Hilton Head Island: sailed—a little

 

Saturday morning Carol walked down to GANNET with me at 8:30.  I had prepared the little boat the day before.  The Evo was on the stern.  The Pelagic tiller pilot in place although that proved futile.  The interior in semi-passage mode with the dinner food bag and a clothes bag that normally live on the port pipe berth moved forward to the v-berth and my sleeping bag and pillow moved aft to the pipe berth.  The anchor and rode deployment bag were under the forward hatch. I wanted to leave early to have some of the tide with me.  It was due to change and start coming in at the mouth of Skull Creek at 10:30.  

Light wind from the northwest required some use of outboard reverse, which I don’t like, but our exit from the slip went as planned and I waved goodby to Carol and we were off on a sunny morning.  Only light wind was forecast and I accepted that once the tide turned we might not get out of Port Royal Sound.  I was pleasantly surprised to be able to raise the main as we rounded the curve of Skull Creek and then the jib when we reached the sound and GANNET moved at 4 knots toward the ocean.  She has not been antifouled now for more than two years, but I had a diver clean the bottom two days earlier, so she slipped smoothly through green water.  It was good to be sailing again after so long.

Our speed dropped to 3 knots as we passed Hilton Head and entered the Atlantic.  Shoals extend out five miles on both sides of the entrance channel, some with water too shallow even for GANNET.  While in the sound the water is mostly 30’ to 50’ feet deep and there is room for a fleet to anchor, I am impressed that ships were able to enter in the days of sail in vessels that did not go well to windward.  I expect they anchored off, sent boats in to reconnoiter, and waited for a favorable wind angle.

I reconnoitered those shoals myself that morning.  In light conditions I could see slight white crests on some of them, but about three miles out the surface of the water was smooth and I eased off and headed for an area that on the iSailor chart shows a minimum of 11’ of water, hand steering and moving my glance constantly from the water ahead and the depthsounder.  Even though it was then low tide, I never saw a depth less than 22’ before it became deeper and we were through to 30’ and more, where we would remain, and I returned the tiller to the Raymarine, not the Pelagic.

Most equipment on GANNET worked at it should despite not having been used for too long, but regrettably the Pelagic was not among them.  It failed three separate ways.  First the remotes did not work.  I have two and had never used the second one.  I changed the batteries in both to no avail.  Not being able to control a tiller pilot from the companionway without having to move to the aft end of the cockpit and push buttons is in light and moderate conditions a mere inconvenience.  In heavier weather it can be difficult and hazardous.  That day only inconvenient, until while we were still in Port Royal Sound, the Pelagic suddenly and inexorably extended the tiller arm full out which of course resulted in a sharp undesired turn.  I switched it from auto to standby, corrected course, centered the tiller arm, and tried again.  And again in a few minutes the arm went full out.  I had moved one of my three remaining Raymarines from the duffle bag in which they are stowed at the forward end of the v-berth farther aft just in case.  A good idea.  I ducked below and brought it up and set it steering.  I have owned more Raymarines than I remember.  I mark the year bought on the back of them with a Magic Marker and by chance the one I had pulled from the bag was bought in 2015.  A true survivor.  Later in the day I changed the batteries in its remote and found that worked too.

To move ahead and conclude about the Pelagic, once at anchor I tried to test it again.  There was no response to any of the buttons on the control panel.  Not then.  Or the next morning.  Or back in the slip.

I like the design of the Pelagic.  I want it to work.  I assume they must work for others.  But I have now had two models, one a prototype, this a production model, and they have never worked for very long for me.

I can get by with sheet to tiller steering alone.  Even better with the addition of Raymarines which are fine up to the point where water starts coming over the deck.

I am still thinking about this, but I do not have confidence in Pelagic and don’t see how I ever can.

More Raymarines may be in my future.

I reclined in a Sportaseat in the cockpit as we sailed pleasantly at 3 knots toward Charleston until 2 PM when the wind died and the rippled ocean went glassy.  I anchored in 35’ of water 5 miles offshore and drank a Heineken 0 and ate cheese and salami and crackers Carol had prepared for my lunch.  Last Christmas she gave me a small Yeti cooler.  My beer was cold and I had ice for my Botanist gin in the evening.  I have become decadent in my old age.

