Mediterranean Summer (17 page)

“Maybe ’cause you need two spots!” Patrick shouted back, ribbing the other captain about
Debutante
’s much wider width.

Kevin stood straight up on the foredeck. “There’s a stewardess on board I wouldn’t mind getting to know,” he said to me out of the side of his mouth. That night, after the owners and guests left until the next weekend, he passed off his watch duties to Ian and darted off in the launch to visit his alma mater.

Because of an early-morning
departure time, I skipped my workout and went to the bakery to get some more focaccia for the ride. Mary, the friendly clerk, handed me a fresh sample no more than a half hour out of the oven and wished me well with my work: “
Buon lavoro!
” We were heading to Lerici, a small port town near the regional border where Liguria meets Tuscany, in an area called the Gulf of Poets.

Everyone’s friend Antonio the harbormaster untied us from the dock. I liked him. He represented the special way some Italians do business—cordial, genuine, and eager to please—and his methods ensured my desire to return.
Debutante
was gone, off to the next stop on their cruise. Soon, Portofino was hidden behind the terrain that protects it so well. Santa Margherita and Rapallo also faded into the distance. Then I saw Chiavari, where, high up in the hills behind, in a small locality called Leivi, the nine-table restaurant Cà Peo could be found.

Cà Peo was where I got my introduction to the vegetable-laden cuisine of Liguria. Franco and Melly Solari earned a Michelin star by building a menu and wine list that exploited an artisanal touch to the local ingredients they used. Melly made her signature pesto in a
mortaio
—mortar—every day, which I’d tried, but I wasn’t able to achieve the bright green color and smooth, pasty texture like hers. She told me the basil of the region was special. From offshore, you can see the long rows of greenhouses along the coastline where it is grown.

But pesto was half the story. Melly told me that during the Second World War, the occupying Germans took all the wheat out of the country and her mother was forced to make pasta out of chestnut flour. “It was the only farina that we had.” People came to the restaurant for her
trenette
or
lasagnette
chestnut flour noodles tossed with that pungent and herbaceous pesto. And with this, she practiced the value of preserving local necessity through her menus by remaining true to traditional methods.

We passed the Cinque Terre again, and the five towns that make up this famous stretch of coastline: Monterosso al Mare, Vernazza, Corniglia, Manarola, and Riomaggiore.

Scott pumped out the tanks and charged the batteries from the generator while Rick stripped the guest cabins and heads. Once we got to Lerici, we’d wash down the boat, get laundry out to a service, and do a massive cleaning inside and out. Then we’d take a two-day weekend, and
Serenity
would become “our boat.”

“Hey, David, check it out!” Rick came into the pantry with an armload of empty jewelry boxes.

“What’s all that?” I asked.

“They were in the cabins. It’s incredible. Host gifts.”

I didn’t even know what a host gift was until Rick explained to me that it was good etiquette to bring a token of appreciation for being one’s guest. There were velvet-covered boxes from Bulgari, Buccellati, and others I had never heard of like Chantecler in Capri, which was thoughtful given that at some point during the summer we’d be there.

“Also, it’s probably because this is the first season with the boat,” Rick concluded. He put the boxes in the galley garbage bin under the sink and went back to work while practicing his growing Italian vocabulary picked up from listening to the owners and guests: “
Buonasera, Grazie, Prego…
”

Suddenly I heard a violent popping sound and noticed the rancid smell of burning electric. Black smoke quickly filled the engine room, galley, and crew quarters. Alarms in the engine room went off. It was a sailor’s worst nightmare—a fire at sea. Scott, Kevin, and Patrick raced below to contain the flames. Thankfully, the fire in the electrical panel was put out quickly, but for extra precaution Scott covered the panel with a fireproof safety blanket. Fortunately, we would soon be close to La Spezia, a major harbor where parts could be found. For me, I had a major refrigeration challenge on my hands. At least this didn’t occur at the start of a weekend with reefers full of perishables.

