Space Saving on A Sailboat. Live Aboard Tips

Having lived aboard on our boat "Rising Star" for three years we had to learn some new ways of storing food, tools, charts, clothes and more to prevent them from being destroyed by mold in the tropics.

When we left the US we had stored our clothes much as you would if going on vacation, in suitcases and on hangers. Our wardrobe consisted of shorts and tee shirts so much of the time that when we actually needed to wear our other clothes to return to the States we found about half of them, especially the cotton ones. destroyed by green mold.

In the case of food we did not have a fridge but chose instead to try to store food in the ways that were described by the cruising couple Lin and Larry Parday. The recommended hammocks for fruit and vegetables, canned butter, UHT long life milk and canned meats.

We stored our dry foods such as flour and rice in ziplock bags and while it did keep most dry foods from spoiling we still lost a lot of rice and flour from the moisture that was sealed in when we closed the lids.

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 such 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 that 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 the 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.

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. Now when we open a box of UHT milk we pour it into the Sharper Image milk container and it lasts about three times as long at room temperature since we still don't have a fridge onboard.