Hilton Head Island: three leopards; sweat and pollen

The three leopards are the novel, THE LEOPARD, written by Giuseppe Tomasi, the 11th Prince of Lampedusa, the 12th Duke of Parma; the 1963 film adaption starring Burt Lancaster and Claudia Cardinale; and the current six part Netflix series.

The story of the publication of Tomasi’s only novel is a sad one.  He began writing it in his fifties and had it rejected by two of Italy’s prominent publishers before he died of lung cancer in 1957 at age 60.  He died knowing only of those rejections, not that the novel would be published the following year to great critical and commercial success.  As a writer I find that sad indeed.

The main character in THE LEOPARD, Prince Fabrizio, is based on Tomasi’s great-grandfather who lived during the Risorgimento when Garibaldi was unifying what would become Italy.  It begins in 1860 and ends in 1910.  The tone is elegiac and restrained.  Prince Fabrizio knows he is the last Leopard.  He does not mourn that, but he also does not respect the kind of men who will come to power.

I read the novel when it was first published and, though young, admired it greatly.  I read it a second time about twenty years ago and bought a Kindle edition a few years ago intending to read it again.  I saw the movie version when it came out in 1963 and liked that too, especially Burt Lancaster’s performance.  Then a month ago I learned of the new Netflix series and was curious to watch it.  I considered rereading the novel first, but thought it fairer to watch the Netflix and judge it on its own internal merits.  So Carol and I did, one episode an evening two weeks ago.

The Netflix LEOPARD is visually sumptuous:  the palaces, the clothes, the people, all dominated by the harsh Sicilian landscape beneath a blazing sun.  I enjoyed the series until the last episode in which the writers under whose direction I do not know had Concetta, one of the Duke’s daughters, perform an act that was totally inconsistent with the intelligent character she had until then evinced.  I suspect that the intent was to leave open the possibility of a second season, but for me it was so egregious that if there is a second season, I will not watch.

I then reread the novel and admired it as much as I remembered.

And then Carol and I watched the 1963 movie which we both enjoyed.  It closely follows the book, but ends short of the Prince’s death and the final portrayal of Concetta as an old woman in 1910.  I like the movie, but believe it would be much better had it included those scenes, but running over three hours as it does perhaps that is asking too much.

For me the order is clear.  The novel is best.  The movie second. The Netflix watchable until the final episode but third.

The sweat and pollen seasons have returned to the marsh.  They are both produced by the sun.  Trees ‘know’ when to produce pollen by increasing temperatures and longer hours of daylight.  So does sweat.

The most obvious pollen in the marsh is a fine yellow powder from pine trees.  The trees just outside our windows and deck are live oaks and palmetto palms, but there is a line of tall pines not far away and for the past week or so everything outside has been coated yellow.  We do not leave cushions out except when we are using them.  I have to dust the seat of my bicycle each morning.  Fortunately neither Carol nor I are allergic to pollen.  And as I was sweeping leaves and pollen from the deck two afternoons ago the sweat season returned.  The temperature was only 77F/25C but with high humidity sweat began pouring down my face.  I finished and came inside and turned on the air conditioning for the first time this year.

Hilton Head Island: living with water

 

Even in this condo I live with water.  At high tide it is only a few yards away.  I glance out at it as soon as I wake in the morning.  I sit reading or listening to music or watching a game and glance out countless times a day.  I watch water approach and retreat.  I see the light change on Skull Creek.  Last evening I was sitting on the screened porch watching a basketball game.  This is an approximation of what I saw just after sunset.  The colors were actually more subtle and the reflection more lavender.  I tried to adjust the image but reality often exceeds our attempts to capture it.

Here is what I saw fifteen or twenty minutes later.

Still beautiful, but different.

Hilton Head Island: a banner day and three poems

Today is another glorious day in the marsh.  Sunny, 70F/21C.  Slight wind.  Another morning of my oiling interior wood.  After sanding the wood around the companionway and the cabin floorboards, I decided against painting the companionway white and am applying Deks Olje 1 as usual.  On sanded wood this is a coat a day which is partially absorbed as it dries.  No set number of coats.  Just applied until it looks right.

However that is not why this is a banner day.