Patrick opted for Lerici
instead of the commercial and naval port of La Spezia for its good shelter, but also to put us in a quieter, less congested marina. It was still early enough in the season that the mass of visiting pleasure craft hadn’t arrived yet. The town itself was noticeably different from all the other ports along the Ligurian coast south of Genoa. The multicolor buildings ceased after Portovenere, and even there, gone were the ornate painted architectural details so characteristic of the Riviera. It was as if the craftsmen kept themselves in the Gulf of Genoa, and the geographical expanse of the rugged Cinque Terre acted as a natural border to this gateway on the Tuscan coast. It seemed like a nice enough place, almost like a hideaway off the beaten track of popular tourist destinations, and it turned out to be very good for provisioning. And just south we would discover beautiful small coves and bays where we could beach the tender and hang around.

Scott asked me to go with him to find a chandler—a mariner’s hardware store—in La Spezia to act as translator. In the taxi on the way over, he surprised me by showing a little knowledge of our whereabouts.

“You know why this is called the Bay of Poets?” he asked.

“No, I’ve never heard of it before,” I said.

“It’s because the poets Shelley, Keats, and Lord Byron lived here.”

I wondered why a guy who had a cold attitude toward Italy stored this bit of information—until he said, “All British you know.”

While we were in La Spezia, I contacted one of the deckhands on the sailing yacht
Pegasus
that had co-hosted the party with us in Monte Carlo. The yacht’s home port was there, and my new friend Corrado, who grew up in the area, told me about the local
frutti di mare,
most notably the coveted
datteri di mare
—sea date mussels. They are so named because their light brown shells resemble dates. There is only one way to get them, however, and that’s not from the local fishmonger. We would have to free dive for them. Fortunately, Corrado clued me into a good spot to find them, just offshore in Portovenere.

The next morning, just after sunrise, Nigel and I boarded the tender and set out for the spot where, as Corrado had put it, “the mussels cling to the rocks and seawalls just outside of the town.” We stopped the boat where we thought might be the spot, but questioned whether we’d need a permit to do this since I remembered hearing from somewhere that they were regulated. But without too much hesitation or worry we donned fins and masks, and then dove in like a couple of escaped convicts—fast and quietly. Once our eyes were accustomed to the murky light underwater, we scanned the seawall. Sure enough, they were there, just as Corrado had said they would be.

“It’s only Wednesday,” I said to Nigel once we pulled ourselves back in the tender with a bucketful of the rare mollusks. “The owners won’t return until Friday night, and these are highly perishable.”

Nigel thought about it for a moment before stating the obvious, “I guess we’ll have to eat them ourselves for lunch.”

“And now I remember
la Signora
told me no mussels,” I said.

And what a lunch it was. We set our portable table over the windlass and under a canopy on the foredeck. Al dente linguine tossed with sea dates steamed with only a touch of white wine, olive oil, garlic, fresh-chopped Italian parsley, and hot red pepper flakes; thick slices of large, pungent tomatoes dressed with a little Dijon vinaigrette, which by unanimous decision by the crew became our “house” dressing; stove-top-grilled bread, thickly sliced and drizzled with olive oil; and an arugula salad. Rick augmented the meal with some crisp and dry Chablis. It was alfresco dining at its best.

No one said anything, but I could tell by their faces that they were enjoying the food and the time spent together. We relaxed and took kips on deck for an hour. While lying along the lower jib sail that was folded like a paper fan and tied to the bowsprit, the long spruce extension from the bow, I felt transported to another life—I was the Italian lounging in
my
backyard on the Italian coast. Soon enough it would be back to work and the punishing schedule that was my real life. But for this brief moment, among new friends, I experienced the other side.

“Hey, Kevin,” I asked after a short while, “what does the ‘S/Y’ I sometimes see before
Serenity
mean?”

