The provisioning van is on the quay in 34 degrees of August heat, the guests arrive in four hours, and there are ninety boxes to strike below. The temptation is to get everything aboard and sort it later. Later is where the food poisoning lives.
Receipt and delivery checks
Check before you accept, and record it:
- Temperature: probe chilled goods between packs (do not pierce sealed packaging unnecessarily) - target 8 degrees C or below, ideally 5. Frozen goods -18 degrees C and rock hard; soft corners or ice crystals inside the bag mean it has thawed and refrozen. Reject it.
- Date codes: is there enough life left for the trip you are about to make?
- Packaging integrity: torn, damp, blown, dented cans, bulging vacuum packs, cracked eggs - reject.
- Contamination: raw and ready-to-eat delivered together? Pests, droppings, gnawed cardboard?
- Vehicle and supplier: was the van refrigerated and clean? Is the supplier reputable and traceable?
Then strike it below fast: chilled and frozen first, ambient last.
Storage layout
| Fridge level | Contents |
|---|---|
| Top shelves | Ready-to-eat: cooked meats, dairy, desserts, salads |
| Middle | Raw fish (below RTE, above raw meat) |
| Bottom shelf | Raw meat and poultry, in sealed drip-proof containers |
The rule is simple: raw always below ready-to-eat, so nothing can drip down onto food that will not be cooked again. Keep everything covered, labelled and dated. Keep chemicals out of food stores entirely.
Dry stores: cool, dry, ventilated, off the deck on shelving, sealed containers, first in first out. Freezer: -18 degrees C, everything wrapped, labelled, dated, and stacked so the oldest is reachable.
Stock rotation, FIFO and date marking
FIFO - first in, first out. New stock goes behind or below, old stock comes to the front. Rotate every time you provision, not once a season.
| Mark | Meaning | Rule |
|---|---|---|
| Use-by | Safety. On highly perishable food (meat, fish, dairy, chilled ready meals) | It is an offence to sell or serve food after its use-by date, even if it looks fine. Do not use it. |
| Best-before | Quality. Dry, canned, frozen goods | Food may still be safe after it, but quality declines. The yacht's system decides. |
Anything decanted, opened or prepared onboard needs its own label: contents, date opened or made, and use-by. "Open 3 days" rules for opened chilled products are a common FSMS standard.
Provisioning in remote places and on long passages
- Buy from traceable suppliers where you can; where you cannot, record what you bought, where and in what condition.
- Assume the local cold chain is broken. Treat chilled goods bought from an unrefrigerated market stall as high-risk: cook thoroughly or reject.
- Assume water is not potable unless proven. Wash salad and fruit in potable water only - not dock water, not tank water you have not treated and tested.
- Shift the menu plan: on a long ocean passage, front-load the fresh high-risk items and move to frozen, canned and dry stores as the days go on.
- Beware weevils in flour, rice and pasta; freeze or decant into sealed containers on receipt.
- Never bring outer cardboard aboard - decant on the dock.
Onboard Notes
Yacht storage is scattered: a walk-in in the lazarette, fridges in three locations, dry stores under a bunk. Keep a written stores plan so nothing is lost behind something else until it dies. Check the remote freezers daily - the one you never open is the one whose compressor fails unnoticed. In heavy weather, secure everything: a jar of mayonnaise cracked open in a locker at 30 degrees is both a chemical mess and a microbiological one.
Scope note: xplor is not an approved centre or an accredited training provider. This lesson is preparatory study only - no certificate and no regulated qualification is awarded here, and the Level 2 food safety award must be sat and assessed with an approved centre of a regulated awarding organisation.