"Thirty years ago the Highlander wore his knife as a companion to his dirk or dagger, and when the company sat down to meat, the men who had knives, cut the flesh into small pieces for the women, who with their fingers conveyed it to their mouths." A Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland. Samuel Johnson, 1775, Ed RW Chapman, Oxford University Press, 1970.
I am definitely not a Fray Bentos pie person, they are for emergencies only, dire emergencies. In my view one should be able to, and can, eat on a small yacht just as well as at home. Even better sometimes because there may well be more time to prepare food, being on holiday usually, or sheltering from a gale. If CC Lynam managed it on his very small yawl in 1892 so can you: "The skipper cooked a magnificent stew of hare soup, curried fowl, rice and onions, which with strawberry jam to taste, was highly appreciated" (The Log of the Blue Dragon 1892-1904, C C Lynam, AH Bullen, London, 1907). Mind you, Hilaire Belloc did not believe in cooking anything at sea, especially meat, according to Dermod MacCarthy, one of his young crew (Sailing with Mr Belloc, Collins Harvill, London1986). The main problem I find is how to look after a basil plant because it needs light, warmth and fresh water — without it tipping out all over the galley. As for drink, there is always room somewhere for bottles of wine, beer, gin, tonic and the crucial lemon, or lime (the addition of ice from a freezer is a bit over the top). And the whisky of course.