I retired to the Great Cabin to get out of the sun and continued reading LORD JIM until around 6 when I poured some gin over ice and took it and the Boom 2 speakers on deck and sat sipping and listening to music as the sun sank toward the low land to the west.

I slept well that night.  The ocean was as smooth as a good anchorage.

With cursed Daylight Time, dawn here now isn’t until 7:30.  I was up at first light and underway by 7:30.  The same light wind as the day before.  GANNET making the same pleasant indolent 3 knots.  At 10 I still had 45 miles to be off Charleston Harbor and I knew I wasn’t going to make it before dark and that I would not attempt to enter the harbor after dark.  As you may know I almost never enter harbors after dark.  There have been a few rare exceptions, one is Port Royal Sound.  And despite the light wind, the forecast was for more than twenty knots to come up during the night, making just anchoring wherever I found myself at sunset untenable.  There are sounds and inlets to the west in which I could seek refuge, but all have miles long narrow entrance channels which I would have mostly to power in and out.  I had removed the battery from the Evo when we anchored Saturday afternoon and it was still charging.  I had swapped it out for the second fully charged battery, but even so our range under power is limited and uncertain and I don’t like to power, so I turned and headed back which instantly improved our day.

The wind was blowing at 4 or 5 knots directly from Port Royal Sound and with the apparent wind increased rather than decreased GANNET heeled slightly and began making 4 and 5 knots.  Not fast, but good sailing and it soon became apparent we would be back in the sound before sunset.

After several tacks we were approaching the shoal on the east side of the entrance channel in mid-afternoon.  Again the water was smooth and we were closehauled on port tack headed for an area where the chart showed as little as 6’ of water.  GANNET’s draft is 4’1” and we were heeled.  There were no waves, only ripples.  I remembered the greater depth than shown on the chart on the way out and continued on, prepared to tack instantly if the depthsounder showed 15’.  It never did.  The lowest reading was 19’.  Once the depth returned to over 30’ I eased the sheets and the wind increased and on a beam reach the little boat romped toward the mouth of the sound at 7 and 8 knots.  Glorious.

I planned to sail up the sound until we were just north of the entrance to Skull Creek and anchor for the night.  I thought I could have made it to the marina, but was happy to remain on the water for another night. 

Halfway up the sound I moved the anchor and rode deployment bag on deck. 

Two miles south of Skull Creek, the wind suddenly died.  It was as though someone had flipped a switch.  I let us drift for a few minutes hoping it would return, but when it didn’t I went forward and eased the anchor over the side.  We were in 40’ of water.  I had tied the rode off at about 70’ to set the anchor.  When I felt it catch, I eased out another 50’ of rode.  By the time I had done that the wind had returned.  After a few expletives, I decided to remain where we were, for which I paid a price the next morning.

The wind picked up during the night as forecast and we bounced around more in the sound than we had the previous night exposed in the ocean.  Still I slept well enough and was again awake around 6.  I turned on one of the solar lights and drank apple juice and a cup of coffee and read.  Later in the morning I emailed Carol—I had cell phone coverage—that I was going to wait for the tide to turn at noon before heading in.

The wind continued to build and was soon gusting 20 knots directly out of Skull Creek.  Had I been able to anchor where I planned on Sunday, reaching the mouth of the creek would have been an easy half mile reach.  Now it was a difficult two mile beat.

6” to 12” white crested wavelets covered the sound when I started bringing in the anchor rode at 11.  I am the windlass and it was hard work pulling even light GANNET forward against wind and tide, holding every 5’ or 10’ with my right hand while flaking the rode into the deployment bag with my left.  Finally, gratefully, I felt the anchor break free, got the rest of the rode and it on deck, then below on the v-berth, and hurried aft to set the jib.  I thought I could beat my way to the creek under jib alone.  It soon became obvious I couldn’t.  I partially furled the jib and raised the main.  This got us going at 3 and 4 knots, heeled gunnel deep.  I furled more of the jib and got GANNET back more on her bottom and began tacking.  However I was disappointed to find that the clutch holding the main halyard allowed it to slip a few inches causing a sag at the tack of the mainsail.  This had happened in the past and I had installed a new clutch designed to hold line the size of GANNET’s main halyard.  It worked for a while.  Perhaps the line had stretched and become thinner.   

