Sailing the Salish Sea: A Vacation Simplified // San Juan Islands, USA

***Originally published on the Gourmandly Blog, May 21, 2016.

The fog draped us in a damp embrace in Blind Bay at Shaw Island. Through the opaque cloak of clouds came the morning symphony of marine birds. Wrapped in North Face Gortex and Patagonia fleece, the guests cozied together in the galley around the table cupping mugs of freshly brewed Orcas Island coffee and mint teas. The crumbs of the recently devoured blackberry pie from Whidbey Island Pie Co. still graced the compass-rose inlayed table. Nothing moved outside. Not even the water rippled. We cranked the diesel heater to its max on the Beneteau 50 sailboat sporting a dark mahogany-colored galley and an abstract painting hanging next to the sink, giving the leased vessel a lived-in feel. This was a perfect day to indulge ourselves at the fireside bar and sauna of Rosario Resort just across the channel, so we redirected our course North to the quiet East Sound.

Stretching to the last nautical mile of the Northwest United States border, the San Juan Islands archipelago consists of 128 named islands — plus an additional 400 smaller unnamed islands which serve as platforms for colonies of seals and flocks of birds. Although ensconced in the marine backyard of Seattle, few Seattleites have navigated the more isolated islands that the ferries do not reach. The complex tidal range of this area that is responsible for producing such a lush variety of aquatic wildlife also creates its notoriously strong currents. These currents can reach up to 8 knots in certain areas—enough to stop a sailboat our size from propelling forward if incorrectly timed to the tidal cycle—a deterrence for many less advanced boaters and sailors.

This is where Paul learned to sail. It’s where he scattered the ashes of his grandfather. Where he learned the best place to drop a crab pot and how to break their shells open on the side of the hull. Where he raced dinghies with his two older brothers. Where I first learned how to cook in a rocking galley, and bake salmon on cedar planks. Where I collected wild lavender for a bouquet, and poked my fingers into the yellow anemones and purple starfish of the shallow tide pools like a child. Where, sitting in the rain in my kayak, I witnessed my first Orca whale up-close and eye level. And where we first vacationed together, touring around the islands three summers ago on the quaint sailboat Paul had eccentrically repurposed—him at the helm, me in the galley cooking the rock crab we had just caught. It’s where our summer romance flourished into a relationship. Now, the stakes were higher. Our passion had become our profession, hosting guests onboard for a customized charter, eager to show them all the places we had come to cherish—Shallow Bay at Sucia island with its sculptured sandstone, Matia Island with its nature reserve teeming with birds, and Stuart Island with a hike that takes you past old barns and pine trees to Turn Point Lighthouse.

Our guests hailed from every direction: Oregon, California (by way of Thailand), Iowa, and Calgary. Except for one pair of friends—doctors dedicated to spending their retirement traveling the world—no one previously had known each other. One worked in theater; another in engineering. Some had never before experienced sailing. They had all arrived for a week-long summer sailing adventure that was a change from the usual sailing destinations of the Caribbean or Mediterranean. This would not be a boat trip over turquoise blue water to a rainbow beach bar. No, this would be a color palette celebrating both heather grey and crystal skies, evergreen branches, and so many vast shades of sapphire blue water.

The flip-up table on the aft deck became the centerpiece of our trip, where we spent much of our time congregated around our outdoor dining room. In the warmer rose-blushed evenings, we gathered around a feast of local spot prawns cooked in garlic and white wine that previously had journeyed with us, alive, in a bucket tied to the swim platform as we sailed from Friday Harbor. In the cooler afternoons, the table hosted rounds of Bananagrams with flights of different beers, wines, and ciders made locally in Washington State. It hosted broken off chunks of tender white Dungeness crab cooked in ocean water that Paul’s father had caught for us that morning, from a specific drop location off one of the fingers of Sucia’s Echo Bay where we had anchored. The table hosted whole coral-colored Sockeye salmon flaked from a cedar plank covered in summer leeks. It hosted the leftover droplets of truffle oil drizzled on heirloom tomatoes in all their multicolored brilliance.