He was lying down near the anchor hoist. “Sailing yacht,” he called back.

“Then ‘M/Y’ must mean motor yacht,” I concluded.

“That’s correct. And ‘SS’ is steamship, ‘USS’ is United States ship…”

“And ‘HMS’ is Her Majesty’s ship,” Scott cut in.

“But for
il Dottore,
it’s ‘TMY,’” Ian added.

“What’s that?” Kevin asked, looking over at him as if what Ian just said was ridiculous.

“That’s my yacht!” Ian said with a big smile.

It wasn’t long before Patrick snapped us out of our banter. He cut in, disregarding our break to discuss business. No one really wanted to talk about work, but we listened anyway.

“After this next weekend,” he said, “let’s use some of our downtime to sail and practice.”

“Practice what?” Kevin asked. For the first time, I detected a note of cynicism in his voice. Patrick ignored the question.

Patrick gave a quick review of our sailing performance and his desire to see the crew get better and faster while under way. He didn’t think we were performing up to the capabilities of the boat.

“I want to see us get a little more efficient, a little tighter, pick up some more speed,” he said.

For me, that was the captain’s prerogative, and going out to practice would be a blast. What better way to spend a day off than to go sailing? Kevin didn’t say much after that. Rick, who could care less, drifted off and went below. Ian and Nigel were up for anything, but I could tell their minds were already cataloging lost opportunities onshore. Soon enough the talk returned to the more standard-issue crew topics of bars, money, and women. But I realized at that moment another fire was smoldering. And one look at Kevin told me that unlike the engine room fire, the smolder between him and Patrick would not be extinguished quite so easily.

Seven

Why Is the Risotto Black?

Viareggio, Forte dei Marmi, and Elba

S
ix weeks into the summer, as we were making our way down the coast from Lerici, a calming rhythm had taken hold on board. None of the frustrations or noise of daily life—no traffic to sit in, no crowds to work through, no whining scooters cutting in and out of tight city streets—interrupted our peaceful offshore existence. As we headed south in the Ligurian Sea, time had diminishing importance, and the calm winds that slowed us down helped make the days longer and hotter. Knowing the hours of the day was only necessary for watch schedules, accurate log entries, siesta times onshore, and the next arrival of the owners. I even found myself occasionally forgetting what day of the week it was.

Early in that sixth week, just a little before five in the afternoon, the central section of Tuscany’s coast, the area called Versilia, came into view off the port bow. I could see several long stretches of sandy beach along the shoreline, but what caught my eye was one massive piece of the mountain range not far behind it. Palisades that looked like they were covered with snow shined bright in the late-afternoon sun. I remembered that this was the Carrara valley, source of the even more famous Carrara marble, the stone that affluent Florentines used to build grand
caffès
, spas, and the resort-like summer homes of the area.

Our destination was Viareggio, a beachfront resort town and home to a few of the world’s best yacht builders. Viareggio was familiar to me because I had worked at a great little Michelin one-star restaurant there called Romano. It was so close to the marina I could walk to it. I had been there in winter, when most of the shops and
caffès
along the long, wide
strada piedi
—walking street—that ran parallel to the beach were closed for the off-season. Now it was in full swing, and Viareggio’s grand hotels, beach clubs, and cabanas preserved a lingering aura of its creation as a popular summer retreat at the turn of the twentieth century.

Friends in Florence had told me about summers at the coast, and that during the high season,
per bene
—privileged—socialites relocate to the more exclusive Forte dei Marmi, just a little farther north. Not surprisingly, Rick took aim for where the style set hung out and announced that the second we hit land, he would be off to check it out. I decided once we got settled in to reward myself by going to Romano for lunch. I also had an ulterior motive.