While most of the sound is deep, there are shoals, some unmarked.  I had to keep glancing at the iSailor chart on my iPhone which I had with me in the cockpit, usually stowed in one of the sheet bags, to keep clear of them.  The wind was too gusty for the Raymarine, swinging from 8 or 9 knots to 20 and 21, so except when I put the tiller in the Raymarine to tack, I hand steered.

Being pushed back by wind and tide, it took us an hour to get to Skull Creek, where I furled the jib, engaged the Evo, then lowered the main and powered at 2 to 2.5 knots, now partially tide aided the 1.8 miles to the marina and our slip where we tied up at about 1 pm.

I had to hand steer some of that as well as the wind and tide kept pushing GANNET around.  I was able to use the Raymarine long enough to drink another Heineken 0 and set up the fenders and dock lines.

I checked the Evo battery and it was still at 84% when we reached the slip, so I could have powered faster or farther had I wanted to.

I received a new Yellowbrick, this a model 3, a few days before we sailed.  My previous one was a model 2 and more than ten years old.  Yellowbrick sent an email about a sale, so I decided to replace it.  The two units look the same, but the 3 sends up positions in much less time, reportedly has much better battery life, is obviously much more powerful, and is considerably less expensive.  My memory is that I paid almost $900 for the Model 2 ten or eleven years ago.  The Model 3 on sale was $500. 

I took the new Yellowbrick down to GANNET to test it and after sending up a manual position which appeared on the tracking page, which is the same as the old tracking page, left the unit on the boat, but forgot to turn it off.  It was stowed in the compartment at the head of the starboard pipe berth with the antenna pointed forward away from the main hatch’s clear view of the sky and under a counter top.  I had it set to upload positions every two hours and as you can see it did and they were received.  I am impressed.  

Also note the one aberrant position.  Most were very close to the true position, but that one was not.  A lesson learned.

I am glad to have sailed a little, to have spent time on the water, and live the routine of boat life again.

I pause.

I like living here.  I like having GANNET so close.  But the truth is these are waters for power boats.

Hilton Head Island: compensation; Conrad; worked out; sailing; peace

 

Within an hour or two from when I am writing this Wednesday, October 9, at 8 PM Eastern time, storm 13 will come ashore on the west coat of Florida.  I refuse to accept the naming of these inanimate storms.  M is the 13th letter in the alphabet.  I will continue to include the letter, so you will know what I am talking about, but I am through with this foolishness.  As Carol points out the naming of storms benefits insurance companies who have exclusions and demand higher premiums for ‘named’ storms.  An event is named a tropical storm at 34 knots, which is the lowest level of a gale, which is really just unpleasant weather.  I have been in more gales than I know.  Given sea room and not trapped on a lee shore I don’t even count them.   

I am perhaps the only US citizen who is not a scientist who wishes this country would give up and accept the metric system.  I have written this here before.  Only three countries on the planet do not use the metric system:  the USA, Liberia, Myanmar.  Quite a group of allies.  The five hundred years of European domination of this planet that began with the voyages of Columbus and Vasco da Gama are over.  The American Century is over.  This country is still the richest and the third most populous—though that will not last much longer—but the historical aberration of our dominant position after the end of WW2 has passed.  Get over it and go with the world standard.

That was an aside.

Even the talking heads whose stock in trade is frightening the masses acknowledge that Storm 13 will have minimal effect on the Low Country.

I have sympathy for those in west Central Florida, but we all know where we live.  From at least Cape Hatteras south to who any longer knows how close to the Equator, hurricanes are a risk.  There used to be a southern limit, but that in recent years has been breached.

Yet this storm has been startling.

I wrote a long time ago and have been often quoted as saying of barometric pressure 1020 mb is high.  1000 mb is low.  And what matters is the direction and rate of change.  I understand barometric pressure in mb rather than inches.

I regularly observe barometric pressure.  I can read it out on my watch and the lock screen of my phone.  I don’t recall seeing a pressure here above 1025 or below 995.  But last Monday morning in a few hours this is what happened in Storm 13M:

Beyond belief, except that it happened.

Here is another quote from a weather scientist:

The talking heads and incompetent journalists who keep talking and writing about thousand year storms happening every few years are simply evincing their lack of intelligence.

