Nearing 8 PM. I am sitting at Central with sleeping bags as lap robes and a watch cap on. It isn’t that cold—48ºF/9º—but I am trying to be as comfortable as possible. Last night I used the sleeping bag system as designed, inserting the heavy bag inside the lighter bag onto which I snapped the water repellant cover and slept blissfully
A shuffled playlist of non-classical is playing at low volume on the Boom 2 speakers at the moment ‘Goodbye’—by Hootie and the Blowfish. Maybe sometime I will write about the music you would not expect me to have.
A tumbler of Coppola Pinot Noir is at hand—left as always where I can see it.
This afternoon was pleasant. Sunny and no wind. I unfurled the jib and applied a self-adhesive patch North Sails provided to the tack of the jib where it rubs against the pulpit and then raised the mainsail and put self-adhesive patches where it can rub against the spreaders.
Below deck I tied the bags on the sides of the v-berth in place and the water jerry cans.
Other than those last minute actions such as topping off daily water bottles and fitting the Torqeedo and notifying credit card companies that I am going to be in Panama—I face complications that Ulysses and Slocum never imagined—GANNET and I are ready to sail and I am becoming restless. I do not speak for GANNET whose patience is as great as her acceleration.
I continue to view LuckGrib, Windfinder Pro, Dark Sky, Windy, and the Weather Channel apps. They all agree that a cold front is going to pass through here Sunday with rain. All agree that the wind will be from the north or northwest on Monday and that Hilton Head will be colder than Cape Horn, near freezing and climbing only into the low 40sF. They do not agree as to what will happen after that.
I have cold weather clothes and heavy foul weather gear which I have not ever worn on GANNET.
Tomorrow I will scrub mold from the overhead and review the weather apps.
Now I am going to pour another tumbler of wine. (A typo made that ‘pour another tumbler of wind.' If only I could.)
Joan Baez is singling ‘Forever Young’. I like the song, not the sentiment. I embrace being old. When I think back about my life I know I could not have done it twice. No one could have. As that great American philosopher, Mae West, observed, “You only live once, but if you do it right, once is enough.”
