HEIRLOOM TECHNOLOGY

By Tim Anderson

Island Tricks

I came across some handy techniques on a recent visit to Maui. Here are just some of the island tricks you should know about.

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Old Tires Boat Rack

These are the Wailea Canoe Club’s 6-person racing canoes (Figure A). The canoe never touches the ground. The paddlers pick it up in the water, carry it onto land, and set it on tires.

Canoe Dolly with Golf Cart Wheels The Wailea Canoe Club has this slick homemade dolly for putting boats in and out of the water. Purpose-made beach wheels are expensive. Wheels from junk golf carts are free (Figure B).

Homemade Wind Speed Flags As seen on Kite Beach, the flags are different lengths and possibly different weights (Figure C). If a flag is flying straight out, it’s easy to read the number. That’s the wind speed. If a flag is hanging and wagging around, there’s not that much wind.

than it sounds, especially if it’s a young coconut. Probably a little bit of juice will squirt out, since the coconut is under pressure.

3. Make two more stabs to make a triangular hole. Rock the knife to connect the cuts and pry the plug out.

4. Drink it. If you have a straw, use that. Otherwise arch your back and drink it like you’re in a commercial (Figure E).

Digression: Coconut juice has all the electrolytes you need in the tropical places where coconuts grow. It’s also sterile if it’s from a picked coconut. They used it in World War II as IV fluid for wounded soldiers or soldiers sick from the wet kind of tropical diseases. A coconut on the ground is probably sterile also, but some of them crack and go sour after they hit the ground.

Lazy Man’s Cherry Picker Prickly Pears

Johnny V, the surfboard guru, has a Surinam cherry It’s the fruit of the prickly pear cactus. The rest of tree in his yard in Haiku (Figure D). Here’s how you the cactus is edible, too, just so you know. The green harvest them: put some sheets under the tree and pads are a great vegetable served raw or cooked. let it dump cherries on them. He says, “If I don’t rake They taste kind of like a cucumber-tomato cross. them up every day it’s like walking through a pile of The pears sit on top for a long time. The darker the mush. And you can’t kill these things. Want some color of the pear, the sweeter it is (Figure F). saplings?” He points to a forest of Surinam cherry These delicious things are covered with tiny hairy tree shoots sprouting under the tree. thorns called glochids. You’ll get them all over yourself the first time because they’re hard to see and you won’t believe any of the following.

Real picking method: Pick them using leather gloves or tongs. Put them in a bucket. What I did: Pick with bare hands and put them in my shirt pocket. I got so many thorns in my chest that I had a hairy chest for the first time in my life. Remove all the thorns!

Real cleaning method: Rub them with dirt or gravel, or put them in a chicken-plucking machine with a thousand pencil erasers. Wash them with cold water. Skin them while wearing gloves. What

Drink a Coconut

Even very young green coconuts are full of “coconut water,” or coconut juice. Before I knew anything I’d try to open them with a hammer, a hatchet, or by banging them on the ground. By the time I got them open, all the juice had leaked out.

Here’s how to drink a coconut with a knife:

1. Take your shirt off. Coconut juice and sap will stain your shirt yellowish brown.

2. Stab the side of the coconut. This is easier

178 Make: Volume 17