Hilton Head Island: an egret and me; finished; choosing to become idiots; three poems

These days I am at the marina about 6:45.  This is a very nice time of the morning.  The sun is just rising about the tall trees to the east.  Skull Creek is often a smooth sheet of water.  It is quiet, except when I startle birds on the dock.  Most squawk and fly away on my approach, but one great heron does not.  There are two species of large white herons here.  Great and Snowy.  Great have yellow beaks and black feet.  Snowy have black beaks and yellow feet.  This particular Great stands on the main dock beside a large power boat.  He is about waist high to me.  He keeps an eye on me as I keep literally an eye on him.  He lets me pass within an arm or neck length.  I could reach out and pat him on the head.  He could reach out and stab me with his beak.  Neither of us do so.  We pass one another in peace and go about our business.  Me to work on GANNET.  He to catch his breakfast.  Though one day I did say, “Good morning” as I passed.  He pulled his head back and looked startled.

I painted the bilge and the small stowage compartment beneath the companionway yesterday.  I am finished painting GANNET’s interior.  Hooray.

I sanded the floorboards today and will apply Deks Olje to them and the remaining interior wood tomorrow.  I expect the floorboards will need more than one coat.  But this job is done.  A photo will follow.

One of the sites I view each morning is Ars Technica.  They recently ran an article about AI cheating at Brown University which I find interesting in many ways, including that the reaction from the university administrators is described as ‘fairly tepid’.

https://arstechnica.com/ai/2026/07/we-cannot-choose-to-become-idiots-the-ai-cheating-scandal-roiling-brown-university/

I bicycle to GANNET.  Before Carol retired and began to live here full time, I bicycled everywhere.  I enjoy riding a bicycle.  We forget how socially revolutionary an invention the bicycle was.  Suddenly the range of the great majority of people who did not own a horse or a boat was greatly extended. 

Hilton Head Island: a day off; almost; withdrawal symptoms; books read

I took yesterday off.  Woke around 6:30 and lay in bed sipping juice and coffee and reading for an hour, first what poses as news, then poetry—Hanshan and a Western anthology.  It was quite pleasant.

This morning I had a very short work day.  I was awake at 5 and biked to GANNET around 6:45.  I had only to prep the bilge and the small stowage compartment beneath the companionway and was back in the air-conditioned condo by 7:30.

My can of spray paint was delivered today as promised, so tomorrow I will paint the bilge and the small stowage compartment, and painting the interior, other than perhaps some touch up, will be complete.  I will still have to sand and oil the floorboards and oil the other remaining wood, but I am almost done with GANNET’s interior.

There are no World Cup matches today and I am having withdrawal symptoms.  After posting this, I will catch up with the Tour de France which has been overshadowed by the World Cup.

Only eight more matches left.  A quarter final on each of the next two days and two on Saturday. The semi-finals next Tuesday and Wednesday.  The third place match a week from Saturday.  The final a week from Sunday.  I make no predictions, but the brackets could result in another France/Argentina final.

Here are the books I read during the first six months of this year.

                SAFE OUT HERE  George MacDonald Fraser

GABRIEL’S MOON   William Boyd

THE CLASSIC TRADITION OF HAIKU

PLAYS  Aeschylus

BERLIN SHUFFLE   Ulrich Alexander Boschwitz

BLOOD MERIDAN   Cormac McCarthy

THE PASSENGER   Ulrich Alexander Boschwitz

THE NAZI CONSPIRACY   Brad Meltzer

THE PENGUIN BOOK OF HAIKU

OMEROS   Derek Walcott

PLAYS   Sophocles

THE JUDAS FIELD   Howard Bahr

ZEN POEMS OF CHINA AND JAPAN

PLAYS   Euripides

JAPANESE DEATH POEMS

THUNDER AT TWILIGHT   Frederic Morton

INES OF MY SOUL   Isabel Allende

THE GREAT WALL  John Man

THE PENGUIN BOOK OF ENGLISH VERSE 

THE PENGUIN BOOK OF JAPANESE VERSE

COMANCHE MOON   Larry McMurtry

A NERVOUS SPLENDOR   Frederic Morton

DON JUAN   Lord Byron

THE PRIVATE LIVES OF THE IMPRESSIONISTS

Sue Roe

THE CONFIDENTIAL AGENT   Graham Greene

PELICAN ROAD   Howard Bahr

THE ART THIEF   Michael Finkel

THE PENGUIN BOOK OF HAIKU

SIR WALTER RALEIGH   Raleigh Trevalyan

THE SOUND OF WAVES   Yukio Mishima

TO A GOD UNKNOWN   John Steinbeck

THE DAUGHTERS OF MARS   Thomas Keneally

MOUNTAIN HOME

                THE BLACK FLOWER   Howard Bahr 

I had read many of these before and very much admire the two long poems, OMEROS by Derek Walcott and DON JUAN by Lord Byron.

The great find of the year has been the previously unknown to me, Howard Bahr.  His THE JUDAS TREE came to me via BookBud.  It is an exceptional novel of the Civil War and caused me to buy two more of his books, PELICAN ROAD, about a train wreck, and THE BLACK FLOWER, also about the Civil War.

You will find two books by Frederic Morton, who also came to me via BookBud, THUNDER AT TWILIGHT and A NERVOUS SPLENDOR are both set in Vienna.  The first leading up to the start of WWI.  The second to the suicide of Crown Prince Rudolph in 1889.  Both insightful and excellent.

Raleigh Trevalyan’s biography of his ancestor, SIR WALTER RALEIGH, is a fine biography of one of the more complicated men in English history.