I dutifully go to a doctor every six months for a skin cancer checkup.  I finally found an acceptable practice here and was checked this morning.  For the first time in as long as I can remember I was not chopped.  Only a few spots were even frozen.  Hooray!

This was not entirely unexpected.  I am experienced at identifying skin cancers and I did not believe I had any.  I didn’t.  No biopsies.  No stitches.  Hooray again!

Edward Murphy, Jr.’s Law—and yes, I looked that up—is not only wrong, it is dangerously wrong.   ‘Anything that can go wrong will go wrong” is not normal.  Almost always things go as they are expected and intended which as an expert on airplane crashes has observed causes a false sense of security.  He also points out that in the case of airplane crashes often the cause is not a single failure but a cascading series of failures.  Anecdotally this is also my experience in sailboats crossing oceans, which is why I try to fix problems before the voyage unravels.

I think I have posted this poem here before, but not for a few years.  I came across it this morning as I have in the past in the BEING ALIVE anthology.

I am also currently reading ONE HUNDRED LEAVES, a translation of the HYAKUNIN ISSHU, a collection of short Japanese poems from the seventh to the thirteenth century.  My Kindle edition includes an illustration before each poem.  Here are two illustrations and poems.

Hilton Head Island: Blown Away; progress

 

As I have mentioned I have added Majikwoid and Argo to the websites I check each afternoon and even if there are no new entries I read some of the older ones until I catch up.  

A few days ago at Argo I read the entry about Winslow Homer’s Maritime Masterpieces.  I am familiar with many of Homer’s paintings and watercolors and once claimed to be attempting to reenact his ‘The Gulf Stream’ when I lost the headstay on RESURGAM off North Carolina.  That was an exaggeration.  No sharks.  No waterspout.  And I was able quickly to use a spare halyard to keep the mast up and sail down wind to anchor off Beaufort.

But some of the works shown in the article are new to me.  I particularly like the one at the top which is titled ‘Blown Away’.  And another, ‘Winter at Sea—Taking In Sail Off the Coast—reminds me why I would not have done well during that age of sail.  I don’t like heights.

Two poems 1200 years apart.

The first by Du Fu, 712-770.

The second by Edwin Brock 1927-1997, which I may have posted here a few years ago.

Du Fu and his contemporary, Li Bai, are among the most illustrious of Chinese poets.  They meet a few times and each wrote poems about the other.  One by Du Fu, ‘Dreaming of Li Bai’ ends:   

            Immortal fame, hard to enjoy in the tomb,

            Will not replace joys that were never lived.

Hilton Head Island: advertisements for myself and others

In 1959 Norman Mailer published a book with the title ADVERTISEMENTS FOR MYSELF.  That was the year I started college.  I remember reading the book back then but nothing else except the title.  Which brings us to myself.

The full title of my main site and of this journal is Self-portrait in the Present Sea so there is truth in labeling.  Both sites are about Webb Chiles.  However I have observed that lately I have frequently been writing about videos and words that others have produced about me.  On the lines page of my main site you will find:  Define yourself or others surely will.  In fact they will even if you do define yourself, but having done so yourself can keep that in perspective.  

I confess that I am pleased to have ‘legendary’ routinely applied to my name, though that may just be a courtesy for having survived so unexpectedly long,  and to be told that I have been an inspiration.  However I am uneasy about self-promotion.  I paused to think about that and let it stand.  Like all writers I would like my words to last.  I am pleased that some I wrote a half century ago are still read.  I cooperate with those who make videos and write about me in the hope that some will discover Webb Chiles through them and read my words who otherwise would not have.  I also find proof in their works that I am not entirely delusional about myself.  Or at least if I am, some others are too.  And I like to direct attention to sites I admire.  So if you  have not had a surfeit of Webb Chiles, here is more.

Majikwoid is a new site by the almost anonymous Gary Simoni who wrote to me not long ago asking permission to use a video that I did not produce and could not provide.  He had a previous site which is linked at Majikwold, but the ‘about’ section is blank except to mention the two sites. I have learned a little about him by reading entries at Conversations With a Hypoxic Dog.  And yes I looked up ‘hypoxic’.

Majikwold has only six entries which demonstrate a wide ranging mind: an osprey; the songs of whales, which has a great final sentence; Mussolini; an excellent song which I had not heard, ‘The Bulls’, sung by Jacques Brel; Lawrence of Arabia; and me.  They are all well written and interesting.  I have added the site to those I check each afternoon I am ashore.

