Lobstah

 

Yup, we're still in New England and where there's chowdah, there's also lobstah. Sometimes when people ask us why we're traveling around the world on a boat, we answer that we're just trying to sample lobster worldwide in order to figure out where we'd like to settle down. We do love lobstah.

Being brought up in Massachusetts, I don't remember not loving lobster or not knowing how to clean one. It's an art which I mastered early. I can remember a time when lobster was cheaper by the pound than hamburger, so the buying decision was easy. When I first met David who hails from Denver, he visited me in New Hampshire and I surprised him with two 2-pound beauties from the local lobster pound. I dove in and in my euphoric state, (think Darryl Hannah in “Splash”) it took me a minute or two to notice he wasn't eating.

"What's up? You don't like lobster?”

“I love lobster, but I've never had to clean one.”

Well, that was easy. I gave him a lesson in lobster cleaning 101 and there was no looking back. He quickly discovered that though I told him he might as well just give me the tail meat since there wasn't much to it, I was just giving him a hard time. He hasn't hesitated since and cleans a lobster down to the last morsel quicker than you can say “Pass the butter.”

In our travels, we've eaten Caribbean spiny lobster in the remote Islas Aves, where we traded lobster daily for charging a battery for the local fishermen. In the Cook Islands, we had another spiny lobster treat compliments of a local friend in the Omoka village. In Tonga, our friends at Matamaka Island gave us a huge lobster for dinner one Sunday after church, already steam-cooked in an underground umu. All these gifts were well-received to say the least and promptly devoured.

At Tristan da Cunha in the South Atlantic, lobstering is the main occupation of the islanders. Everyone participates in this delicately eco-balanced endeavor which keeps the island a financially self-sustaining British Overseas Territory. The lobsters are flash-frozen in the island's tiny processing plant and shipped by boat to South Africa where they fetch a pretty penny. Thanks to Tristanians, Andy and Lorraine Repetto, we left Tristan with a freezer full of Tristan lobsters. I dare say, we had had our fill (at least temporarily) by the time we reached Cape Town.

In Australia, we sampled Moreton Bay bugs, aka slipper or flathead lobsters. All lobsters are called “crays” or crayfish in Australia and the lobstermen there are called cray fishermen. Even the lobster traps are different than we're used to seeing in here in the USA.

In New Zealand, we sampled crays in Milford Sound, Fiordland when a local lobsterman offered us a couple of culls. While anchored in remote Port Davey, Tasmania, we heard a knock on the hull just around dusk. A local cray fisherman gave us two huge crays for dinner. He asked if we knew how to cook them? This born-and-bred New England girl had no problem answering that question and that generous gift was steaming in the pot in no time.

En route from Easter Island to Pitcairn Island in the South Pacific, David decided he'd construct a lobster trap out of whatever he could muster up on the boat and try his luck when we got to Pitcairn. No luck catching lobster, but it certainly did occupy quite a bit of his time on the passage.

The biggest difference we find between Maine or American lobster is the big, tender, succulent front claws which are absent on the spiny varieties. We think the cold-water lobster meat itself is sweeter than the tropical water varieties, too. But the sampling is not yet complete. We have the rest of the world's lobsters to try before making our final decision. So many lobsters … so little time.

Lobster trivia: In addition to the usual green-brown lobsters that turn red when cooked, there are also blue, orange and yellow anomalies. It appears they all turn red when cooked and they all taste the same. Really? You'd think if you were blue or yellow, they'd give you a break, huh?

Drinking Our Way Around the World

Every country seems to have its most popular drink and we try to sample each one. We hate to miss anything that the locals think is good. Some are soft drinks; some are not so soft. We're equal-opportunity drinkers. We try them all.  

First of all, everywhere we've traveled, there is one common denominator drink-wise: Coca Cola. In fact, we just learned that Coca Cola/Coke is the second most identifiable English word in the world, just behind “Okay” which is first. Most soft drinks are drunk warm, off the shelf in other countries. No ice mania like in the US. Usually the range of products is not broad. Unlike the diet, original, caffeine-free, vanilla, cherry, zero, ad infinitum offerings, there's Coke and, well, that's about it.

Peru had Inca Cola, a sweet, bright yellow, carbonated soft drink that was so sugary, it made our teeth hurt when we tried it. Pisco, however, is a distilled grape brandy that is absolutely wonderful. There's a controversy between Peru and Chile as to who makes the best pisco. Our friend, Gonzalo, is probably reading this and without a doubt, Peru wins this controversy in our book. Gonzalo makes the best “Pisco Sours” on the planet. We visited his friend's bodega, Vista Alegre, and got a first-hand look at the pisco-making process, sampling several pisco sours along the way. We have cruising friends who loved pisco so much, they converted a water tank in their boat to a pisco tank!

