GRIFTER’S TALES
ABOARD THE AQUA SERVICE
By Colin Lee MacLeod
I am the deckhand-cook. The cooking is a full part of the job—and it shares the day with everything else.
Breakfast is one beginning
I make all three meals aboard the Aqua Service. Breakfast, lunch, and dinner. In between, there is laundry, morning preparation, engine-room checks, errands, tools to fetch, and maintenance work to assist with.
Writing “deckhand-cook” on one line makes it look compact. Living the job stretches that line across the day. A meal needs preparation, cooking, serving, and cleaning up. Meanwhile, the boat has its own work to do.
The list keeps growing
One morning I was cooking breakfast, running errands, and getting tools and equipment for the crew. Then I was also responsible for tying up cable as part of the preparation for the next pull. That is the kind of day I want to capture in these tales.
This is a personal account of the work, not a set of lifting or line-handling instructions. On deck, the actual operation belongs to the crew’s procedures and the people directing it. My story is about the overlap: the galley job does not erase the deckhand job, and the deckhand job does not make dinner disappear.
Feed the crew. Keep moving.
There is a useful discipline in having to finish something people are waiting for. Three meals give the day a rhythm, even when the work between them changes.
These are also the beginnings of The Pirate’s Cookbook: meals made on a working boat, with the circumstances still attached. I want the recipes to come from actual galley days. The job gives us the material. We have to remember to record it.
Grifter’s Takeaway
A job title can be short while the day is long. Notice all the work that keeps a crew going.
