Cleanliness is next to godliness

The Passepartout has never looked so clean nor been so tidy since we first stepped aboard last August. This is quite an achievement considering that three, now four, people have living in this confined space for twenty days, mostly at sea.

Most of the credit goes to Gabriella, she is one of the most fastidious people I have ever met. Gabriella's view is that when someone else has washed the dishes, cleaned the shower stall, tidied the bookshelf of washed the floor, there's always room for improvement. She runs a critical eye over my poor attempts at keeping the galley clean.

In Gabriella's universe there is no room for dirt or bad smells and she has a scientific approach to their banishment. Food preparation surfaces get treated with hydrogen peroxide. Dishcloths and sponges from the sink have a nightly soak in industrial strength cleanser. All fresh fruit and vegetables were washed in a solution of potassium permanganate before they came aboard.

And that's not all.

Garbage disposal is usually a problem on a yacht like this. We don't want to throw anything into the ocean apart from vegetable matter or fish guts. But we don't want to have multiple bags of smelly kitchen waste along for most of the journey, rotting in the heat as our route dips ever more southwards.

I thought we had a good piece of advice from our son Amir. He told us that when buying drinking water, always go for the 5 of 8 litre jugs. These have a large opening suitable for cramming in kitchen waste and then sealing hermetically. When full, you just have to store them in a cool dark place until the end of the voyage. Gabriella's strategy is different.

It begins on the dock where the absolute maximum amount of packaging is left behind on dry land. Anything that can be transferred from it's wrapper, can or plastic pot finds its way into Tupperware. If there was a way of leaving eggshells behind while keeping the eggs fresh, we'd do it.

Any packaging that comes on board is further reduced to the absolute minimum after the contents have been consumed. This means cutting, folding and crushing and flattening. Before they get thrown into the bin, yoghurt cartons, remnants of vacuum packs that contained cheese or sausage and anything else that might smell are scoured with sea water and soap. Each morning Gabriella checks that whoever was cleaning up the night before followed the rules. Invariably people cut corners and she has to 're-do the rubbish.'

The end result is that after eight days since leaving Mindelo and preparing three meals a day for four people, we have just moved our first bag of rubbish into the chain locker where it will stay until I find a bin at St Lucia. It weighs around 400g and smells like a fresh bouquet.

Did I mention that the first Spanish phrase she taught me was 'El flojo trabaja doble'? (The idler works twice)

But it's not all rubbish. Today was fine with no sign of rain squalls. We are running under genoa and main in 15 knots of wind with a 2 meter swell. Everyone managed to catch up on sleep, we caught a good size fish for tomorrow's lunch but the freezer is still not working properly.