Team SCA in the Volvo Ocean Race - Day 8 - The Peppercorn Dilemma

Lunch was a new dish for us: pork, green beans, potato, and green pepper. If you think about it, that pretty impressive meal out here, and it was pretty good, except the green pepper was green peppercorn and there were thousands of them. I wish I were exaggerating.  "I think I burned more calories picking them out, than consuming a proper bite of food," Stacey said. Stacey does not like spicy food, so lunch was a bit of a challenge.  Out here if you don't like your meal, well then you don't eat. Or you eat cereal, which does not have enough calories to keep you going. Racing offshore, you become more of a machine than human so keeping the machine stocked up on fuel is essential.

 

On Team SCA, the girls burn so many calories during a watch that not eating is not an option. So they deal with the chicken that resembles more of a sponge than chicken and the dinner with too many peppercorns.

For each day, we have allocated one breakfast, lunch, and dinner. For breakfast we generally have muesli or porridge, and the other two meals are hot, generally a stew or a curry. All meals are freeze dried, which means they must be rehydrated with boiling water. The main meals make up about 75% of our consumed energy (25% each meal).

Aside from main meals, each girl is allocated two energy bars and a chocolate bar. The bars make up approximately 25% of our caloric intake (about 8.3% each). There are then communal bags of dried fruits and trail mix, and if we are lucky, extra slabs of chocolate.

Before we left Alicante, our team doctor reminded us that eating is just as much a part of the job as sailing hard and fast. It is also incredibly important to remain hydrated and drink electrolytes in order to keep the body (aka machine) working at its optimal is essential. On land a lawyer wouldn't show up to work without their case briefs, and out here a sailor wouldn't show up to watch without being properly hydrated and fed.

So when there's so many peppercorns in the meal that it's virtually inedible it can be a bit of a dilemma: eat and suffer short term or not eat and suffer until the next meal, eight hours later. Either way, it is vital to bring nothing but 100% on deck. (www.teamsca.com)