The morning after our beach bonfire Nicki from Karie-L made an excited announcement on the radio that they’d just speared a large fish right from the deck of their boat. A little while later she dinghied over to offer Jack a piece of it. How’s that for home delivery? We don’t fish and I don’t eat fish, but Jack is always grateful whenever someone else’s bounty spills over to him.
Greg from Oceanna went out to the reef to fish as usual, and stopped by EV on the way to give us some fresh coconut from all the nuts he’d husked the night before to fuel the bonfire, and I gave him a thumb drive with some books I’d told him about. Jack worked on a few boat projects and I spent much of the day peeling, grating and toasting the coconut, with a few hours off for a visit with Mark and Sue from Macushla. Later in the afternoon Greg came by again with a huge lobster for Jack’s birthday. The birthday isn’t for a few days but it’s likely we’ll be at sea again by then, and tomorrow our expected nasty weather moves in and we’ll all be boatbound minding our anchors.
Jack was delighted with the unexpected gift but had no clue what to do with a whole lobster. I’m no help, never having eaten one in my life and not so interested in the cooking of it either. Greg talked Jack through the process, then in an act of supreme kindness, actually cut the tail off for him and dumped the rest, handing Jack a perfect lobster tail ready to be cooked.
After parboiling then grilling, our birthday boy sat down to his favorite — and very rare — birthday dinner.
Seriously, keep this in mind. We’re in the middle of the ocean, inside a reef, with no land in hundreds of miles. And Jack gets fresh fish and a lobster for his birthday from generous fishing friends anchored nearby.