I wanted to share with the guests the foods I grew up with, unmasked: lightly flavored and served whole. Food that I only ate and served in the summer because that is when it came to life. Each island we visited brought a new bounty specific to the San Juans. This tour through the culinary vastness of the Pacific Northwest showcased what is most important to me about my home.

We drifted quietly through narrow inlets, past the skeletons of trees topped with bald eagles. We rode the tides across the straits. We sat in the soft sand. We wove through forests of Madronas that stretched out from the perimeters of the islands. We crawled across the wind-cratered sandstone rocks. We clinked ruby glasses of wine to a brilliant sunset. We swung on an abandoned, lopsided wooden swing on our hike through Stuart Island. We peacefully read books on the bow. We polar-bear plunged off the stern. We watched blue herons glide silently over the water at dusk. Occasionally the nose of a seal popped up on our stern, following us like a curious dog. We strolled silently under the filtered sunlight of old-growth forests awash in moss green and blankets of ferns. At night, we scrubbed our dishes in the ocean to see our forks turn to wands creating bubbles of bioluminescence.

The final day, we awoke to the sun’s gentle warmth as the weather returned to its typical celebrated summer climate. When the sun shines on the San Juans, the whole place sparkles. Its light glittered on our wake as we sailed back to Anacortes crossing through Rosario Strait. The guests took turns at the helm, navigating our boat through the Northwest winds that blow through the strait. On our final and last sail, a herd of porpoises danced in the distance—a final farewell to the islands teeming with wildlife.

It became a perfect vacation, not for its exoticism or snapshot moments, but for its sense of community. The true breadth of what a vacation means in regards to a boating adventure changed. We became a fluid crew, working together to trim the sails, coil the lines, tidy the galley, and batten down the hatches when needed. We all loved who we traveled with as much as the location we traveled in. We valued seeing how something was created more than just the final product’s presentation. And we appreciated the relevance of a particular flavor to its birthplace, not just the dish itself.

Any Pacific Northwestern will gush over their glimmering summers that make up for all their long, lethargic, waterlogged winters. Summers made of long days that stretch into stunning sunsets that reflect onto the water, and endless outdoor activities. But we discovered that what most made this journey special, was the crew we became onboard. That is why the memory that lingers most is the pleasure of that foggy morning, simply sitting amongst a warm group of people, in a warm cabin, with a warm cup of coffee.

An Invitation to the Spice Isles // Saint Vincent and the Grenadines

If you unpacked my suitcase on my maiden voyage to the Grenadines, you would find a few somewhat modest but colorful bikinis, worn-in Havanas sandals, my Shun chef knife, smoked salts from Seattle, and butcher twine for trussing a chicken, just in case.

I was to set sail, as I had done a dozen or so other times in the past year, to cook for guests aboard. I step on to a new, unfamiliar, boat each time—a Lagoon 52, a Bavaria 51, a Leopard 44, a Juneau 53, some with a reefing system and self-tailing winches—all boating terms that sounded like gibberish when I first began the work. The inconsistencies of chartering only exasperate the many variables of travel—will I sleep on the bow or in the galley if it rains; will my propane oven work or will it go out mid-week as it often does; do I have enough wine glasses such that if three break on a big wave I have enough for dinner that night; will my fridge be cool enough so that my meat won’t sour a day after its purchased or will it freeze instead on the day it’s meant to be used for lunch? As the chef, I commit to making the best of whatever is available to buy that day. But tacked on to all these variables this time was a destination I had never been to before. I knew nothing of St. Vincent and the Grenadines before my captain, business partner, and boyfriend, said that we were headed there to take some thrill-seeking kiteboarders on a weeklong wind-hopping tour through its myriad tiny islands.

