Chicken Soup for the Soul
Day 3 : Azores to Ireland
Friday, May 20th 2022
BANG! Crash! Clang.
It’s 10.30pm and an almighty explosion just happened in the galley. I’m on watch, and put down my book to go and investigate. Before I can even stand up, Jen calls out from our cabin.
“Pete, Are you alright?” I hear her yell faintly, above the din of the engine. She ought to be asleep right now, but she’s been struggling with the incessant rolling, the product of no wind but swell left over from the stronger winds of earlier in the day.
“I’m fine, it’s just something in the galley. Try and go back to sleep”, I respond.
I go down to investigate, expecting a scene of total carnage from the explosive sound. In these rolly conditions, it’s not at all unusual for stuff to fall over, or for spice racks or cupboards full of bottles of oil and sauce to chink and clang and generally emit a cacophony of noise.
But this had been altogether different. If we’d had a pressure cooker on the stove (we didn’t) it’s the kind of noise you might expect if it had blown it’s lid off.
In the actual event, it was a little bit anti-climactic. The oven, swinging on its gimbal, had gotten caught under a drawer that had slid open. This caused the oven door to fall open, and both shelves, and the glass within the oven door to fall out noisily, clatter to the floor (more correctly called the “cabin sole” in nautical terms), and then slide violently into Coco’s food bowls on the opposite side of the boat.
In the process they’d somehow managed to completely empty her food bowl of kibble, and distribute it perfectly evenly, 50% into her water bowl, and 50% into a neat pile against the wall on the other side of the galley.
As I knelt down to retrieve the shelves and glass door, they suddenly slid to the opposite side of the galley, as the boat rolled. I slid too, ending up in a heap next to them. One second later, a small pile of kibble joined me on the other side. And 3 seconds after that, we all (me, the shelves, the door, and the kibble) hurriedly made our way back to the other side of the galley as our balletic dance continued.
Slowly, and with all the grace that a slightly over-weight, slightly balding, and heavily cursing 50 year-old in four layers of bulky clothes can muster while sliding around on his knees, I put the oven back together and picked up about 153 individual pieces of kibble that were now scattered around the floor (I didn’t count them, but you’re going to have to accept my word for it, especially as the exact number is pretty irrelevant).
Everything seems that much harder when you’re sleep deprived, and we were at our maximum level of sleep deprivation – the level you can only reach between days 2 and 3 of a passage, when you’ve not yet fully fallen into the rhythm of the watches, and your level of exhaustion is not yet sufficient to enable you to go to sleep and remain asleep through almost any amount of discomfort or noise.
The kitchen reinstated to it’s usual level of order (which is to say, still banging and clanking as cutlery slid around in drawers and pots and pans worked their way free from their neat piles in the cupboards), but at least with an intact oven and no more than 15-20 crunchy pieces of kibble left unfound in the darker recesses of the floor (again, I didn’t count them, but really, you need to stop obsessing over this level of irrelevant detail), I returned grumpily to my spot in the cockpit.
Before settling down to my book, I unzipped the side panels of the cockpit enclosure to get a good look all around, and immediately felt my annoyance start to melt away.
The rain and clouds from the morning had slowly cleared up to leave a beautiful sunset an hour or two earlier. And now, just before the moon rose, the stars were out in full force, twinkling both in the sky, and reflected in the glassy waters, interrupted only by the long rolling, 2 metre swells which were causing my mood, the oven and Coco’s kibble bowl, to lose their equilibrium.
I drank in the scene, inhaled deeply, and exhaled.
“That really is chicken soup for the soul”, I thought.
As I sat back down again, my mind turned to other similar examples of that same feeling. I thought of many of the hikes we’ve done, where I’ve found myself standing and staring at scenes of spectacular beauty. And also the many acts of kindness we’ve witnessed or been the beneficiaries of on this trip.
I thought of the simplicity of life on the Tanzanian island of Koma, where we’d witnessed the joy of 5 or 6 year old kids drawing animals in the sand with Jen and teaching her their names in Swahili.
And before long, I was back in my happy place, albeit a bitterly cold happy place, as I huddled in the corner of the cockpit and drew a blanket around me.
Never mind trying to warm myself up with past examples of chicken soup for the soul, I thought. What I need is some actual chicken soup.
Happily, we have some packet Cup-a-Soups in the cupboard in various flavours for just these sorts of moments on cold night watches, and I was pretty sure some of them were of the required variety.
Obsessed now for the need for actual Chicken soup, I rummaged through the cupboard, trying to stop everything on the other shelves from falling out as the boat continued it’s grim rolling dance, and I struggled to hold on to my new-found good humour.
Past the packets of Tomato Soup, Tomato Soup with crotuons, Mushroom soup, Chicken and Vegetable Soup (close but not quite), more tomato soup (what was with this obsession with Tomato soup?), Pumpkin Soup…
And then Huzzah! A crumpled old packet of chicken noodle soup. Exactly what the doctor (or more commonly, the Jewish grandmother) ordered.
I put the kettle on to boil, and went back on deck to make sure all was good. I took another peek out the enclosure to top up my good mood, by now slightly strained by the usual struggles to keep my balance, and my temper, in the pitching galley.
The whistle of the kettle interrupted my star gazing, and I rushed below to switch it off before it awoke Jen.
As I poured the water into the powder in the bottom of the mug, a vision of chicken soup materialised, as if by magic (the magic of freeze drying and rehydration I guess - not quite the stuff of Penn and Teller, but it would do, under the circumstances).
I’ll admit to feeling slightly disappointed by its consistency. It was not quite the clear and tempting broth with plump noodles that I’d been expecting. Instead it was quite oily and gelatinous, as if the manufacturer had pumped it full of MSG or other additives to make it especially “warming” or some such. And the noodles floating around were managing to achieve the mildly impressive feat of looking totally dry while immersed in boiling hot liquid
“I guess there’s some magic there”, I thought.
I left the soup on the gimballed stove for a moment, the level in the mug never changing as the boat rolled, so awesome is the gimbal, and took the opportunity to write a log entry, hoping that the intervening minute or two would see the soup both cool down a little, and also magically transform into something more like what my mother would make.
BANG, Crash, Clang!
A smaller sound than the first time around, but there could be no doubting the inevitability of the scene that would greet me when I walked the few paces back to the galley. Instead, delaying the moment as long as I could, I calmly finished writing the log, and then went to survey the devastation.
The contents of my mug were indeed spread over the entirety of the galley floor, coating it in a thick layer of oily, gelatinous liquid and still surprisingly dry and spindly noodles.
"Hah. It’s Chicken Soup for the Cabin Sole”, I grimly thought, as I began the disgusting job of mopping it up while sliding around on my now oily knees.
45 minutes later, I resumed my spot in the cockpit, my good humour as evaporated as the contents of that damned packet, but at least now with a steaming mug of tomato soup (with croutons) in my hand.
___
Day 3 Statistics:
Time on passage so far: 2 day, 20 hours
Distance covered in last 24 hours: 134 nm
Average Speed in last 24 hours: 5.6 knots
Distance to go: 757 nm
Number of sheets of paper towel used to mop up the disgusting gelatinous mess: 53 (I did count these – I’d begun to realise your unquenchable thirst for irrelevant statistics).
