Planning meals while sailing is often a hassle
When planning a sailing trip, you think about the weather, port calls, watch schedules, safety, and the itinerary. But there’s one topic that always comes up: what are we going to eat?
On a sailboat, feeding a crew of six, eight, or ten people for a week can quickly become a headache.
You have to plan for enough food, accommodate everyone’s dietary preferences, manage limited storage space, and avoid spending hours cooking after a day of sailing.
And unlike at home, when you’re missing an ingredient in the middle of the Bay of Biscay, you can’t just pop into a supermarket.
It’s precisely to simplify this process that I created Kigumi.
The challenge: organizing meals for the entire crew
On a cruise, meal planning begins well before casting off.
You have to answer several questions:
- What meals should we prepare for the trip?
- Who is vegetarian, or has allergies or food intolerances?
- Which recipes are suitable for cooking on a sailboat?
- How much food should we buy for the entire crew?
- How can we avoid forgetting items and wasting food?
- How can you adjust the menus when a trip takes longer than expected?
Usually, we end up with an Excel spreadsheet, WhatsApp chats, a shared shopping list, and a lot of improvisation.
It works, but it takes a lot of energy, especially when you regularly organize cruises or sailing courses.
Kigumi: Plan meals together before you set
sail
The idea behind Kigumi is simple: centralize meal planning so the whole crew can participate.
Rather than letting just one person handle the menus, dietary restrictions, and grocery shopping, Kigumi lets everyone work together to plan meals for the trip.
1. A meal schedule for the entire cruise
Start by creating a trip and organizing the meals for each day.
Breakfast, lunch, dinner: everyone can see what’s planned and prepare accordingly.
Another benefit is the ability to adapt menus to the realities of sailing.
A quick lunch during a crossing, a dish that’s easy to reheat after a night watch, or a slightly more elaborate dinner at anchor: not all meals have the same constraints.
2. Take dietary
restrictions into account
This is probably one of the most challenging issues to manage within a crew.
Between allergies, intolerances, vegetarians, and individual preferences, finding recipes that suit everyone quickly becomes complicated.
Kigumi lets you account for participants’ dietary preferences, identify incompatibilities with recipes, and consider ingredient substitutions.
The goal isn’t to prepare several different meals, but to find common solutions whenever possible.
For allergies, checking ingredients and cross-contamination is, of course, still essential.
3. Plan your provisions without starting from scratch
Once the menus are set, you have a much better idea of what to pack.
Instead of buying supplies at random and hoping they’ll be enough, you can plan your provisions based on the recipes and the needs of your trip.
This is particularly useful on a sailboat, where every cupboard counts and refrigerator space is limited.
You can also plan the order of your meals: eat fresh produce first, save long-lasting foods for the last few days, and keep a few backup meals on hand.
Less improvisation, fewer oversights, and less wasted food on board.
4. Involve the crew in decision-making
Meal preparation shouldn’t be the sole responsibility of the skipper or the person organizing the trip.
With Kigumi, participants can help choose recipes and express their preferences.
It’s a simple way to get everyone involved before departure, rather than discovering at the first dinner that half the crew doesn’t like what was planned.
And when sailing as a group, this collective planning is already part of crew life.
A concrete example: an eight-person
week-long cruise
Let’s imagine a week of sailing in Brittany with eight crew members.
Before setting sail, you need to plan seven days’ worth of meals. Among the participants, some have dietary restrictions, others don’t eat meat, and not everyone has the same preferences.
Without proper planning, this usually ends up with a big shopping trip right at the start, followed by daily discussions to decide what to have for dinner.
With Kigumi, you can plan the trip in advance:
- Create the cruise and bring the participants together.
- Gather dietary preferences and restrictions.
- Select recipes suited to the group.
- Schedule the meals.
- Prepare provisions based on the selected menus.
Once on board, there are, of course, the unexpected challenges of sailing. But at least you don’t have to start from scratch with meals every day.
Because at sea, we have better things to do than manage Excel
spreadsheets
Kigumi won’t cook for you, clear away the dishes, or prevent a pot from tipping over while sailing close-hauled.
And it doesn’t replace best practices for provisioning, particularly the need to bring extra supplies to handle the unexpected.
However, it does take away a significant portion of the mental load that comes with organizing group meals.
And that’s exactly what I was looking for.
I wanted a tool that would let me plan meals for a cruise without creating a multitude of files, messages, and endless discussions.
Because once I’m out at sea, I mostly just want to sail—not worry about what we’re going to eat tonight. And that’s much easier with 110 recipes available.