The piece about me is most original and includes quotes that though I have read Marcus Aurelius and Henry James I did not know.  

https://gvsimoni.com/2025/03/12/a-conformity-to-intelligence/

ARGO is a magazine published by Steve Walbrun ‘about sailing art, literature, and history’.  Steve wrote to me asking permission to use some of my words, which I gave.  I did not know that he had already written a piece about me.  I visited the ARGO site and find a lot there of interest other than me.  I have bookmarked it as well.  

https://argoreader.com/

I thank Gary and Steve.  I admire what both are creating and wish them success however they define it.

Hilton Head Island: lighted; destinations; change in Atlantic hurricanes; shock of recognition; the use of fear

 

Beautiful weather in the marsh this week.  Temperatures in the 70sF/low 20sC and sunny.

I biked to GANNET yesterday and secured the wiring to the new deck lights, filled some holes with sealant, and combined wires from the bow lights and the stern light to one switch on the electrical panel.  Previously the stern light was connected to a different switch.  And then marked ‘bow lights’ off my to do list.

However I have some reservations about the new bow lights.  They are from a name brand, Hella, and expensive.  They cost $170 for the pair.  I hope this is a case where you get what you pay for but I was disappointed when I first saw them.  The housing is plastic.  Well, so is GANNET.  But this is not impressive plastic.   The lights themselves are well sealed.  I hope they endure, but they do not seem more robust than lights costing a fraction as much.  I considered returning them.  Obviously I didn’t.  And for the present GANNET is legally lighted.

Scott wrote to me:  “readers would appreciate learning why you have decided not to embark on any future sailing to planned destinations.”  I will do so, but probably not until I sail again without a destination in late April or May.  I thank him for writing.

I thank Larry for a link about Atlantic hurricanes forming and moving farther south than in the past.  This change is peculiar to the Atlantic and interestingly the research comes from China.  I have observed this trend.  Places such as Venezuela and Trinidad that were formerly considered safe, no longer are.

For us in the traditional hurricane zone, the greatest concern is the increase in storms with rapid intensification which is beyond current forecast ability.

https://studyfinds.org/hurricanes-shifting-south-threats-caribbean-us-coastlines/

In his books on the Aran Islands, Tim Robinson makes reference to an earlier book by J.M. Synge, the Irish playwright best known for THE PLAYBOY OF THE WESTERN WORLD.  I found it in a Kindle edition of his collected works, which for $2.99 includes six plays, poems, two books, and essays and articles.  Allow a writer to say that books are the greatest value.

Synge visited the islands at least four times in the late 1890s, staying for several months on each visit, mostly on Inishmann, the middle of the three.  Although he was educated and travelled and came from an affluent family, he got on well with the poor and primitive islanders.  I enjoyed his THE ARAN ISLANDS and look forward to reading his poems, of which I had not known, and re-reading PLAYBOY which I have not since college.

In reading Synge’s ARAN ISLANDS on one page he writes, “A little after mid-day as I was coming back one old half-blind man spoke to me.”  And the thought immediately came:  ‘old half-blind man’:  that is me.

On a later visit Synge was talking with another old man, a part-time fisherman, as almost all the men on the island then were.

I particularly like “and we do only be drownded now and again.”

I do not claim to be brave, but I am not afraid of the sea, though I do not leave port on days when I shouldn’t. I consider that prudence, not fear.  Fear is often, perhaps usually, fear of the unknown.  The local often rough waters were known to the men of Aran, but as Synge reports so was superstition.  Tales of fairies and miracles were common and their world and understanding did not go more than a few miles.  Galway was its farthest extreme.  I know a wider world and of discoveries by scientists over the past hundred years which makes my unknown much less than theirs.  When on a boat things get out of control, such in a knockdown, the adrenaline gushes and the animal reacts, but thus far as least, the action and response are brief, almost instantaneous.  I am at home at sea and one is not normally afraid at home.

 

Hilton Head Island: the Seasick Kinkajou revisited

YouTube notifies me of the comments made about my videos but not those posted at the videos made by others about me.  I am interested and check on them from time to time and recently found one posted nine days ago at the Safe Harbor Storyteller video by jamestaylor.  