I am among the last who circumnavigated using a sextant.  I also used pilot charts, which were large impressive portfolios of monthly charts of various oceans divided into five degree areas of latitude and longitude showing probability of wind direction, percent of gales and calms.  As I have said in the poem, ‘Ithaca, Illinois’ “he holds the world in his mind”.  I do hold much of the information in those pilot charts in my mind.  But what was collected from tens of thousands of reports from ships in the past is no longer relevant.  There has been a paradigm shift.

So Hilton Head has been passed in the past few weeks by a storm to the west and now one to the south.

I feel a bit like a warship in a naval battle where the enemy has fired straddling salvos.  Shells landing to port, then to starboard.  Assuming the enemy is competent they have our range.  Fortunately in this case the enemy is not sentient and so does not deserve a name.  But that a strong hurricane will strike Hilton Head Island is certain as it is every place on this coast.  I hope it does not happen in my life or Carol’s, but if it does, it is a risk I have chosen to accept considering I can’t live in New Zealand’s Bay of Islands.

So the three progressive photos of tonight’s sunset are some compensation for the risk of hurricanes and alligators.  There are more compensations here.  Other beauty and tranquility.  Tranquility is not my highest value, but I have lived a life of sufficient stress that it is appreciated.

I am rereading Joseph Conrad’s LORD JIM for I think the third time and am thoroughly enjoying it.

When in the past I have been asked who are my favorite authors I have said Thomas Hardy and Emile Zola.  Reading as I am all of Zola’s twenty Rougon/Macquart novels has changed my evaluation of Zola.  His best half dozen or so are very great indeed, and he courageously wrote “J’Accuse” in the Dreyfus affair, but he also wrote to fill pages in serial publications, as did many others, and I find too many words and too prolonged descriptions in many of his lessor works. I do not find this in Conrad who almost always is a pleasure to read.  I recall reading Conrad first as a teenager in my room in that landlocked suburb of Saint Louis.  It was a collection of short stories titled I think TWIXT LAND AND SEA.  I did not want to be where I was.  Conrad pointed a way toward a better place.

I did my standard workout today for the first time in three weeks, since before my most recent skin cancer removal.  I was told not to exercise while the stitches were in for two weeks and then not to do much with my upper body for another week after they were removed.  That would have been tomorrow, but I have missed not using my body and pushed a day early.  No problem.  As is my custom I went to the next level a few weeks before my birthday and did 83 push-ups and crunches in the first series.  I am good for another year.  I have no idea how long I can keep this up.  One more each year.  My life has become beyond my imagination.

Despite the apocalypse to the south, our weather forecast is good and if it holds I will leave the dock Saturday morning and try to sail to Charleston, fifty miles away.

To do so I will have to sail more than fifty miles to get out of Port Royal Sound and into Charleston Harbor.  Little wind is expected Saturday and the tide will mostly be against me.  I hope only to get out into the sound or perhaps the ocean and anchor and be underway early Sunday morning.

I have not sailed since February.  I hope I never go so long again.

The circumstances are not important, but I said to Carol this evening, “The only peace I will find from now on will be at sea.  Perhaps it always was.”

Hilton Head Island: more Tim Robinson; three movies; old milk

I thank Gary for informing me that some of Tim Robinson’s books are available at the Internet Archive.  I found there one of the Aran Island books, PILGRIMAGE, and two of the Connemara trilogy, LISTENING TO THE WIND and THE LAST POOL OF DARKNESS.

https://archive.org/search?query=creator%3A%28tim%20robinson%29

So you can if you wish discover if Tim Robinson suits you for free.

On the past three evenings we have watched three movies:  one great; one excellent; and one a very successful bit of fluff.

The great was SUNSET BOULEVARD from 1950, starring Gloria Swanson as a former Hollywood star who is seeking a come back and William Holden as a young out of work writer who is brought into her delusional world.  After watching the movie on Paramount Plus I was surprised to learn that Gloria Swanson was nominated for but did not win the best actress Academy Award that year, which went to Judy Holliday for her part in BORN YESTERDAY.  Some of SUNSET BOULEVARD is almost melodrama, but it is rightly considered among the best movies ever made.

The excellent was THE ASSASSINATION OF JESSIE JAMES BY THE COWARD ROBERT FORD.  I bought the novel of the same name by Ron Hansen via BookBud and found it much better than I expected, so when I discovered it had been made into a movie starring Brad Pitt as Jessie James and Casey Affleck as Robert Ford I wanted to see it.  The movie is excellent in all respects:  acting, direction, cinematography.  Casey Affleck in particular is impressive in portraying the nuances of Robert Ford’s insecurities and complicated relationship with Jessie James from hero worship to killer.

