Get ready to see the hottest tiny house around! Literally. Here’s PIZZA PI, a Virgin Islands Food Boat…
Sasha and Tara Bouis have turned their tiny floating home into a FOOD BOAT serving fresh baked pizza served on delicious made-from-scratch slow-fermentation New York style crust. Each pizza is made to order with fresh local ingredients. They offer a gluten-free menu and they have even partnered with a local ice-creamery, Scoops and Brew, to serve the best ice cream in the islands!
Pizza and ice cream, on a sailboat, in the Caribbean. Does it get any better than that?
THE CREW
Capt. Sasha began his journey in Manhattan. He graduated from MIT and spent years working on Wall Street. His passion for the sea grew so strong, he decided to leave it all behind and become a sailboat captain. The chilly waters near his home town sent him in search of a warmer climate, landing him in the beautiful Virgin Islands where he met Tara in 2007.
Chef Tara graduated from IU in 2005 and taught Elementary Special Education in Indiana while spending the summers teaching SCUBA in the Caribbean. She met Sasha and knew her heart belonged in the islands with him. After taking a leap of faith, Tara is now an award-winning yacht chef and an expert at biting off more than she can chew. Tara designed the entire layout before renovating the boat and then built it herself! The result? The most amazing floating home ever!
THE BOAT
Pi is a 37 ft. G.L. Watson design built in 1996 in Sheffield, England. The entire boat is built with a whopping quarter-inch thick aluminum plate. She’s a sturdy motorsailor equipped with a vintage Perkins 4.236 engine and sails to carry her wherever the wind blows.
THE GALLEY
To keep up with the water demand for washing dishes, Sasha and Tara fitted a DIY water maker that produces up to 40-gallons per hour.
The galley boasts commercial equipment such as the Baker’s Pride P44S-BL (Brick Lined) oven measuring 26″w x 28″h x 28″d. There are two separately controlled baking chambers and each chamber has two 21″ decks. This allows for cranking out 4 pizzas every 15 minutes! Sasha designed a hood ventilation system to direct the heat up and out keeping the galley nice and cool.
They also installed an industrial 20-quart Hobart mixer and a mechanical hanging basket scale for dough-making. The hanging scale is much better than a regular mechanical scale on a boat because the measurements aren’t affected by the rocking motion caused by waves.
To support the electrical demands of all these appliances, Pi is outfitted with (2) 130 watt Kyocera solar panels, a 12kw Northern Lights Generator and a hefty battery bank.
THE LIVING SPACE
Sasha and Tara spent two years building Pi into everything they dreamed she could be. They turned her into a fully operational vessel as well as a very cozy tiny floating home. They lived aboard after all the basic necessities were finished during the construction process, right up until Pizza Pi was officially open for business. Due to Health Department requirements, they can’t actually LIVE on the boat anymore but they maintain the functionality that makes this the most awesome tiny floating home around!
If you’re interested in seeing how this boat was transformed from a bare aluminum shell to a smokin’ hot pizza joint in the Virgin Islands, check out Sasha and Tara’s blog as they catalogued the whole process.
PIZZA PI VI is located in the beautiful Christmas Cove, Great St. James Island near the East end of St. Thomas in the US Virgin Islands. Christmas Cove has FREE mooring balls, amazing snorkeling and some of the best sunsets of all the Virgin Islands.
Taking a trip to USVI soon? Visit www.pizza-pi.com for more information or check them out here:
Facebook: www.facebook.com/pizzapivi
Twitter: @pizzapivi
Instagram: pizzapivi
Hail them on VHF Channel 16 to place your order. You can also call or email it in too. Just tell them what you want and swing by in your dinghy to pick it up 15 minutes later. Credit carts are preferred but cash is okay too. If you visit often, you can ask for a Captain’s Card.
Pi will even deliver! (Within Christmas Cove that is.)
By Jody Pountain for the [Tiny House Blog]