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mYTwmVzCJh4

I doubt it is the singer, but then we do have the same hair style.  I thank him because he reminded me of something I wrote several decades ago and haven’t read for a long time and because he came up with a new definition of me.  Here is his comment from which I have removed a few words through my slight modesty.  

I am happy to have found these videos,  Way back in the late 80s I read your story ‘The Seasick Kinkajou’ and loved it.  I re-read it regularly.  You are mythic, and…here I will coin a new term…auto-heroic (which I think of as being heroic for yourself, rather than for others).  I have read several of your books, and am enjoying these videos immensely.  You always come to mind when I read Lord Alfred Tennyson’s ‘The Voyage.’

I admit that one of the things of which I am proud is that when I completed my first circumnavigation I knew I had broken Chichester’s record for the fastest solo circumnavigation in a monohull yet I did not hold a press conference or notify Guinness.  I needed to prove myself to myself and I had.  I did not need validation from anyone else.  Perhaps that is auto-heroic.  Eventually Guinness contacted me.

Many comments say that I have inspired the person who made them.  I cannot say that was ever my intended purpose, but then perhaps I have not fully understood my intended purpose, and in my old age I am pleased to have inspired a few.

Less this become too much of a self-love fest, here is a recent comment made about one of my own videos.

I agree he doesn’t understand.  That is one of the reasons I mostly avoid answering the question “Why do you sail?”   My experience is that people either understand almost instinctively or they never will.

And here is The Seasick Kinkajou which I have just reread.  I hope you enjoy it as James Taylor and I do.  It is a true story though I have changed the names.

The Seasick Kinkajou

                       Fritz is German, but he looks like a Viking--not one of your fine, shining, blond Norse gods, but like a real Viking just back from the wars.  This is unjust, for Fritz is one of nature’s gentlemen and one of two singlehanders I have met who have boats with aft cabins.  What could a solo sailor possibly want with an aft cabin, I wondered.  A place to get away from himself?  The answer was that neither had started off alone, and neither was a singlehander by choice.

    Fritz had in fact left Europe five years earlier as part of a floating commune/menagerie:  five people, a giant German shepherd dog, and a kinkajou, all crammed into a 30’ ketch.  By the time I met him in Papeete, all but his girlfriend, Simone, and the animals were gone.  And Simone and the dog jumped ship there.  As much as I like Fritz, I cannot say that I blame them.

    When I first saw his boat, LIEDER, she was so covered with rust that I thought she was made of steel.  But she is of wood, and the rust came from bad fastenings.  Her teak deck was rotten.  She was slow and impossible to self-steer.

    Fritz had a sister living in Australia, and he was on his way to “leave the sea and work with the moo cows.”  Simone said that if he actually reached Australia, she would join him, but that she was not going to sail another mile in that boat.

    A For Sale sign appeared on LIEDER--the first of many with ever-decreasing prices I was to see on her in successive ports across the Pacific--but naturally no one was interested.  Finally his visa ran out, and the only way he could get to Australia was to sail.  So he went to sea in a rotten boat that would not steer itself and with a kinkajou that would not stand watches.

    Kinkajous look something like a cross between a raccoon and a monkey, with a long prehensile tail, large lustrous eyes, and soft brown fur.  They are intelligent, curious, and nocturnal.  This one had been aboard LIEDER since it was only a few weeks old.  Kinkajous manage rather well on boats, where they can leap around in the rigging and startle people.

    I like animals, but they present considerable problems on boats, particularly with regulations upon entering various ports, and Fritz knew that even if he managed to nurse LIEDER to Australia, he could not keep his pet.  So he was always looking for a place where he could set the kinkajou free.  That was one of the main  reasons he sailed to Suvarov, an uninhabited atoll in the northern Cook Islands.

    Fritz made no pretense of loving the sea, and at Suvarov he moved ashore and lived in the shack where the New Zealand hermit, Tom Neale, had lived.   He took the kinkajou with him in the hope that it would learn to fend for itself.  But the kinkajou was most definitely not interested.  The only home it had known was a boat, where meals of fresh fruit were provided regularly and could be washed down with a stolen sip of beer.