The book describes more of Robert Ford’s life after the killing—he was only twenty when he shot Jessie James—than does the movie.  He became wealthy running a bar in a Colorado mining town before being assassinated himself.

I recommend both book and movie.  We rented the movie from Amazon Prime.

The successful bit of fluff is WOLVES starring George Clooney and Brad Pitt.  I read that it is the most viewed movie on Apple TV+ ever.  It is a crime movie with an often implausible plot, but entertaining enough if one suspends judgement.  I was curious what the stars were paid to participate in this and find that reportedly they received $35,000,000 each, and the director $15,000,000.  My word!

I have been making daily visits to GANNET.  Yesterday I checked the duffle bag with breakfast supplies and discarded a zip-lock bag with oatmeal that had turned suspiciously black.  I have no idea how long it had been on board.  Probably years.  I also found a sealed pouch of powdered milk that I opened and moved to a plastic canister. It looks all right, but it is a brand that I seldom buy and think I last did in Durban, South Africa.  If so, it is now seven years old and extremely well travelled.  I think I might throw it away too.

Hilton Head Island. the year of Tim Robinson and moving

Yesterday morning with regret I finished reading STONES OF ARAN:  LABYRINTH, the fifth of Tim Robinson’s incomparable books on the Aran Islands and the facing Connemara coast of Ireland.  I do not say incomparable casually.  There may be their equal, but if so I do not know of them.  

The five books total 2120 pages.  Reading them as I have about ten pages each morning, I have been enjoying the company of Tim Robinson almost since the beginning of the year.  I will miss him.

One measure of my appreciation of them is that I read them in paper.  There are no e-editions and reading ‘real’ books only re-enforced my strong preference for e-editions where I can change the font and its size, can read them at night without external light, hold them comfortably in one hand, and have hundreds of books in a space no larger than a small magazine.

The books are shown above in the order he wrote them, left to right.  That is not how I read them.  I started with the middle book, LISTENING TO THE WIND, the first of the Connemara trilogy, read the next two in that trilogy, then read the two STONES OF ARAN.

Robinson and his wife, to whom he refers in the book only as M, moved from England to live on the Aran Islands for several years before shifting to the mainland coast.  He walked, bicycled, rode in cars and boats, almost every inch of the islands and the coast.  He writes with intelligence and style and wry humor of their geology, biology, botany, archaeology, mythology, history and people.  He must have been a likable man and a good listener for he was an outsider in closely knit and isolated communities, an Englishman in a land England treated cruelly, and an avowed atheist in societies where people have killed one another over religion for centuries.

Here are a few quotes from the last pages of LABYRINTH.

Certain families used to keep a lookout posted for sailing vessels inward bound for Galway, so that their menfolk could row out in the currachs to meet them and propose themselves as pilots through the rocks and shoals of Galway Bay.  (Jokes were made about these Aran pilots.  For example:  the Araner assures the captain of the ship that he knows every rock in the bay, and is taken on as pilot.  Soon afterwards the ship shudders to a halt against a rock.  Captain:  “I thought you said you knew every rock in the bay?”  Araner:  “I do—and that’s one of them!”)

When I read of an old Aran Island man, who was probably younger than I am, say, “There’s nothing for an old man to do”, I thought to myself:  Well, perhaps there is.

Robison wrote two endings to LABYRINTH, both of which are serendipitous endings to my reading all five books.

Indeed I have been gone far too long about this island (but see, my darling, the book I have found you among its stones!)  And now, have I reached the end of it so soon?  With so little seen, less understood, nothing possessed?  Not quite, it seems, for at this last moment something comes into view to the west.  Perhaps it is just a path of foam kicked up by dolphins, perhaps it is the material of a postscript to my Aran…

And that postscript ends:

The virtue of reality is that no understanding is equal to it; no walk, however labyrinthine, wears out the stone.  And so, the Aran I have written myself through is inevitably the Lesser one.  But, whether it be the terrestrial paradise, an airy illusion of clouds on the sea, or the work of delusive spirits, I have brought back a book as proof that I was there.  Perhaps when I open it in seven years’ time it will tell me what I had hoped to learn by writing it, how to march one’s step to the pitch and roll of this cracked stone boat of a cosmos; but for the time being I cannot read it.

