A Son de Marvideo
104. Cooking on board. Josu Otazúa and Captain Tarteras, sea gastronomy for sailors.
15 May 2025 · 1h 24m · 92 views
What this video covers
Josu Otazúa, a retired cook from Guernica, describes his decades-long career cooking aboard large vessels, including Conoco supertankers running Persian Gulf routes with crews of 40-plus, and the schooner Idus de Marzo on a voyage to Antarctica.4:32 He traces his progression from steward to cook to chief steward, a path shaped largely by chance — stepping in when the Conoco ship Independence lost its cook to a suspected heart attack mid-voyage, then being kept on permanently after the captain lobbied the company.10:01 The contrast between the two working environments is stark: Conoco's tanker galleys were hotel-scale operations with large refrigerators and full equipment, while the Idus de Marzo's galley held three people at most and carried a small freezer never designed for polar provisioning.16:24 Otazúa adapted by baking bread daily from flour sacks and relying on crew rotation to cover galley duties on his free afternoons.17:10 Captain Javier Babé recruited him for the Antarctica voyage, which Otazúa describes as one of the unrepeatable experiences of his life.14:42 The episode also covers cooking aboard the Pacific Star with Daniel Ferreiro (Capitán Tarteras), tropical storm meteorology for Atlantic crossings, and maritime gastronomy books stocked by Librería Robinson.23:16
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