📬 Expedition Letter #3 – Exploring Seychelles

What are the Seychelles famous for? What did the Green Coco team discover there?

Learn in our Expedition Letter #3: Exploring Seychelles

  • How did GIANT TORTOISES survive here while others disappeared forever?
  • Is there really buried pirate treasure on Mahé Island?
  • What bird lays its eggs and then flies for years without landing??
    Let’s go find out…

🏴‍☠️ Pirates + Unfound Treasure

Seychelles was completely uninhabited until the 1770s.
That made it the perfect hideout for pirates — like the legendary “Buzzard,” who’s said to have stashed treasure somewhere on Mahé Island…

Still hasn’t been found.
Not saying we’re looking.
(But we’re definitely looking.)

Before humans, giant tortoises ruled these islands.
No predators. No rush. Just 100-year-old chill vibes.

Then sailors came.
The tortoises were hunted or loaded onto ships for long voyages — slow-moving snacks at sea. Populations crashed.

But one place held on: the Aldabra Atoll.
Untouched by humans, it became a sanctuary.
Today, over 100,000 Aldabran tortoises live wild there — a living example of what can survive when we just leave it alone.

🐦 BIRD ISLAND: THE CITY OF SOOTY TERNS

We sailed to a speck of land and found it surrounded by seagrass

And then: the sky exploded. Thousands of sooty terns live here!
These birds live most of their lives without landing… They fly non-stop, catching fish, even sleeping mid-air.
They only land to mate, nest, and hatch their babies.
Once a year, here on Bird Island. That’s it!

It’s LOUD. It’s amazing.

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Thank you for being on this voyage with us.
There’s more to come.


Letter #4 is already on deck — as we were preparing the boat to leave Seychelles behind…

Stay curious.
Stay salty.
And keep following the stoke. ⛵️💫

— The Green Coco Expedition Team

Want to See More About Our Stay on the Seychelles? Check Out Our Episode About Our Shakedown Cruise:

And don’t forget to check out our latest blog posts here:

📬 Expedition Letter #2 – Seychelles

Ahoy Explorers! Come to a Tiny Archipelago Near East Africa With Us to Learn:

  • Why are the world’s HUGEST coconuts only growing in 2 tiny islands in the whole world?
  • How come GIANT TORTOISES only exist in the wild in Galapagos… and Seychelles?

This little far-flung group of islands is where the GREEN COCO EXPEDITION began. Where is this place??

After searching around the world, we found our catamaran Nesi in this archipelago. This video tells the story of us moving there from Polynesia.

This is a remote place that had no international airport until 1972. Captain K’s dad visited these islands enroute from Tanzania to India by cargo ship in the mid-60s, it probably looked very different indeed. Probably like this:

Fun Facts about Seychelles

#1. It’s a Small Country with a LOT of islands spread over 800 nautical miles.

#2. It has the world’s largest coconut, only growing on Praslin and Cousin islands. It’s got a fascinating biology.

#3. It’s the only mid-ocean islands with GRANITE in the world.

This is the good stuff that we cover in our Expedition Letter #2 — sent by snail mail to subscribers around the world. [Subscribe for $10/month. Learn more about it here.]

What the Letters look like this in real person:

Thanks friends in Morro Bay, CA for sharing your stoke!

We also include some random fun stuff for the kids, like….

How to dive without being a fish:

These are the stories to we’re sharing with our kids and we want to share it with your family too. Little tales from the places we are blessed to visit around the world in this community world-schooling voyage!

Our Expedition teacher Joelie is the artist behind these beautiful letters — customs made works of art that you can touch and feel.

Every Expedition Letter is a chance to be surprise and learn something weird and wonderful.

The world is big. You’re part of it. And there’s still so much to explore.

Subscribe for $10/month. Learn more about it here.

Thanks for being part of the journey with us… and keep following the stoke.

— The Green Coco Expedition Team ⛵️💫

PS. we’ll be sharing more about the Coco-de-Mer and the Granite in the Seychelles very soon!

Stay posted.

Watch the video of us moving from Polynesia to Seychelles here:

Check out our latest blog posts here:

Joelie: our boat school teacher in Madagascar

In February 2024, we moved aboard our 60ft catamaran Nesi in the Seychelles with the help of Zoe (read her post here)

We worked non-stop, full-throttle for 2 months, suffering with the summer equatorial heat, running two very eventful “shakedown trips” with co-op members, and doing a million repairs & projects on the boat.

Check out all the posts from all our previous teachers.

Joelie arrived in April 2024, just as we frenetically prepared to leave the protected waters of Seychelles. No time to waste… when she arrived, I gave her a drill and screwdriver and we started installing solar panels.

Continue reading

Expedition Letters – our gift to kids everywhere

We’re passionate about our kids getting their hands & feet dirty (or wet) and experiencing life for themselves. To LOVE learning because that’s what makes life fun !!

What fools ever launched a youtube channel and simultaneously promoted a ‘screen-free’ alternative?? We just did. Last weekend was Episode 1 and this coming Sunday January 5 is Episode 2 on our channel. One every week!

We’re super proud of our videos, but heck, we really wanted to get something REAL in kids hands that they can get excited to receive by snail-mail every month. Something outside of digital screens, something they can hold and allow their imagination to wander.

So we created Expedition Letters as a complement to our videos. Every month, they’ll be delivered to your house or school, a beautiful 4 page handmade, custom work of art! Exploring cool new countries that Green Coco visits, educational nuggets, naturalist drawings, fun maps.

We’re only charging $10/month — losing money for awhile, then hopefully barely covering costs… But we wanted to make it accessible for everyone. Ontop of that we’re doing 2 promotions to launch the Letters, deadline January 20, 2025:

  • First 50 subscribers: get a chance to win a FREE boat trip with bonus raffle tickets !!
  • Get 1 , Give 1 : sign up and nominate an awesome teacher to receive a FREE year subscription of the Letters.

Read more info about Expedition Letters and subscribe here: www.GreenCoco.org

On a personal note: thank you for the support in this crazy new endeavor of ours. We run boats, not monthly subscriptions, it is pretty daunting!! We don’t know if it’ll make financial sense, but we believe it’s the right thing to do, so we’re trying to make it work… fingers crossed we reach enough people to make it fully sustainable.