This is a collection of recipes and recollections from over sixty years of cooking aboard boats. For almost half that time, the boats were my home, so marine cuisine became second nature.   

I bought my first boat in 1964, when I was in the Royal Canadian Air Force, serving with Search and Rescue in Comox on Vancouver Island. As one would expect for only twenty-five dollars, it was somewhat derelict – a sixteen-foot cedar lapstrake rowboat with a rotten transom. Over the winter, I removed the rot and, loosely based on pictures in books from the local library, converted the remains into a fifteen-foot leeboard sloop with canvas sails on lumberyard spars, and rigged it with ropes and fittings from a hardware store. With a sheet of canvas to drape over the boom, a food sack and a sleeping bag, I explored along the coast, among the islands and up Desolation Sound. 

I was only twenty at the time, so my cooking was initially rudimentary, little more than heating tinned stews and such in a pot over a Primus stove. But after jigging my first ling cod, I realised I needed to expand my equipment, ingredients and techniques. 

This book skips over the long learning process, which involved, among many other things, visiting eighty-five countries and exploring their cuisines, serving as an instructor in a culinary school, writing wine-and-food columns and feature articles in newspapers and magazines, and organising and conducting upscale wine-and-food tours of France, Italy, and California.

<><><>

This is the galley in Sequitur, my 15-metre sailboat, in which we explored the Americas from 2007 to 2012. 

This is the galley in Zonder Zorg, my 1908 converted 16.5-metre Friesian skûtsje, in which we've explored the European inland waterways since 2012.  

The photos and descriptions in the recipes are from my book, To Cape Horn in Comfort and Style and from my blog, Skûtsje Zonder Zorg.  External links to the related chapters or posts are at the end of each recipe. 

<><><>

Copyright © 2025 by Michael Walsh

All rights reserved. No part of these contents may be reproduced in any form by any electronic or mechanical means, including photocopying, recording, or information storage and retrieval, without permission in writing from the author.