alt Hacker News"Generally I relied on canned goods to supply the bulk of my meals. Each can was protected in double Ziplock bags to prevent rusting. Pinhole leaks in cans caused by rust and corrosion can be lethal to the unsuspecting mariner."
Is a pinhole leak on a can really that dangerous on a 24 day trip. I get ocean air...but wow. That is something I would have underestimated for sure.
wondering if someone in the know can weigh in? is this over cautious or like yeah, good idea?
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I can't think of a reason it'd be any more dangerous than if the same food was sitting on your counter for the same time period. But some people won't eat cold pizza that sat out overnight either.
When we can food, sometimes there's a jar that doesn't seal. We just put it in the fridge and use it in the next few days. It'll keep at least as long as if it hadn't been canned.
Having said all that: if I went to open a can of food and saw that it had a leak, I wouldn't eat it, because how could I be sure that it wasn't leaking when I packed it 24 hours ago? A visible leak now might have been too small to see then, so who knows how long it's really been leaking.
I used to live and work on tall ships.
We never had this issue, but we also likely had better storage conditions in that there was precious little chance of actual seawater reaching our food cans. Cans would sometimes rust on the rim, but I don't think I ever saw a can rust all the way through, despite some of them being likely years old.
This seems like overkill unless you are very convinced that your cans will come in contact with seawater.
I recall reading Kay Cottee's account of her solo unassisted circumnavigation in 1988. She was the first woman to do so.
Part of her preparation was removing the labels from all tinned food, and then re-writing what was in the can with a permanent marker on the lid, before fully immersing each can in laquer. Presumably this was done to help deal with corrosion problems.