Rum in the Caribbean and South America was cheap, cheap, cheap. Every island seemed to have its own. Some rums we tried were magnificent and as sip-able as a cognac. Others never made it past our tongues for fear they would rot our throat and stomach linings on the way down.

Then, of course, there's kava in the South Pacific. David sampled kava in Tonga and Fiji where women traditionally don't partake of it. I was feeling a little left out. In Fiji, it was required by law that a certain amount of kava be presented to each village chief as a gift on arrival. We carried some with us all through our travels there. It's made from a particular black pepper plant (Piper methysticum) and tends to calm you, rather than intoxicate you. It also numbs your tongue and lips. We were told it gets stronger the farther west you go in the South Pacific. Originally, it was masticated by young men, spit into kava bowls, water was added and everyone drank. That's still done in some areas, but we (yes, even women in Vanuatu) sampled kava several times in Vanuatu and watched them make it the modern way, using a meat grinder. It tastes very much like mud water.

In New Zealand we tried L & P (Lemon & Paeroa), “world famous in New Zealand” and only in New Zealand. It's made with lemon and spring water from the town of Paeora and it's pretty good. It's a Kiwi-ana thing.

In Australia, Bundaberg Ginger Beer caught our attention first … mostly because we arrived in Bundaberg, I guess. Not to be confused with ginger ale, ginger beer is spicy and wonderful and we drank lots of it in Australia. We haven't started brewing it ourselves yet, but you can buy kits for it.

We sampled wines in many countries. Chile has its cabernet sauvignon. Malbec was best in Argentina. They even have malbec-flavored ice cream! Uruguay offered a new variety of wine … tannat … which is wonderful and still rarely available in the US. (I think the Uruguayans drink it all themselves.) New Zealand has perfected its sauvignon blancs. Tasmania has cool climate wines that were excellent. We especially enjoyed pinot gris. Australia has a vibrant wine industry, but their wines are expensive.

In addition to the fine wines offered in the Winelands of South Africa, we discovered Amarula. Oh, my, what a delectable cream liqueur. Made from the native marula fruit, elephants, zebra, kudu and rhinos all take advantage of this fruit when it's ripe in the wild.

Let's not forget maté, that bitter herbal drink that the Argentinos and Uruguayans drink constantly. We tried it and found it too bitter, but we're told it's an acquired taste.

We even threw back vodka shooters at the southernmost bar on the planet at the Ukranian Vernadsky Station in Antarctica. Talk about packing a wallop!

What's the best? Depends on our mood and where we are at the time. Wherever we are, that's the best at the moment. So what's your favorite drink?

The Blue View - Microbrewery Nine of Cups

 

A couple of years ago in Fiji, we were invited aboard another sailboat for sundowners. The skipper had brewed his own beer aboard and was eager to share some with us. That was the nastiest, foulest beer I can remember tasting, and after politely nursing it for an hour or so, I finally managed to down it all. So when we were aboard our good friends' sailboat Fifth Season in Sydney a year ago and were offered some homebrew, I was a bit reluctant to try it.

I needn't be. His brew was outstanding. He had brewed several varieties and it was like visiting a microbrewery. He had purchased a brewing kit and had been brewing beer for a year or more. I asked lots of questions and got a lot of good information and suggestions.

Beer here in Australia is quite expensive by U.S. standards. Brewing your own beer, on the other hand, is quite inexpensive. As a result, there is rarely a town in OZ that doesn't have a brew supply store. Even the local Kmart and groceries carry the basics.

I found a DIY brew-kit made by Coopers, an Australian brewery, that included everything I needed to brew my first batch. Fermenter, hydrometer, bottles, brew mix... everything was there. In addition, it came with a short video with all the instructions. The average sailor could do this. In fact a high IQ chimpanzee could manage it. Just the thing for me.

The results were outstanding. So far I've made several lagers, several varieties of Pale Ales, a cider, and an English Bitter. Each batch makes 23 liters or about six gallons, and costs roughly $20-$25 a batch. That's roughly 35 cents for a 12 ounce bottle or 42 cents a pint. Not bad.

Lest you think the rule that “nothing is ever easy aboard a boat” doesn't apply here, there are a couple of catches with brewing aboard a sailboat. The first catch is that we have to be anchored or berthed somewhere for a couple of weeks. Unless I can figure out how to gimbal a 6 gallon container of fermenting beer, we can't go sailing without the risk of turning the bilge into our fermentation vessel. We missed a weather window once because the brew wasn't ready to bottle. And since it requires a large amount of water for washing and sterilizing everything as well as for the beer itself, it's best done somewhere that we have access to water ashore.

So while Nine of Cups is berthed here in a quiet marina with plenty of water, I'll brew up a couple of batches. Of course, with that comes the necessity of frequent taste tests to maintain proper quality control.

Our youngest son was interested in trying his hand at homebrewing, so I checked to see what was available in the States. It turns out that Coopers markets the same brew kit via Amazon in the U.S. I highly recommend it.

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