See the World:
Learn to Cook
Ben McCanna
View from the head rig.
It is a cold, wet day. We woke this morning to cloudy skies over Holbrook Harbor, and after an hour-long shore trip to the colonial village of Castine, those skies let loose. The sideways rain that now falls upon West Penobscot Bay has cleared the Angelique’s decks of everyone but crew.
The Angelique has two things going for it on a day like this. First, the deckhouse salon offers a warm, dry refuge for passengers to view the rain-soaked scenery. Second, the Angelique employs a bang-up cook.
A frugal traveler who wants to see the world by boat has two choices: 1) join the Navy; or 2) learn to cook. Chad Pelletier, a Mainer in his 30s, has done both.
As a Navy sailor, Chad spent four years voyaging the seas aboard the aircraft carrier USS John F. Kennedy as a bosun’s mate. When he left the service in 2000, Chad moved inland to work as a nightclub bouncer in Memphis. A few years later, after visiting his family in coastal Maine, Chad realized he belonged near the ocean. He enrolled in a culinary arts program in his home state.
Chad at work.
After leaving the kitchen classroom, Chad entered the galley. Last year he served as the cook on the Lewis R. French; this year he’s on the Angelique; this winter he hopes to travel the world as a personal chef on a private yacht.
The attributes that made Chad a reliable bouncer also make him a trustworthy cook: He’s a big guy. Chad’s also prideful. And serious. One might even say rigid. Maybe it was the years he spent in the Navy, or perhaps it’s something inherent in his being, but Chad is a by-the-book kind of guy. (So much so that Chad was fired twice from the Memphis nightclub for failing to overlook low-level, management-tolerated criminality.)
In a cook, however, these are good problems. You want someone who is serious. On some vessels you might find cooks who are there for the sailing — people for whom the galley is a mere entrée into the larger windjamming world. Their food is fine — better than good — but you really want someone for whom the galley is the endpoint: someone who is there for the love of cooking, someone with professional training, someone who invests himself into every dish. A perfectionist.
Naturally, this person may arrive with some quirks. The temperamental demands of a cook may chafe against schooner bums who, by their very nature, go with the flow. While a schooner bum must bend good-naturedly to the capricious wills of current and breeze, a cook is single-mindedly beholden to the clock: at 8:00 a.m. there is breakfast; at 12:00 p.m. there is lunch; and at 6:00 p.m. there is dinner. The fact that a single boat employs a handful of easy-going deckhands alongside a routine-driven cook does not signal an incongruity; it’s an appropriate allocation of resources.
And the Angelique provides the perfect space for a cook to ply his craft. The galley is located forward of the deckhouse salon, and it is the envy of many cooks within the Maine windjammer fleet. Other cooks work belowdecks, but Chad—along with all the passengers who’ve escaped the rain—stands in full view of the windswept Bay.
In a few hours, Chad will serve the final dinner of this trip. The passengers will file out of the elegant deckhouse salon and into the messroom for bourbon chicken, fresh corn, and roasted red potatoes with herbs. The rain might have ended this trip on a down note, but, lucky for us, the Angelique offers joys independent of weather.
Up next: A Pirate Adventure Cruise aboard the Isaac H. Evans.
Gilkey Harbor.
Posted on Sunday, September 21, 2008 in Permalink
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Reader Comments:
You rock Ben!
See you on the slopes...
Chad would have been assisted by two experienced galley crew to prep, present and clean up. It's not glamorous or "cool" but very necessary to the running of a smooth, efficient experience for any guest.