LandfallVoyages

Tri-tip may be the most wonderful food on the planet.

Tri-tip is the very end of the beef sirloin. It isn’t the nice big tender end, it’s the small, tough end. It was cheap once but now it’s popular and expensive. It looks like a 5 pound triangular roast with a thick slab of fat on one side.

To properly prepare a tri-tip it must be cooked in the classic Santa Maria style. This means slowly grilled over red oak, nothing else, and dry rubbed with salt, pepper and garlic powder and nothing else. Most people add something and take something away and destroy it. If you do it just right it is tender and juicy and the most flavorful cut of beef.

The last time we lived aboard was on our Cross Trimaran, The Night Heron. Living on a mooring (out in the middle of the bay) was awesome. With no shore power we didn’t have a lot of electricity so we didn’t have a refrigerator. We kept a freezer in our storage unit on land. We would stock up meat when it was on sale and freeze it for later, much as the dirt dwellers do.

One morning I went to the storage unit and pulled out a tri-tip for dinner. I left it on the cockpit coaming in the sun to thaw in it’s Ziploc bag. I had some other errands to to so I motored off in my dinghy thinking all was well. When I was returning a while later I could see a sea gull (winged rat) trying to drag my precious tri-tip off of the side of the boat by the baggie. He had the corner of the bag in his beak and I could tell that he was pulling with all of his might, his little rat back arched into the heavy load. I was frantic to shoo him away before he dragged it over the side and sank in the green abyss. I stood up in my skiff and shouted and screamed and waved my arms like a madman and he grunted and pulled faster. I jumped up and down and yelled like a banshee and he scraped and pulled some more.

As I got closer I could see the evil glint in his eye and we both knew that the other knew that this was a battle to the end. I gunned my outboard engine and approached our boat at top speed, still screaming and waving. My plan was to turn sharply at the last second and slam the side of the skiff into the side of the trimaran and prevent the meat’s escape.

The last second came and I choked.

My hand slipped just a little on the wet tiller and I was a hair too late. The bow of the skiff punched straight through the thin plywood and fiberglass of the trimaran, the damned gull gave his last mighty pull, and the tri-tip splashed and sank.

There is no moral to this story.