Kiteboarding has bubbled up to the surface of mainstream consciousness, having moved from its place within the perimeter of “extreme sports” to one that the kids try out on family vacation in the tropics. Don’t be fooled, though. I watched as even our seasoned kiteboarders were swept out of the protected lagoon by a strong downwind gust or forced to paddle against the current to retrieve their board. When you are harnessed to a kite four times your size that hangs two-stories above, one wrong move can plaster you against the trunk of a palm tree if you’re not careful, then warp your kite like tumbleweed in a tornado.

I am no kiteboarder. I get my thrills by walking a mile up a dusty road, off of a tip from a local named Black Boy. I came across him smoking a joint under the shade of his palm tree on Mayreau Island, and he pointed me in the direction of a village on the other side of the island selling the only pork ribs around. Rather than accept a ride, I chose to find it on my own walking under the intense heat of the midday sun. What I seek, like the kiteboarders who hired me as their guide, is to voyage into the unfamiliar.

Backtrack a few days ago before the trip started. We were walking along a dusty trail leading to a picturesque waterfall—the kind you swim under and send the picture as a postcard—when we crossed paths with a toothless farmer wearing barely-held up pants, muddy rubber boots, and a faded t-shirt. His creole was too thick to comprehend by my unpracticed white-American ears. Without prompt from us, he motioned to follow him deeper into the jungle. While many might hesitate before following an indecipherable stranger holding a machete, we nonetheless accepted his invitation, which took us to a tree hanging with ripe hibiscus-colored baseball-size fruits. I relished in the exotic taste of these tropical fruits as I ate the two, then five fruits passed my way. The skin was waxy and crisp like a pear with a white juicy interior that softened as I bit into it. Its delicate rose-like smell wafted around us in the shade of its tree. I later discovered its many names as I wandered Grenada’s Saturday market—French cashew, plumrose, Malay apple, rose apple, and others. Our fruit farmer, who had invited us to share in the plenty of his personal French cashew tree, planted a stone’s throw from his one room home, filled our backpacks to the brim. The fruit acted as a wordless welcome to these Spice Isles, filled with smells and tastes I would soon joyfully discover and pass on to my guests. The next day, I displayed his beautiful fruits in a white bowl at the entrance to the boat—an invitation to our guests as they boarded their vessel and home for the week.

Food was my currency of communication.

On the islands, grocery stores were scarce and minimal, so instead I bought all the food from someone: mahi mahi from Xavier, a local fisherman who visited my boat every other morning; soursop from Jenny who manned a fruit stand on Union Island; and lobster from Cliff who cooked it alongside his girlfriend on the sandy shores of the uninhabited Tobago Cays surrounded by a ring of coral reefs. Like a nostalgic nod to the days before giant one-stop-shop grocery stores, food here still remained an exchange not just of goods, but of information and personal history. It was a seamless part of the daily routine in the Grenadines and the backbone of social interaction. 

Underneath the rainbow of umbrellas at Grenada’s Saturday market, women and men softly chatted as they hand-shelled pigeon peas into plastic bags, occasionally taking a break to coax me into buying their baby purple peppers, stalks of bananas, or clusters of nutmeg and mace and jeera (aka cumin). On the coast of Grenada at dusk, I walked past a group of twenty or more villagers as they pulled in the heavy-laden nets full of jacks fish. Their ages ranged from little kids who helped collect the squirming fish into buckets to older men and women who negotiated the communal task of pulling the rest of the net on to shore before night fell. The deal was, you help, you take home fish.

As the outsider, I yearned to be invited into the local community. To join the conversation, I’d ask about recipes. One fruit vendor who quietly sat beside his wife in their life-size doll house painted in bright Easter egg colors with a small roof awning to provide shade, jumped up excitedly as I began to feel and smell the aromatic baby pineapples hanging in their front doorway.  I hadn’t intended to buy any, having brought many of the islands luscious pineapples back to the boat already. But he stepped in, asking what I did with the rinds. His eyes widened as I replied, joking with a smile that I was crazy to throw away the rind of the pineapple, when they were perfectly good added to boiling water, a little sugar, and made into homemade pineapple juice. The draw of trying something new from a local tip convinced me to buy a bunch.

