A solitary sailor's life knows no land-based meal schedule. It oscillates between two worlds: shipboard fare — dry rations, canned goods, and fresh water counted drop by drop under the roll — and the shore feast, that eruption of fresh fruit, fish, and coconut milk when land reappears after weeks at sea. Eating aboard the Firecrest was first about survival; ashore, it was about being reborn.

Pressed by hand from the grated pulp of a ripe coconut, this creamy milk was for Gerbault the taste of deliverance and paradise regained. He contrasted it all his life with the dryness of shipboard tins and the hardness of ship's biscuit.