Do you have melamine plates and cups or china on board? Acrylic “glasses” or crystal? In case you think this is a “girly” preoccupation, let me say straight away that it was the men who had the most vociferous opinion in the discussion, involving a group of cruising types with many thousands of miles at sea between them.
All agreed that melamine is the safest and most practical form of crockery afloat - and if you've ever seen a windward locker lid fly open and the whole lot fall on the cabin sole, you'll know why!
There's the (probably apocryphal) tale of the luxury yacht that went out for its first sea trials with a Crown Derby dinner service beautifully stowed in custom designed racks, and lost the lot when the prototype shallow keel failed to do its job.
But one (male) foodie in the group won't have melamine plates because you can't heat them properly. He goes for Pyrex, which is virtually unbreakable. Another (female) prefers stylish plain white crockery from Ikea, which costs 37p an item, and therefore causes no pain if it does get broken.
I'm happy with melamine plates and dishes, but I think tea and coffee taste horrible in melamine cups. So we have cheap and cheerful china mugs (97p from Tesco) which can be regarded as semi disposable.
I know some people who have exactly the same view about acrylic glasses: they say they ruin the taste of decent wine, and insist on having proper fine-rimmed stemware. But we have a horror of broken glass in lockers (dating from our first boat, where we found some, left by the previous owner, the painful way!).
As a result, we tend to buy wine for the boat in boxes, rather than bottles (they fit better in the fridge, anyway.) And perhaps if you're drinking “plonk” the subtleties of what you drink it out of are less relevant.
There's also the question of whether you put up with instant coffee on the boat, and if not, what sort of coffee maker to use. Feelings were so strong on this point that our hostess actually made some of each, to suit all tastes. But instant and ground alike, it was all served in very attractive, and extremely practical, insulated stainless steel mugs: easy to clean, unbreakable, cool on the outside so they could be put straight down even on varnished woodwork. What more could you want?
We assumed they must have come from a specialist chandlery and cost a fortune. But she assured us they came from Poundstretcher. It's worth going looking for them. They'd go happily with either melamine or china!