At a stop in the interior hills of Grenada a young woman grilling in her repurposed oil drum told me that the secret to her family’s remarkably succulent chicken barbecue was that after they boil the chicken (before grilling it), they add the leftover water and a case of Carib beer to the sauce. Her family, in concert with the many others, dragged their makeshift barbecue to the street every Friday, turned on the reggae, and greeted friends and family with fresh juice or local rum as they informally passed through, eating whatever was cooking or just catching up. It was an open invitation.

My challenge was to acquaint myself as quickly as possible with these foreign foods, enough to create a week’s worth of luxury meals for ten hungry guests on a constantly unstable platform. I have to remain malleable and attuned to the whims of the group and the logistics of sailing, accommodating for allergies, a fluctuating daily schedule, and variables of seasickness, sunburn, and dehydration. But for my crew of kiteboarders, the practice of remaining fluid was effortless. Despite the countless unknowns and unplanned excursions -- or perhaps because of them -- our only expectation was of something we hadn’t yet experienced. We were each excited by the adventure of navigating through the unknown.

Our week was framed by the full moon. To celebrate, we congregated on the windward side of Union Island, where Jeremie Tronet, the pro-kiteboarder most famous for his “Jesus walk” trick, was hosting a full moon party complete with barbequed Lambie (the meat of the marine mollusk found in a conch shell) and rum. Dressed in black with lights running through his kite and down around his legs, Jeremie walked into the water towards a large metal basin that hovered above the saltwater flats, filled with a tower of dried palm fronds. Invisible in the darkness were the four thin nylon threads that connected him to his kite, which wafted directly above him like a patient hawk above its prey. At once, he lit a spark and the fronds erupted into a 15-foot flame.  With it he sped away from the statue into a dark waters beyond. Silhouetted by the spotlight of the full moon, gaining speed, he leapt over the flame, turning the energy of the wind into an artistic performance. He waltzed with his kite over and around the flame, to and from the waters edge to a beach of growing onlookers. Once the fire had nestled into the ocean, our crew of eager kiteboarders—like giddy schoolchildren at the last bell—flocked to the water, their boards in hand and tethered to their kites like wings ready for flight. One-by-one, they tilted their kites downwind, on a race through the moonlight highway.

The wind and water shape these islands. I met Kevon, a 28-year-old fisherman in a tiny low-lit rum bar on the southern part of mainland Grenada. He was in tune with global current events—while listening to Jamaican rap music he spouting dreams of visiting Mongolia to see its animals before they became extinct. Although very much influenced by his “millennial” generation, he also remained keen on preserving his past. He sailed around the islands to sell his fish to a nearby restaurant, and in his free time raced wooden sailboats with his friends. The boats are still made right around the corner from his home, a continuation of the tradition of boat building of his Ciboney and later Carib ancestors. On our return to Grenada, we sailed alongside a small sailboat manned by three locals—older gentlemen, whose white curly beards were a stark contrast to their dark, sun-weathered faces – while their fishing net dragged behind them, the end of it marked by an almost invisible empty 5-liter water jug. Like Kevon, they practiced the old style of fishing in the Grenadines as a means to catch fish. Sometimes preservation of heritage is born out of necessity, and boating was an integral part of the daily diet. It was essential to the Grenadine’s food culture, thus allowing it to remain intact.

I was seduced by how personal the food sources were, lured by the homegrown meats, fruits, and vegetables sold in the markets or on the street. How little of outside exported food there was. There was a life to the food outside of the vertical fluorescent-lit aisles of a grocery store. What a relief from the plastic and packaging—literally and culturally—that plagues other popular tropical destinations.

