Hints & tips

Here are a selection of little tips and hints we have collected/learned/stolen during our cruising so far.  It's by no means exhaustive, just off the top of my head as I type.
Always keen to learn more, please feel free to email us with your tips, and we will upload them (with an accreditation, of course) for the world to see.

• Never leave port without some white vinegar.  Its uses are many and varied – can be used for cleaning when diluted with water, keeps the heads from getting calcium build up when a cupful, neat, is flushed through the system. Use neat with some bicarb to keep your chopping boards fresh.
• When doing long passages and overnighters, a thermos flask filled with hot drinks or soup are very welcome and easy to handle.
• Eggs keep for a very long time if you cover them in a thin layer of vaseline before putting them in the fridge.
• Before you leave, cook up a big pot full of rice – you can put it into containers in the fridge and is really easy to reheat.
• Do not allow cardboard anywhere aboard! The glue used it food grade and weevils LOVE it!
• Get a wide mouth jar, some pantyhose, an elastic band and some packets of sprouting seeds – within a couple of days you'll have crunchy fresh greens and life without lettuce will be a thing of the past.
• If water is really an issue, you can use seawater to boil root vegetables in.
• Don't throw your books or magazines away! Cruisers love to get a new to them read, and are avid swappers!
• You're ashore and it starts to rain -  and you left a hatch open over your bed! Never worry again, a two dollar plastic tablecloth placed over the area of bed exposed to weather will keep your bedding dry and make shopping trips ashore stress free.
• Microwave flour on high for thirty seconds - kills weevils!