Space Saving on A Sailboat. Live Aboard Tips

During the time when my wife and I lived aboard our boat "Rising Star" for a period of about three years, we had to learn some new ways of storing food, tools, charts, clothes and other items to prevent them from being destroyed by mold and mildew. Mold can be a real problem in the tropics, especially aboard a boat.

When we left the US we had stored our clothes as most people would when going on vacation, in suitcases and on hangers. In the islands we wore shorts and tee shirts most of the time, but when we actually needed to wear our other clothes on trips back to the States, we found about half of them, especially the cotton ones were destroyed by green mold.

In the case of food we did not have a fridge onboard, but chose instead to try to store food in the ways that were described by the cruising couple Lin and Larry Parday. They recommended using small hammocks in the galley for fruit and vegetables, and buying tinned goods such as canned butter, UHT long life milk and canned meats.

We stored our dry foods such as flour and rice in ziplock bags and while this method did keep most dry foods from spoiling, we still lost a lot of rice and flour from the moisture that was sealed inside the containeer before we closed the lid.

While anchored in Marsh Harbor Abaco we met a cruising couple that had developed quite an effective system for keeping food, clothes and tools.

For clothes they used a product called Space Bags that you place clothes in, and then suck the air out of with a vacuum cleaner.

For fruits and vegetables (they had onboard refrigeration), they used a Tupperware like system from Sharper Image which contains silver, which keeps food fresh for weeks.

For tools they used Tupperware containers to place all metal tools, bolts, screws, etc in, and then they tossed in silica gel packs to remove any remaining moisture.

Just sealing the lids on these does not get rid of the salt that is in the air which rusts your tools. You need the silica packs to remove the moisture that remains in the container after you close the lid.

For books they also used the Space Bags, as well as Ziplock freezer bags.

When we returned to Miami for supplies we bought a set of the Space Bags and a small, compact shop vac which we can run off of our inverter.

We visited the Sharper Image store at the mall and bought a set of the silver impregnated food and milk containers. When we opened a box of UHT milk we promptly poured it into the Sharper Image milk container. This extended the life of the opened milk by about one to two days with no refrigeration.

For more about our adventure read "How To Live Aboard A Boat, A Cruising Story"