After the avocado incident a couple weeks back, I realized that the owners were not inclined to try anything new or different. Romano Franceschini’s style was their style. It would be a match. Romano’s menu featured simple preparations of super-fresh local seafood, and he had an extensive cellar of Italian wines. In the kitchen, Franca, his wife and the chef of the restaurant, had mastered using as few ingredients as possible so as to highlight the flavors of the fish rather than do anything to mask them. This inspiration perfectly suited what I could cook on board, so I intended to put their methods into practice and, as a compliment, attempt to reproduce some of their authentic offerings. I was also hoping that Romano would give me some leads to the best places to purchase fish, the kinds of seafood his restaurant had made its reputation serving.

I walked into the restaurant without a reservation, remembering that it wouldn’t be too difficult to get a table on the early side of a weekday lunch. The servers I had worked with were all there, and Romano, surprised to see me, was as warm and wonderful as I remembered him. He immediately went to the kitchen to get Franca. After I explained why I was in Viareggio, they were very impressed. I was led to a table and never saw a menu. At the end of my extravagant two-hour fish lunch, Romano took a seat at my table and inquired as to my whereabouts since I had left the restaurant and how I had ended up on board
Serenity.

When I asked him where he got his seafood, he immediately revealed his source, a small storefront near the harbor. I had seen the
pescheria
—fish shop—when we first arrived. I had even taken a moment to step inside. I have to say, I wasn’t impressed. The place appeared barren and lifeless. But when I returned to the shop with regards from Romano, I learned why. I was taken to the back of the store, where I saw the catch that never made it out front. The shopkeeper said that the fish had just arrived a few hours prior, during the late morning, when the day boats returned. The fish were still firm from rigor mortis—the stiffening of the body that occurs within hours of death—a clue to freshness. I arranged to come back at the end of the week, when my bosses would be returning.

The next day Patrick again suggested that instead of remaining in port, we take the boat out for some crew-only day sailing. “You know, we’ll take her out and stretch her legs. Plus,” he explained to all of us, “I already told the boss that we’d get in some good practice runs.”

It seemed like a good enough idea to me, and none of the crew expressed any reservations. The winds were light, so hauling wouldn’t be that bad, and it was a little cooler offshore.

Patrick seemed to have a plan. At first, we’d go out for long stretches, doing the occasional maneuver but really focusing on sail trim and sail changes. With so many sails in
Serenity
’s wardrobe, even the basic suit could be dressed up with many different accessories—where and how to attach blocks, lines, new hanks, and other marine rigging. Patrick and Kevin were forever huddled together, trying to figure out things like how close we could sail to the wind while not sacrificing the speed we’d built up. It did get a little laborious. I would soon learn that I had been wrong about lighter wind meaning less hauling. It actually meant more work, constantly changing and raising the huge light-wind sails to find the right mix for increased performance. But on crew-only sailing days, cooking took a backseat to sailing, and it was great to be outside and part of the team.

Slowly, we all began to notice that Patrick was taking these afternoon sailing exercises much more seriously than the rest of us. He would bark out orders, or berate one of us for not having done something the way he wanted it done. Other than that, he didn’t say much, except for sharply phrased questions about how we were doing something. No casual conversation or praise. But despite his sour temperament, even I could see that his serious attitude was producing results—from a tighter rig to smoother runs of the lines and more perfectly trimmed sails.

As line cooks to this operation, Rick and I mostly did a lot of pulling. In between the next set of instructions, Rick took a break to supply the crew with cold beverages. But I could see that his head wasn’t into this. He was probably on a beach somewhere imagining himself nodding graciously to a beautiful woman.

But even Rick could not totally ignore what was happening on deck. As the practice runs became more intense and demanding, Kevin began to give voice to the concerns we were all feeling—that lurking beneath Patrick’s aggressive agenda was something more than a desire to put together a team that would not embarrass the owners in the season-ending regatta. As this or that maneuver was called into question, the conversations between Kevin and Patrick became terser. To me it still seemed like they were arguing over murky philosophical differences in how best to sail a boat. But then Kevin escalated his response.

