A few summers ago I started to share my sailing with you all. The first crews arrived and, from the first trip onwards, I took command of the stove for various reasons. To organize the menus of a sailing boat, do the shopping, and cook in a limited space, with a tiny fridge and little storage capacity—it’s not a responsibility that can be given to someone who lacks experience with boats. If we add to all that the rocking of the waves, you’ll understand why—even though skippering Narinan takes a lot of work—I decided to also take charge of the kitchen. The result was much better than I’d imagined. My experience of life onboard and, above all, my desire that the crews enjoy their holidays to the fullest, made it possible that you would ask me for the boat’s recipe book, even if I’m not a grand chef.

As you know, we value independence and freedom a great deal on Narinan. If we’re comfortable in the coves, surrounded by nature, it’s a chore to have to go in to port just because we’re out of food. So the onboard recipe book has been thought about and conditioned with the following points in mind: there are six or seven of us sailing for one week; we can only do one shop, meaning that if anything’s missing, it’ll be difficult to pick up en route; the fridge is smaller than the minibar of a hotel room; and we like to eat fresh and well, with local produce and as little packaging as possible.

The order in which the recipes appear corresponds to the order in which we cook them on Narinan. While there’s a certain amount of flexibility, the one thing that really imposes itself in the day’s cooking is the order in which the ingredients for each dish could turn bad. I’ve put the biggest effort into finding tasty dishes made with fresh ingredients that can be kept until the final meal of each trip. I hope this book will be useful if you have a boat and make trips that are similar to Narinan’s, with family and friends for several days at a time and without passing by towns with supermarkets. But if you’d like to try boat cooking at home, you’ll find very simple recipes here that fairly quick, with ingredients that are easy to preserve. Wherever it may be, I hope the same happens to you as it does on Narinan: that you sit close together, that the wine and the wonderful conversations flow, that time stops on any given evening.

Text and recipes: Kenneth Perdigón

Photography: Coke Bartrina

Design: Robbie Whitehead

Design Assistance: Nicolás Barreto

Copy editor and translation: Madeleine Willis

Collaborations:

Foreword: Vincenzo Angileri

Photography: Alba Yruela

Artwork: Maria Prats, Blanca Miró Skoudy