    For three days he did not venture from the shack, and when Fritz carried him outside and set him down beneath a palm tree, he ran back inside and hid in a corner.  This place wasn’t moving the way his home always had, and he didn’t like it one bit.  For seven weeks Fritz debated whether to leave the kinkajou behind.  But when the LIEDER upped anchor, her full crew was back aboard.

    I last saw Fritz in Suva in September 1979. He told me that he was  beginning to fear that he was doomed to sail ever westward in a boat he could not sell and that would not sink, and with a beast he could not keep and would not abandon.  The cyclone season was near.  The “moo cows” were waiting in Australia.  Simone had written and said that she was still ready to join him when--or if--he got there.  My departing image was of him brooding over a glass of Fiji Bitter at the yacht club.

    A year later a letter in unfamiliar handwriting caught up with me in, I think, Port Vila, where I was recovering from a minor shipwreck.  It was postmarked Adelaide, Australia, and was from Fritz.  He had managed to find a girl brave, or desperate, enough to sail LIEDER with him to Australia.  They had had a terrible passage.  The Tasman had not been kind to them, but then the Tasman is often unkind.  Two full gales had opened LIEDER’s already working seams.  They barely managed to reach Sydney Heads.  Fritz wrote that he hadn’t really cared at that moment what happened next.  If the LIEDER sank on the spot and the quarantine officials ordered the kinkajou to be put to death, so be it.

    But Australia is a friendly place, often as hospitable as her surrounding seas are not, and once there everything came right for Fritz.  For a while anyway.  Fritz was actually able, after replacing a few planks and painting over the rust marks, to sell LIEDER for $10,000.  While I am pleased for Fritz, I must admit that I would be curious to see the buyer.

    With the kinkajou, Fritz fared as well.  When the Sydney Zoo agreed to take him, Fritz seemed to be free.  Simone rejoined him, and together they were traveling around Australia, using his sister’s farm as a home base.

    Fritz wrote that there was a female kinkajou in some other Australian zoo and that possibly his, which was a male, would be taken there for breeding purposes.  I felt quite honored to know the only kinkajou in the world to make outcalls.

    There the story rested, until the day I picked up a newspaper one morning at the Darwin Sailing Club.  A photograph of Fritz covered the front page.  He and Simone were fugitives from justice.  The charge:  kinkajou napping.

    For the next two weeks I rowed ashore early each morning, eager for more news.  Not until the authorities captured the outlaws was I willing to leave for Bali.

    The story that came out through the newspapers was that on their way back from picking apples in Tasmania, Fritz and Simone stopped to visit the kinkajou.  They were dismayed to find him languishing.  His fur was scraggly; his normally huge eyes were sunken and lusterless; he was without energy or appetite and to all appearances was dying.  The zoo veterinarians did not know what was wrong.

    At the sight of Fritz and Simone, the kinkajou rallied briefly; but when, after three daily visits, he resumed his decline, Fritz and Simone decided upon desperate measures, and the next day, when they were left alone with the animal, Fritz stuffed him inside his shirt and smuggled him out of the zoo.

    The three fugitives made their way to the Queensland coast where a friend had a sailboat.  Once on the boat, as Fritz hoped, the kinkajou rapidly recovered.  At a pretrial hearing after their arrest, Fritz was quoted as saying that the kinkajou showed improvement almost from the moment they pushed off from the shore.

    Of course, it could have been many things--being around Fritz and Simone again, a different diet (somehow I doubt the zoo staff thought to give him an occasional sip of beer)--but I prefer to believe with Fritz that it was the smell of the salt air and the bobbing motion of the boat, the sound of the wind in the rigging and perhaps the call of the open sea.  Fritz testified that the sight of the depressed kinkajou in the zoo had reminded him of how he himself had often felt during the long years he had struggled to get a boat and free of Europe.

    I am disdainful of people who turn dogs and cats into children, but in this case the evidence seems strong:  Other kinkajous are nocturnal creatures of the Ecuadorean jungle; this one had become a sailor.

    Certainly Fritz and Simone thought so.  They made an agreement with the authorities, who were quite reasonable in the face of pro-kinkajou public opinion.  They could keep the kinkajou if they took him out of Australia.

    I tried to get in touch with Fritz and Simone, but they had already bought a small sloop and sailed for New Caledonia.