Tim Robinson must share this year with Carol’s retiring and our moving full time to Hilton Head Island, and my not writing for publication or sailing much.

This is the first year in almost half a century I have not written anything for paid publication.  Some of you will recall that I sold an article last year and the experience was not enjoyable.  I have outlived agents, publishers, editors.  I expect editors of most sailing magazines still know who I am, but I do not have the rapport with any of them that I have had with some in the past.  So a writer writes and most of what I write now is this journal, which may be my masterpiece and you get it for free.  

I also write a fiction manuscript I have titled VARIATIONS ON A THEME.  I have added to it for almost two decades as thoughts and images and bits of dialogue occur to me.  It is about one of the three essential subjects of my life.  It is not about wind or words, so I leave it to you to figure it out.  It is for my eye (sic) only and now runs to more than 160,000 words.  One day soon I will reread it from the beginning and delete it.  To share it would be unjust.

Of sailing, the stitches from my most recent skin cancer surgery were removed this morning.  I brought the canisters that hold oatmeal, trail mix and protein powder up from GANNET to fill and I will soon make the vast fifty mile voyage to Charleston.

Given time and continued health I will sail more.  Much more.  Beyond the edge.

Some of you may know that I have often quoted my fellow born in Saint Louis, who sought to distance himself from it as much as I, T.S. Eliot, “Old men ought to be explorers.”  

He only talked it.  I am living it.  At my own rhythm.

 

Hilton Head Island: open and three bad ‘poems’

Our air-conditioning went out last Wednesday afternoon.  This was irritating because we replaced the entire system, as we did everything else in this condo, only a few years ago.  To the credit of the company that installed the new system, they had a technician here within the hour.  Presumably he was already working somewhere on the island and came to us as soon as he finished that job.  He quickly determined that a motor had burned out long before it should have, but these things happen.  He also quickly learned that they do not have a replacement in stock and somewhat more slowly that they can not obtain one until Monday, that is tomorrow, at the earliest.

In midsummer this would have been seriously distressful.  However, Helene kept us relatively cool Thursday and Friday with wind and rain, and we have overhead fans in both bedrooms and on the screened porch, plus Carol drove to Walmart and bought a powerful floor fan.  

Our highs have only been 83-85F/28-29C and lows 71-73F/21-22C.  Not intolerable and once the rain stopped, we have been living with all the doors and windows open which I am enjoying very much.  The membrane between us and the outside world is negligible.  I hear the wind in the live oaks and Spanish moss.  Ripples on the shore of Skull Creek.  Birds.  I awaken at night to feel the usually slight breeze off the creek as well as that of the fan.  I can smell the not unpleasant marsh.  With everything open this condo is even more than usual like living on a boat.

However I confess that when the replacement motor arrives, we will close up again for a while.

I have more than a dozen books of Japanese and Chinese poetry.  When I finish one, I scroll down in the Kindle app on my iPad Pro to the one I last read longest ago and start rereading it.  I have now read all of them several times.

My copy of ZEN POETRY:  LET THE SPRING BREEZE ENTER is 188 pages long.  Of that, the first 62 are introduction and the last 12 are about the death of Shinkichi Takahashi who lived 1901-1978.  That leaves 114 pages of poems. 31 of those pages are devoted to Takahashi.  

I have written that with a few exceptions I much prefer the ancient Chinese and Japanese poets to the more modern.  The ancients speak to me as the moderns do not.  This is particularly true of Takahashi and devoting so much more of the book to him than any other poet is disproportionate, to say the least.

I offer you three examples of what I do not even consider poems.  These are representative.  I could have provided many more examples.  In fact practically all of those of his included in the anthology.

These are among the greatest poems of cultures that go back more than two thousand years?  I think not.

An anonymous did not like my thought about Zen in a previous entry.  Although I admire most of the poetry in the anthology, this will give him something more to complain about.

Hilton Head Island: uneventful

Helene passed to the west of us during the night uneventfully.  We received only 1.59” of rain and only one gust of more than 34 knots was recorded at the airport.  That gust registered 46 knots. There are some trees down and power outages, but we are not affected.  The wind is still blowing  around 20 knots and there are whitecaps on wavelets on Skull Creek.  I have never seen what I would call a wave on the creek.

Carol and I walked to GANNET this morning.  Lots of leaves and twigs and a few small branches on the path.

