Glad you’re enjoying the series.
After the Oyster expedition the cadets have 70 days of work aboard our freighters, much of it on the Inside Passage and Peninsula Passage where the navigation mix is 80/20 electronics/piloting.
Then comes 2-3 years more of academy, including more internships at other companies, with other ways of doing things.
So, they’ll be pretty well-rounded when they graduate
This week: the trainees from Maine Maritime Academy set out into the wilds on the Oyster. This episode has spectacular aerial photography of the Broughton Islands.
Makes me a bit sad to see them eating chili from a can, but we’ve all been there when it’s chili dogs for lunch aboard wherever.
They’re eating well, for a wilderness expedition. A lot of outdoor people rely on freeze-dried meals. Pour hot water in a bag and done. I find freeze-dried backpacking meals wretched. Canned food is a magnitude better than freeze-dried. And as you’ll see later the crew is supplied with fresh onions and veggies, and fruit.
The big issue with fresh food is bears. Most of the food supply is left out in the boat overnight, out at anchor, so the bears (and raccoons) can’t get to it. What little is left ashore at night has to be hung from a tree.
I was being a bit tongue-in-cheek, as chili holds a special place in my kitchen repertoire. Never been curious enough about freeze-dried meat to try some!
I figured y’all were seeing them well-fed to keep up with the energy outlay.
Lots of carbs, yes. For protein, they have Landjaeger sausage or tuna at lunch, and for dinner we use a lot of chunk chicken that comes in retort pouches, great for tacos, burritos and curry.
Lots of fat in the form of butter and peanut butter, for sustained energy.
For six-days the trainees are rowing machines, and their minds are navigational computers, and all of that is housed in 19-year old bodies which eat huge amounts of food. You have to keep them fueled up.
Having done something very similar as a young man freeze dried food was absolutely vile but since then there have been remarkable improvements in the taste and different menus. We had a very small backpack called a Mountain Mule with a hollow metal frame containing kerosene for fire starting. One change of dry clothes for sleeping in plus sleeping bag and food. The one carrying the tent didn’t carry food.
The pack could be so well sealed that we used to tie them together to float them across fast flowing streams after getting the first guy across all roped up.
It was character forming each day pulling on wet woollen shorts and socks in wet bush with some snow and ice about but hey, no bears or snakes.
My oldest son couldn’t stand oatmeal until we were backpacking on the AT when he woke up starving with very little to choose from. We were both too tired to make a big meal the night before & woke up famished. That morning he thought apple cinnamon oatmeal was the best thing in the world. His mom was ecstatic that I brought home a little guy who had a 180 degree opinion about a food he hated just 4 days before. When camping, I often make a simple pot of Knors Rice soup with a can of chili beans mixed together. When youngsters ask me how I cook such delicious food, I tell them the #1 secret, “Cook for starving people who burnt a bunch of calories & they usually love it”. Chili straight from a can? I remember it being delicious. Envy them, don’t feel sad for them.
Everything tastes fine when you’re by a campfire.