    I expect that when they went to sea, the smallest crew member was also the happiest.

Hilton Head Island: small tasks and good political advice from more than a thousand years ago

After a relatively cold start to the year, the marsh has returned to a pleasant normal of sunny days with highs in the 60s and even 70sF/18-23C.  Lovely.  I have biked down to GANNET most mornings to chip away at the list of items that needed attention after my recent thousand mile sail.  Nothing serious broke, but the small items numbered fourteen, eleven of which have now been marked as done.

main sail luff slide—a clevis pin somehow worked its way loose despite being secured by a split ring from a slide the last day at sea causing a substantial sag midway up the sail, though no measurable reduction in speed.  The pins are small and metric.  I telephoned North’s Charleston loft who sent me four of them at no charge.

Replacing the missing pin was an ordeal.  It proved impossible with the sail on the mast and removing the sail on GANNET requires disconnecting the solid boom vang from the boom and the boom from the mast with lots of easily lost tiny pins and rings.  I managed to get the sail off and back on and the boom and vang reassembled without dropping any bits overboard. In doing do I found a clevis pin in another slide broken and replaced it too.

test tiller pilot—I swapped out the new tiller pilot I had been using for most of the sail for a different one because I thought it was failing to respond to its control buttons, but this happened at night and after I got in I wondered if I had inadvertently put the tiller pilot into stand-by, so I tested that tiller pilot and although it did get wet it is working properly now.  Good.

secure iPhone—During the sail I mostly read and navigated on my iPhone instead of my iPad Pro and whenever I went on deck I slipped it into one of the bins on either side of Central only to have difficulty in finding it when I returned, so I decided to make a permanent place to stow it.  Shock cord with a piece of felt to keep from scratching it or the counter top.

sail ties—I bought webbing to make new mainsail ties several weeks ago.  I finally got around to cutting it to length, melting the ends over the JetBoil and making four new ties.

fill compass wire hole—The light in the cockpit bulkhead compass failed quite some time ago.  I seldom look at that compass, setting course by the Velocitek on the mast or my iPhone.  So I removed the wire to that light which left a hole in the bulkhead.  I filled it with epoxy putty.

reglue tiller pin—Toward the end of the sail the pin in the tiller to which the arm of the tiller pilot connects pulled out.  I have spares, but fortunately it fell into the cockpit and I was able to slip it back into place and tie the tiller arm to the tiller.  I reglued it with SuperGlue.

retape turnbuckles—Routine maintenance to prevent cotter pins from catching lines and ankles.

new tool bag—The zipper on the old bag had corroded frozen open.  The bag lives directly under the companionway and gets wet.  I measured the space.  It is 18” wide.  The old bag was 16”.  I found an 18” one at Amazon.  The extra 2” make a significant difference in stowing tools and I have coated the zipper with zipper lubricant.

glue nonskid—The edges of two of the Raptor nonskid pieces lifted.  This has happened before.  Raptor comes with an adhesive backing that after some years needs help.  I used SuperGlue.

running backstay cleats—I sometimes sail off the wind under jib or asymmetrical alone.  After the passage from San Diego to Hawaii at the start of GANNET’s circumnavigation I emailed Buzz Ballenger, who made GANNET’s mast and boom, about this and he suggested running backstays in addition to the normal fixed backstay, so I had them installed.  This was eleven years ago.  How to stow them when not in use has been a problem, so I finally went to West Marine and got out of the store having spend less than $10, by far a record low, for two small plastic cleats and six screws—two spares.  Problem solved as it should have been years ago.

Evo grip—The rubber grip on the tiller arm of the Evo electric outboard developed a split and shifted so that neutral was no longer directly down but off to one side.  I repositioned it and again used SuperGlue.

Eleven down.  Three still to go.

I crawled forward and determined that the problem with the port bow light is not the wiring.  The light has failed.  I would like to have just a single red/green bow light, but that won’t work on GANNET with the carbon fiber bow sprit in place, so I have ordered Hella replacements for both the starboard and port bow lights.  They should be here in a few days and I will install them.

The jib furling line needs to be replaced or end for ended.  Too much wind today.  I will try to end for end it soon.

The interior wood needs attention.  I oil it with Deks Olje Number 1 and probably will sand and do so again, but I do consider painting the piece at the companionway white.  I have not yet made up my mind.