GANNET is fine as I expected.  

A few boats have torn biminis and other canvas work that they were unable or unwise enough not to remove.

The wind is presently from the SSW blowing up Skull Creek and plastering the side tied boats opposite GANNET against the dock.  A huge fender on a big slab sided catamaran has been pushed onto the dock and no longer protecting the boat.  I don’t think almost any number of men could push the boat away and get the fender back in place until the wind diminishes which it should do by sunset.

Hilton Head Island: waiting for Helene

   

The photo does not accurately capture what I am seeing and experiencing, which is odd considering how flawed my vision is.  Even damaged we are impressive constructs.

Light to moderate rain has been falling since dawn.  Now it is nominally sunset though there will be only a darkening of gray.

As I write a Great Blue Heron is squawking.  I cannot see him, but have lived here long enough to know the squawk.

The storm, which as you know I do not think should be named, will pass west of us between midnight and dawn.   Other than a possible tornado, about which we can do nothing—there is no safe place in this building—I do not expect much.  I believe that most experienced sailors become fatalists.  You know chance can kill you and so if you are intelligent you plan and prepare to reduce chance to the minimum.  But you cannot eliminate it.

I am on the screened porch.  A glass of Laphroaig is on the table.  Rain is falling.  The Great Blue just squawked again.  

It is pleasant out here, listening to the rain patter against the leaves of live oaks and the deck as I have often heard it patter on decks of boats.  A cool breeze.

I biked down to GANNET yesterday to tie a line around the tack of the jib to prevent it from possibly unfurling and to tie down the tiller.  I found I already had a line around the jib.  I did tie down the tiller, though I don’t know that makes any difference.

My standards are different from almost all, certainly the alarmist talking heads on television.

I know hurricane force winds.  Not category three or four as Helene may be upon landfall.  But all the talking heads who have experienced nothing offer only cliches and fear.

I came out to listen to music.  I left the choices to chance.  The first to come up was Lucio Dalla and Luciano Pavarotti singing ‘Caruso’ 

https://www.google.com/search?q=lucio+dalla+pavarotti+caruso&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&hl=en-us&client=safari

and the next Erik Bogle, who wrote ‘And the Band Played Waltzing Matilda’

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cnFzCmAyOp8

Rather good choices by the algorithm.

The rain continues to fall.

The stitches in my arm come out a week from today and soon after I hope to sail to Charleston.  

I am so much looking forward to sailing a month or two early next year.  It has been too long, particularly since I have so little time left.

I continue to read Tim Robinson and with regret have only five or six more days of his being a part of my mornings.  The oriental poetry I read now is a book of Zen Poetry, although I think those who believe in zen are so afraid of suffering in this life that they accept a life that is already death before death inevitably comes.  And I continue to read five Shakespeare sonnets each morning.  I am almost at the end of those written to a young man and am looking forward to those last twenty-eight to or about the ‘dark lady’. 

Shakespeare had some bad days, as we all do,  as shown particularly in several of the sonnets in the 70s.

I had to move chairs.  Rain is blowing in from the north.

Totally dark now,  The sound of rain,  A slight breeze against my face.

I’m going to listen to more music.

Hilton Head Island: unsmooth; LIBRA; countdown

A great writer has observed that life is the process of turning baby smooth skin into scar tissue.  I now have more.  What I hope is the last of this year’s crop of skin cancers was removed Wednesday leaving a two inch diagonal scar on my right bicep with impressively neat and even stitches.

This was done by a female doctor.  I believe she will be a satisfactory replacement for the beautiful skin cancer doctor in Chicago.  She, too, is attractive, which is not an essential medical quality, but pleasing.

During our conversation while she was slicing and stitching, she asked what I did.  I corrected the tense and learned that she and her husband own a 51’ catamaran that is operated by one of the bareboat charter companies in the British Virgin Islands.  They use it a few weeks twice a year and the charters the rest of the time pay for the boat.  When it is paid off, they plan to sell it.  She asked if I like sailing here.  I hesitated, but said as I have written in this journal, I like living here, but I don’t like sailing here.  To my relief, she said she doesn’t either.

