Oceans on 5 Nov 2010 Velux 5 Oceans - Ocean racers deprived of home comforts for weeks on end

Life alone at sea is tough for the Velux 5 Oceans skippers at the best of times, fighting extreme exhaustion, facing massive physical challenges and having to constantly make major decisions at the drop of a hat. Now imagine if all you had to eat for every meal for a whole month came out of a packet. No fresh food, very few treats, none of life’s little comforts. That’s what faces the Velux 5 Oceans skippers as they take on The Ultimate Solo Challenge sailing 30,000 miles around the world alone.

To keep weight to an absolute minimum, the majority of a skipper’s meals come in the form of freeze-dried packets which just need hot water added to them. They’re specially designed to provide enough nutrition to the sailors but they’re hardly gourmet. Flavours range from Thai Green Curry to Spaghetti Bolognaise to King Po Chicken - delicious!

'I’ve just finished a nice breakfast of scrambled eggs and ham, out of a bag of course,' Canadian skipper Derek Hatfield reported this morning. 'The breakfast ones I really enjoy because I love breakfast but anything that has eggs and ham in it is top of my book. They’re actually not bad at all. I’m using a brand called Mountain House and their meals are very good, I haven’t got tired of them yet. I was able to pick the ones I wanted before the start of the race which was great. I might be tired of them by the end of the race though!'

'I have some meat with vegetables, beef stroganoff, some Chinese dishes, Mexican, Polish foods,' added Zbigniew ‘Gutek’ Gutkowski. 'Everything I have onboard is good, because I tried all the meals before I set off. It is not my first trip with dried food, so I knew exactly what I have to take and the choice was mine. One thing I can’t recommend is cooked beans in tomato sauce – I don’t like it, but I don’t have it for sure.'

And there’s no fancy cooker onboard an Eco 60 - a single gas ring burner is all the skippers have to cook with. 'Onboard cooking is easy,' joked Belgian skipper Christophe Bullens. 'Put boiling water in a sachet, wait five minutes and take a seat at the table. Oh wait, there is no table!' Even boiling water would have been a luxury to Christophe during his 48-hour qualification passage. His matches were accidentally taken off his boat just before he set sail so he went hungry for two days!

During the long ocean sprints sailors develop cravings for comfort food, and usually fulfilling their cravings is top of the list of things to do when finishing a leg. Steak and hamburgers are usually high on the agenda, but for Derek Hatfield it is something a bit different.

'It might sound weird but the thing I really crave most is a glass of cold milk, I love milk,' he said. 'Everything I have onboard is so warm, it’s already body temperature so you hardly notice when you drink it. It’s the same with the water – I put orange crystals in it but still you can hardly taste it. When I get to Cape Town I’ll have a glass of cold milk and chase it with a glass of cold beer!'

But it’s not all bad for the skippers. Although their yachts are stripped bare to keep weight to a minimum there’s still room for a few little treats hidden away here and there. Among his food rations, British skipper Chris Stanmore-Major has 29 bags of Haribo sweets, 20 bars of milk chocolate and 12 cans of rice pudding. Derek Hatfield takes a much more frugal approach - among his luxury food items are one loaf of Brioche (buttery French bread), a jar of peanut butter, and two bars of dark chocolate. Gutek’s only comforts are two jars of chocolate spread and some dried fruit and nuts.