In a gesture that could be construed as showing disrespect to his captain, he walked up to the foredeck, as far away from Patrick as the boat would allow, and anchored himself there for each practice sail.

Later that day, Ian leaned into me and observed, “Kevin’s not calling back to confirm Patrick’s orders.” I knew this was a bad sign. Sometimes it was better to stay below.

Nigel was the first
of the crew to gather around the mess table that night. “Why is the risotto black?” he asked. His scrunched-up nose suggested he was put off. Or was his nose merely registering the smell in the galley, an odor redolent of the deep sea.

The answer was cuttlefish. More accurately, the black ink they carry in the precious sac so hard to extract from deep inside their bodies. As we moved down the coast, I began to experiment more and more with local specialties, such as this evening’s fare,
risotto con seppia nero
—risotto with cuttlefish ink. Nigel was aimlessly pushing the blackened kernels of risotto toward the rim of the dish, his way of avoiding a direct confrontation, but I took it personally and became determined to get him to give it a try.

“Come on,” I said.

He smiled and said, “Okay, okay.” He tasted the risotto in small bites and, after a long pause, pronounced judgment: “This is really good, mate.” Scott, on the other hand, wasn’t shy about declaring, “The start to this meal is vile.” He pushed the dish away untouched.

Now, of course, I had to concede that I had been serving the crew lots of pasta and risotto, maybe more carbohydrates than they were accustomed to. But no one seemed to be putting on a gut. Our lives were just too active for that, especially now that the crew-only practice sails had been added to our daily routine. And I had to think, these guys were living pretty well. Some of the food served to the staff at restaurants where I had worked was, as the Italians say when reserving comment,
interessante.
Then again, some
was
interesting. I knew it wouldn’t take long for my crewmates to agree.

In the early afternoons, I’d have the mess area to myself to write letters home and leaf through my journals to look at the recipes I’d written down from my various
stages
and turn to the books I had brought along—most notably the regional cookbook that Nadia gave me and
Mediterranean Seafood
—to plan out my menus and generate shopping lists for the weekend. It was important to stay ahead and have some idea of a plan, but in the back of my mind I tried to remain flexible. Everything was subject to change as a result of what might be found in the markets. Plus, I could only hold about two days’ worth of food for both guests and crew, so keeping abreast of what I had on hand was good practice.

After the morning food-shopping trips, I’d come back and spend a good deal of time putting everything away, with cheeses in one place, other dairy in another, proteins below, fruits on top, bread wherever it fit. Invariably, there would be a trip to the storage area in the bilge to stash shelf-stable ingredients and, in the same trip, pull what I needed to start my prep. I’d return with my hands and arms full of provisions only to realize—after I climbed back up, scraping my arms along the way—there was something I forgot or something I should have stored. Back down to the bilge, yet again.

Scott came below to ask if he could make his late-morning cup of tea. I found it hilarious that he could want a cup of hot tea in the rising heat of the day. It was the end of June, and it was beginning to feel like we were closing in on the tropics.

“Scott,” I said, “the rest of the world is drinking iced tea at this time of year. So are the rest of your compatriots. Why don’t you have yours the way the Italians drink theirs—flavored with peach juice? You know, cool, refreshing, and no steam!”

Scott knew where I was really headed. In addition to steaming up my galley with his boiling water, he also had the habit of wedging the engine room door open, which raised the galley temperature fifteen degrees. Worse, the diesel fumes from the engine now had a direct path to everything sitting in the galley.

“My food smells like it has been infused with motor lubricants,” I complained, halfheartedly.

“I need to ventilate, mate,” Scott said.

“But do you have to do it now? It’s going to make the fish smell like they were pulled off an oil rig,” I pleaded.

“You have your crosses to bear; I have mine. Sorry, mate.” He moved deeper into the engine room and started inspecting some clear tubes filled with some kind of white material mounted on the wall in a very elaborate mechanical apparatus.