If you opened my suitcase upon returning home, you would find dried shredded cassava for the cassava pone recipe from Margaret, a welcoming B&B owner tucked into Woburn Bay on Grenada I stayed with my first few nights before moving on to the boat; Curry for the fish curry recipe Kevon explained over a couple shots of rum in the dimly-lit aptly named “Hangover” bar; And Ms. Jo’s hand-rolled cocoa balls mixed with nutmeg, mace, and cinnamon—the three essentials of the Spice Isles—from Saturday’s farmer market on Grenada. All remnants of an invitation. An exchange between person and place.

---

Bathed In Jewels // Islands of Naples Bay, Italy

If one were to look at a map of Italy, one would easily miss the small little islands equally spaced in the Tyrrhenian Sea off the coastal city of Naples.

Yet these islands -- Procida, Ventotene, Ponza, Palmarola, Ischia, and Capri --host the most dramatic union of natural and anthropological beauty I have ever seen. The whimsy in its people, its dramatic natural beauty, and the setting for serene sailing combined to make a truly unparalleled trip, both for myself, and for our guests.

When we first arrived to Procida, on a quick ferry from Naples, we were met with a row of pink and yellow homes facing the marina. Their bright but decaying paint jobs, with peeling walls and sloped wooden shutters, gave the appearance of an old but cheerful lot. We found this kind of colorful vibrance everywhere we visited, in both the architecture and the people: grandfathers convincing their grandchildren to make their first leap into the water off the bathing rocks of Ventotene; teenage girls gossiping in their soft sing-song Italian on the way back from the beach on Ischia; the cascading lemons, peaches, plums, apricots, heirloom tomatoes, and herbs that seduced you in to each hole-in-the-wall market. The islands lured you with their playful nature, allowing the common day-to-day stresses of life to gently flutter away.

Set juxtaposed from this cheerful whimsy was the sheer, spectacular display of hundred-foot white cliffs jutting vertically out of a royal blue sea. Of the islands, the three that marked itself so permanently into my brain were the white cliffs of Ponza, the blue-hued caves of Palmarola with its jagged-green rocks and lavender-pebbled beaches, and lastly, the jaw-dropping white-washed rocks on the south side of Capri, where flocks of white birds swirled in and out of its caves. Rarely do you see nature so naturally, unabashedly white, or caves flecked in gold. I felt humbled by its vastness, honored by its uniqueness. Most of this natural beauty went untouched, though occasionally, we came across a stunning castle built right into the rocks of its island. One such castle on the island of Ischia was remarkable for its view of the town and sea below. Despite its sometimes dark history (it was used as a political prison in the 20th century), one got a sense that this castle was as much for enjoying the pleasure of viewing these islands as it was for guarding it.

The winds seemed to always be in our favor, with a gentle breeze that blew in our direction. There is a quieting effect to sailing--when the seas are calm and the weather is fair--that leaves one in sort of a serene dream-state. Because of your place on the horizon, you are always looking at the rise and fall of the sun and moon, and this cycle tunes us in to a natural state we've forgotten. On one of our final mornings, we rose at 4 am to depart from Ponza and make the 60-mile sail to Ischia. Our journey began East, directly into a sun that slowly began to fill the sky, composing a gradient of yellow to orange to blue. Our guests slept onboard and as they woke, their faces showered in gold light, our sailboat--both our home and our vessel for the week--crept across a placid ocean. 

It is hard for one to ever find a sense of stillness or tranquility these days, and yet I found it nearly every morning and night in these islands. From the soothing effects of the natural hot springs on Ischia to the curdled yellow highway reflected from the moon across the water each night, these islands are bathed in a magic unlike any other. They will forever be imprinted in my mind as jewels of the Italian sea.