I just finished reading LIBRA, a novel by Don DeLillo about Lee Harvey Oswald and the Kennedy assassination.  DeLillo is quite clear that it is a novel and that he has taken liberty with the facts.  I am not given to conspiracy theories, but the novel offers one that is interesting and internally coherent.  I also find interesting the statement made in the novel that the CIA file on Oswald now runs to 144 volumes. 

I remember where I was when I first heard that Kennedy had been shot and when a few hours later I learned that he had died.  I saw Jack Ruby shoot Oswald on live television.  I was twenty-two years old.  Carol was six.  She remembers where she was too.  Some others I have asked who are about her age do not.  

Carol and I are sixteen and a half years apart.  We met when I was in my early 50s and she in her mid-30s.  The difference in our ages meant considerably less then than it did in 1963.

The marina offers a 10% discount on slip fees if you pay for a year in advance.  My contract expires at the end of this month and yesterday I paid for the coming year.  In doing so it occurred to me that I will do that only one more time. In October of 2026 I will start paying by the month because when the hurricane season ends, I sail.  A very pleasing thought. 

Hilton Head Island: rogue; cool; two views of the future; two harbors

I thank Larry for this link about “the most extreme rogue wave on record”. Extreme not in being the highest, but the highest in comparison with the other waves present at the time.

https://www.sciencealert.com/gigantic-wave-in-pacific-ocean-was-the-most-extreme-rogue-wave-on-record

I think the definition of a rogue wave as being twice the height of the other waves present is far too conservative.  Twice is not usually of much significance.  

As you may recall the most dangerous moments of GANNET’s circumnavigation came not in the two 55 knot gales, but on a sunny moderate day in the Pacific Ocean northeast of Samoa.

At just after noon three hundred and fifty miles north of Apia, Samoa, I was standing in the companionway when I saw two 10’ waves coming at us, high above the average 4’ waves.   They were steep and close together.  As the first one hit, I ducked below, sliding the companionway over me.  However, the vertical slat was not in place and not reachable.  The second wave exploded into and over us, knocking GANNET down, masthead almost in the water.

With GANNET heeled 90º I braced myself from falling and stared down at the ocean.  GANNET’s lee rail was below water.  The ocean only a few inches from entering the cockpit.  The wave was gushing in and pressing us down.  It was a matter of whether the ocean would reach the cockpit before GANNET came back up.  Time slowed almost to a stop.  Probably a few seconds passed.  GANNET came back up.

I walked onto our deck this morning at 8:30.  It was 65F and sunny.  I was too cool in just t-shirt and shorts, rather than too hot.  First time that has happened in months.  

The low that has been sitting off our coast gained some strength and went ashore yesterday near Wilmington, North Carolina.  Our seemingly perpetual Small Craft Advisory has finally been lifted.  However I go in tomorrow to be rechopped.

September, normally the height of the hurricane season, has thus far been relatively quiet.  However, this morning’s GRIBs show something that might develop at the end of the month.  Projections nine days out are problematical, but here what the GRIBs are showing for Thursday, September 26.

The first is the European model.  The second U.S.

Two harbors:

Hilton Head Island: Saturday evening. The view from the deck

 Not a dramatic sunset, but subtle beauty.

I am sitting here listening to music.

Wind rustling live oaks and Spanish Moss.

We have a Small Craft Advisory for waters out to twenty miles as we have had for more than a week, daily renewed.  As always not as much wind on this side of the island.

Just after high tide.

No sound except my music,  Presently ‘The Lord’s Rough Ways’ from the soundtrack of the movie, THE HOSTILES.

I gain strength from such moments, as I gain strength from knowing that a few of you appreciate my words and what I am doing with my life.  I pause, for I tell myself I should need no strength from others, and I am certain I would live and write as I do if no one knew, but I am glad that a few of my fellow misnamed species do care and understand.  The present tense is deliberate.  Not even at eighty-two:  what I ‘have done’ with my life.  I sometimes think:  this has gone on too long.  It does not matter what I think.  I have no choice.  I am not yet over.

I am on that part of the bell shaped curve of life where on the far right the line parallels and does not ever touch the baseline, but of course in reality the moment comes when it does.  I started to say I face that without regret, but I do have regrets.  Yet the regrets are details.  Mistakes I made in ignorance and inexperience.  I have done what I was born to do and still am.  It takes more effort now.  Yet I have time, until I don’t.  And as I have written the secret to my success—which presumes that I have had any—is that I do so little.

So I will gather what strength I can and continue doing little.