Day 162 Sunday, December 1 - The Great Coconut Opening

Day 162 Sunday, December 1 - The Great Coconut Opening

Today starts out much the same as most days but proves to be quite the learning experience.  The day starts out with, yes a coffee.  We follow this up with a walk for Julie and a run for Dawson.  After our exercise portion of the day we gather our fellow boaters to partake in the Great Coconut Opening.

We had brought our coconut to shore along with a hunting knife, screwdriver and hammer.  This is the 1^st coconut husking for us but will not be the last.  After about 10 minutes of removing the husk we are down to the nut.   We punch two holes into the nut through the eyes and drain off the coconut water.  Dawson being the worker gets the first sip.  After everyone gets a sip we have about ½ of a water bottle of coconut water, which we understand is excellent with rum.  We then break open the nut by whacking it several times around the equator of the nut, which breaks in half just like in the YouTube video said it would.  We share some of the coconut meat and we take the water and remaining meat back to the boat. 

Dawson, Coconut and tools

Dawson husking coconut

Husked Coconut

Prior to the great coconut opening we had learned that Steve has some info on the operation of SSB receivers so we sign up for the course being offered at 12 noon.  John and Linda from Blue Moon join us.  It turns out John has the same SSB receiver as we have.  We get some instruction on the receiver from John and then Steve demos his software for receiving weather faxes on his tablet.  The weather fax is a free service from NOAA and with a software program you can transform your tablet into a fax machine and receive the weather complete with maps and forecast.  This is a great thing to have, the SSB receiver was $80 and the program for the IPad was $2.99 from the ITune store, a very cheap solution to your weather needs.  This is something everyone who is planning on going cruising should know about.

SSB and Weather Fax class

Selfie in Inner White Sound

Dawson in the blow up Kayak - not bad for $300

After our lesson we head off for a kayak trip in the inner white sound, just to see what we could see.  It turned out not to be much, some wrecked boats left to rot in the mangroves.  We paddle for about 2 hours and then return to the boat for some real R and R as it was a full day of learning and exercising.  During the R and R we snack on fresh coconut.

Dinner, coffee, game of Kings Cribbage’s and yes you guessed it off to bed.

Cheers

Dawson and Julie