A Sea of Blue // Saronic & Clycades Islands, Greece

I will remember Greece first and foremost by its cheese. Feta was ubiquitous, and in the Saronic Gulf Islands in particular, it was almost exclusively made of sheep cheese. (This was a win for me, being lactose-intolerant to cow milk.) There was a wider range of styles of feta than we're used to in the United States —from fresh and creamy that sprinkled like chèvre, to harder, earthier kinds served as a solid block atop a salad. Greece has 19 registered cheeses that fall under the DOP or PDO label--Protected Designation of Origin in English--signifying cheeses grown and produced in the local region they traditionally come from. This regulation protects the cultural reputation of the cheese (and other food products across the EU) and of its producers. In that way, from how the sheep or goats are raised to how the cheese is cured or brined, generations of history and culture are preserved in each bite of cheese.

Equally emblazoned in my mind were the colorful hues of Greece. It is a country of blue—from the brightly painted blue shuttered houses, to the sapphire blue water, the dusty evening sky, and the distant peaks that jut out from the horizon. The fluoride-white houses illuminated the sage green olive trees and the camel-colored wheat fields that terraced into the ocean below. 

From artifact to architecture, history in Greece is woven into its surroundings. Tucked into Aegina island is the small town of Messagros, where a famous potter--the last of his kind--still practices an ancient style of pottery. Nektarios Garis, who carries on the traditions of his ancestors, still collects clay from claybeds around the island and fires his pottery in a wood-fired kiln fueled by fallen pine branches from around his home. On Andros, a beautiful little island in the north of the Cyclades (that is uniquely devoid of the common Greek crowd of tourists), old hand-stacked rock walls parcel out land along the steep cliffs. They seemed unused in current day, and more stand as a memory of ancient civilizations that date back further than I can even imagine. There is a similar feeling of awe, both from afar and close up, as you enter the ruins of the "Sacred Triangle" -- the Acropolis, the Temple of Poseidon, and the Temple of Aphaia--all of which were built by the early Minoan people (early Greek settlers) in the 5th century BC.

It seemed there were three main simple joys to life in the Greek islands: family, religion, and fish (nearly every inlet, hill, and island had a small one-room church on it). Fishing was a hobby and a profession. One taxi driver told me that his retirement plan was to fish everyday. Fisherman enter the ports in the morning on islands like Hydra, selling fish directly out of their iceboxes to locals (and throwing the scraps to the eager harem of cats awaiting their turn). Men and children idly walked the docks at night with a small cooler and a hand-reeled hook, waiting for the night squid to reveal themselves. 

What Greece gave me, and more specifically the Saronic Gulf Islands, was an opportunity to play with local ingredients in a creative way. As a chef on chartered sailboats, I got the opportunity to act on a food fantasy I’d had about provisioning directly from the local fisherman and the fruit and vegetable vendors, discussing recipe ideas like “Bake this one in fresh tomatoes”, or “Fry this one lightly with oil.” I got tips from the old woman at the dried fruit and coffee shop I loved on Aegina for her fassolatha recipe. On Porros, I was recommended the right cut of lamb for kleftiko, and on Spetses, step-by-step directions on how to make the famous frothy Greek coffee, frappe. I was inspired by the different personalities on each island--from the food to the people--and that context got built into each dish.

After traveling through the Greek islands and meeting the people on them, what struck me was that beyond their enthusiasm to share their food knowledge, it was their connection to their food that stood out to me. Their food came not just from an ocean but the ocean right outside their doorstep. One restaurateur in Porros told me that fish, like produce, varied by its season here. Restaurants won’t serve a fish out of season, nor will the same fish appear year-round. Instead, you eat only the fish that can be caught that morning. At restaurants, it was common practice to be welcomed back into the kitchen or the icebox where the server would introduce you to the fish that was being served that night, allowing you to choose by its appearance and size. Throughout the meal, servers would beam with pride when they asked “Did you like that? Have you tried this? My mother made that!” Their eagerness to share, their enthusiasm for what they were serving, their pride—it seemed to me a way of outward cultural expression through food. But it goes beyond just food as cultural identity. It’s a direct invitation to outsiders—“Come taste Greece,” they’re saying. Come learn who we are through our food.