Turbo Cook because of her high-tech sun glasses, but when Mrs. Sandra Welsh served up the food on Dancer, the jokes were over, for this mother-of-five did herself proud on the Newport-Bermuda thrash.

In her first-ever job as cook on a racing boat, Mrs. Welsh not only proved equal to the task but very good at following orders: skipper Nance Frank decreed that her all-female crew should be served healthy, high-energy food.

Sodas, beer, chocolate in any form, candy and junk food were strictly taboo.

"No problem,'' said the spunky 59-year-old neophyte. As a former curator and a Chinese history major, she knew what "doing your homework'' meant, and with a big family to raise, she was also a very organised person unfazed by large-scale cooking.

Thus, before she planned a menu or lifted a mixing spoon, Sandra Welsh consulted the nutritionist to her husband's college football team, and also read the memoirs of long-distance solo sailors to learn what they ate.

As a result, Dancer' s crew enjoyed things like Morning Glory Muffins (containing carrots, golden raisins, fresh apples and nuts), an original trail mix (quickly dubbed rail mix by the ladies balancing over the sloop's side) of nuts and seeds, and sturdier stuff like stew and lasagna. Quirky items like boiled eggs pickled in beet juice provided colourful food for thought if nothing else.

In fact, Mrs. Welsh's six-day menu (was she surprised when they arrived in just over three days!) makes colourful reading in itself: linebacker soup, curried egg mold in pita pockets, chicken enchiladas, filled cabbage, gingery pancakes, and "garbage bread'' (a meat and cheese filled sub sandwich). With her research completed and her menus approved by skipper Frank, Mrs. Welsh bade farewell to her home and family in Charlottesville, Virginia and set up camp in their summer home in Nantucket.

That the US Women's Challenge (as the potential Whitbread Round the World Race competitors are officially known) was competing for the first time in the Newport-Bermuda race caught the imagination of manufacturers, Nantucket merchants and a Marriott Hotel chef. The result was food "trials,'' donated victuals and the use of a walk-in freezer in Newport.

In solitary splendour, Dancer 's cook-elect spent days cooking meals and boosting sales of gallon-sized, lock-top plastic bags -- for everything was stowed in them before being scientifically frozen in uniform square shapes.

Ultimately, the brick-hard food packages were colour-coded to match the coding on each day's menu "so that if anything happened to the cook someone else would know what to prepare'', and when finally they reached the sloop, the meals were stowed in menu sequence.

With limited refrigeration, Mrs. Welsh used blocks and bags of ice as well as the frozen food and water bottles to create a substitute freezer.

The favoured drink was water, bought in gallon jugs and frozen before the voyage.

"It might sound gungy, but a water bottle would be sent up on deck and passed from one to another down the line,'' Mrs. Welsh noted. Individual cartons of fruit juice were another favourite, and there was also milk.

With meticulous planning, emergency supplies of canned foods and water were also stowed, along with Mount Gay rum -- to be broached only after passing the finish line at St. David's light.

Fresh fruit, washed in a mild solution of chlorine bleach and water, was hung in net bags in the galley, ready for instant snacking, as were supplies of tea and coffee and juices.

"Next time (if there is a next time) I am going to get down on bended knee and ask Nance if we can have hot chocolate. The girls got tired of bouillon and would really have appreciated hot chocolate on the night watch,'' the motherly cook said.

Similar permission might -- just might -- also be sought to officially stow a particularly popular chocolate, peanuts and caramel bar. One, sneaked aboard and passed in the dead of night when the skipper's eye was elsewhere and the deck crew was battling rough, cold seas, was as deeply appreciated as the finest of forbidden fruit. Contraband miniature pretzels found similar favour with those battling seasickness.

Despite the bad weather, the Turbo Cook never missed a beat, working wonders with her gimballed propane stove and the plastic bags of food. Meals were served on schedule wherever crew members were functioning, and in individual plastic bowls.

"It may not have looked too smart, but at sea you just want to eat,'' the cook explained.

Sandwiches rarely passed the women's lips, and even the two vegetarians ate well despite catching Mrs. Welsh unawares. Breakfast always included a healthy oatmeal cereal, fruit juice and muffins or bagels, to which French toast, pancakes, a hash and eggs casserole or pancakes might be added. Lunch usually included a hearty soup, and hot dinners were the highlight of the day. There was a different main course every night, served with rice or vegetables, and a fruit dessert.

Washing-up was a breeze -- thanks to Sandra's Snappy Solution. "I bundled up the dishes and cutlery in a mesh laundry bag, swished them up and down in soapy water, drained the bag a little, and then did the same thing in clear rinse water. Then I hung the bag up and let the dishes drip dry,'' she revealed.

She is also proud of the fact that Dancer was ecologically responsible. Not one item of litter was thrown overboard throughout the journey. Instead, refuse was neatly stowed and brought ashore for proper disposal.

Tickled pink with surviving her first racing voyage, Mrs. Stewart has already made up her mind that, if skipper Frank asked her to sign up for the 1993 Whitbread Round the World Race, she'd be off like a shot.

COME AND GET IT! -- Mrs. Sandra Welsh, cook on the sloop Dancer, was so thrilled with her first ocean racing assignment that she hopes to be part of the US Challenge Women's Team competing in the 1993 Whitbread Round the World Race.