From TuFu 712-770.

Hilton Head Island: another short film about me and two sailor’s poems

There is a small and unprofitable cottage industry of making short films about Webb Chiles.  Here is another and there is a third out there perhaps still being worked on.

Christopher Cochran is a sailor and a professional videographer who has worked for large advertising agencies and major companies, including Nike.  More than ten years ago when he was living in Chicago he contacted me and asked if he could make a short film about me.  I agreed to cooperate and gave him permission to use my words and videos, but this is his film, created with his own time and at his expense.  I thank him for his interest and effort.

Here is the link if you would like to watch.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s2Yv9_qLZxo

I thank David for this sailor’s poem.

It reminded me of another anonymous from Medieval times which I quoted in one of my books during a storm at sea but I can’t now find it.

Hilton Head Island: a frozen anole and love of the thing itself

This winter continues to be unusually cold in the marsh.  The temperature when I woke at about 6 am was two degrees F/one degree C below freezing.  I know this is not real winter.  I have lived in Boston and Chicago which have real winters; but it is cold for Hilton Head Island where the high temperatures in February are normally in the 60s F and the lows in the mid-40s or low 50s.  Unfortunately proof of the cold was a dead anole—think gecko—on its side, tail curled, frozen stiff on our screened porch this morning.  We often see anoles on the deck and a few find their way in and usually out of the porch coming in through the drain holes in the baseboards.  The holes are small, but so are the anoles and they are limber.  He was not equipped to deal with freezing temperatures.  I felt sorry for him as I tossed him over the deck perhaps to make a meal for another creature.

Here is an article I wrote ten years ago and have recently been thinking about for reasons I expect you understand.  I have copied it from the articles page on the main site where as I am sure you know there are many fine things to read.

https://www.inthepresentsea.com/the_actual_site/articles.html

love of the thing itself

2015

       

      I went to Project Gutenberg the other day to find a link to Joshua Slocum’s SAILING ALONE AROUND THE WORLD to send to an acquaintance, and ended up downloading his THE VOYAGE OF THE LIBERDADE for myself.  I thought I had read LIBERDADE a long time ago, but I hadn’t.       

         Slocum built the LIBERDADE with the assistance of his 15 year old son, Victor, in four months after the 326 ton trading ship, the AQUIDNECK, which Slocum owned and captained, went aground and was lost in a small Brazilian harbor one hundred and fifty miles southwest of Sao Paulo.  He and Victor then sailed the LIBERDADE five thousand five hundred miles back to the United States, hand steering watch and watch, four hours on, four off.  Slocum’s second wife, Henrietta, and his young son, Garfield, were also aboard.

        Slocum passes quickly over the almost miraculous building of the boat in a remote harbor with few tools and materials.  Fortunately good wood was close at hand.

        When the sails blew out soon after the voyage began, the LIBERDADE was towed at speed to Santos; and from there coastal hopped until Pernambuco from where she sailed 2150 miles non-stop to Barbados in 19 days.  

        Jill and I sailed off that coast, going directly from Rio de Janeiro to the British Virgin Islands.  Once around the bulge of Brazil, trade wind and strong currents are behind you.  Slocum claims one current assisted day’s run of 220 miles; but the LIBERDADE’S average was 103.

        As you can see from this drawing the LIBERDADE was an open boat.  She should have sailed well downwind.  She was relatively light with little wetted surface. 

        By the time they reached the United States Henrietta had had enough.  She never made a voyage with Joshua again.  Thus are single-handers sometimes made.

        I enjoyed the first part of the book which was about the AQUIDNECK as much as I did the latter part about the LIBERDADE.  The business of making a ship pay.  Slocum finding cargos, delivering them, ever seeking the next.  There was also cholera, small pox and a mutiny during which Joshua shot and killed a man.

        The voyage of the LIBERDADE was audacious.  Perhaps as much as setting out in the SPRAY to become the first man to sail alone around the world.  

        Slocum had his own doubts about moving down from sailing a ship to the 35’ LIBERDADE, but once underway he wrote, “The old boating trick came back fresh to me, the love of the thing itself gaining on me as the little ship stood out; and my crew with one voice said, ‘Go on.’ ”