And I particularly enjoyed THE SOUND OF WAVES, by Yukio Mishima.

Hilton Head Island: despicable

As regular readers know, what the U.S. calls soccer and most of the world football is my favorite sport and I have been watching the World Cup with interest and pleasure.  Usually I watch a couple of matches each day, although last Wednesday I saw all three when England and Belgium came from behind and the U.S. held off Bosnia-Hertzegovina playing with only ten men. A great soccer day.  Like most soccer fans throughout the world I have been impressed by tiny Cape Verde who played Spain even and barely lost to Argentina.

However.  Indeed, however.  

I was stunned to learn that the automatic one match suspension given to the U.S. striker, Folarin Balogun, has been reversed after telephone calls from the U.S. President to the President of FIFA.  This is despicable.

The outrage and condemnation has been nearly universal among coaches, officials—other than FIFA—and fans around the world.

I had been looking forward to the U.S./Belgium match this evening.  I will watch, but now with mixed feelings.

There is one man who can put this right.  That is the manager of the USMNT, the Argentinian, Mauricio Pochettino, by not playing Balogun.  I doubt he will, but it is the right thing to do.  

Hilton Head Island: THE ENDEAVOUR found; still painting; three poems

 

I thank Larry for a link to an article about the wreck of Captain Cook’s ENDEAVOUR being found off Newport, Rhode Island.  I have often sailed into Newport Island and I never imagined that the famous ship was at the bottom of the harbor.

https://www.zmescience.com/science/news-science/shipwreck-confirmed-captain-cook-rep/

I admire Captain Cook greatly.  I have also sailed many of the places he did on his two and roughly half circumnavigations and am impressed by his seamanship and navigation into what was then the unknown.  However, I do not think that salvaging and restoring the remnants of the hull worth while.  Let her timbers remain where they have been for almost 250 years.

I am still painting GANNET’s interior.  Sigh.  In the fifteen years I have owned the little boat I have painted her interior two or three times.  I am finding the job more complicated and arduous than I remembered.  One problem is that I am painting this time in the wrong season.  GANNET does not have good ventilation below deck and the summer heat becomes intolerable by 10 A.M., so I bike down around 7 and quit before 10.  Another problem may be that I am old, which is true, but not an excuse I care to make.

Today I painted around the starboard pipe berth.  Tomorrow I’ll paint around the port pipe berth.

I will still have the areas under and between the pipe berths and the interior of the small stowage compartment under the companionway and the bilge. Then a day of clean up.  Then on to touching up and polishing the hull.

Three poems.  I read my daily poetry before I bike to work.

The first by Hanshan.

Then Thomas Hardy.  1840-1928.

 And Andrew Lang, who was a Scottish poet and novelist who lived 1844-1912.

Hilton Head Island: decked and four poems by Hanshan

 

I finished painting the cockpit this morning with Petit Easypoxy.  A few days ago I painted the deck areas between the Raptor nonskid pads with Kiwigrip.  This is the second time I have used Kiwigrip.  I had hoped that it would last, but seemingly nothing does in the heat and humidity of the marsh and it chipped and cracked like every other coating I have tried.  So I have checked ‘deck’ off my to do list.  But in viewing the top photo I see that I need to repaint the carbon fiber bowsprit.  So the list is still as long as it was.

I did not do a perfect job.  GANNET is a work boat.  A tool of the trade.  She does look better and she passes the ‘viewed from a boat length away’ test.

Next the interior, which will not be pleasant.  GANNET does not have good ventilation below and even with the hatches open it will be hot.  Working on deck I had to stop at 10 AM because of the heat.  

The interior should take three days.  One to scrape and sand loose paint.  One to paint the forepeak.  One The Great Cabin and over and beside the pipe berths.  

I have written of Hanshan, also known as Cold Mountain after the peak on which he was a hermit, here before.  He is a legendary Chinese poet or poets who lived perhaps about 600 A.D.  There are scholars who believe that the poems attributed to Hanshan were written by three different poets over two centuries.  Part of the legend is that he scratched his poems on rocks and trees.  

Here are four.

Hilton Head Island: contracted

I signed a book contract today with Mariner Media for GANNET 6.

https://marinermedia.com/

Check out their bookstore.

I m indebted to Kent, who maintains Audrey’s Armada of small boats, for bringing the book to Mariner Media’s attention.  Thank you, Kent.

This is an important day in my life.  Few sign book contracts often.  Or ever.  And even fewer at age 84.  

The day is not remotely as exciting as when I signed my first book contract fifty years ago.  That was so important.  Confirmation that perhaps I was what I thought I was.  I can still feel the exaltation I felt when I opened the letter from my agent.  Suzanne and I were living in my grandparent’s house in Mission Beach after the completion of what would become the first of many circumnavigations.   My grandmother and the man I think of as my grandfather were visiting relatives in Cincinnati.  I had only two thousand dollars left.  Living rent free that would have lasted a while, but the way forward was uncertain.  Suddenly it was less so, and when not long later I sold EGREGIOUS, there was space to breathe, and in a year to began to plan what would become the open boat voyage.  We splurged that night and dressed up and went to dinner at the Hotel del Coronado.  Signing the contract today electronically online causes quiet pleasure and proof that I am not retired.

Doing so relinguishes my control of the published book.  I will not set the price.  I do not know when it will be published.  As I have written here, because of the photos, it will only be published as an ebook, something not even imagined when I signed the contract for STORM PASSAGE in December of 1976.  In the contract the title is still GANNET 6.  

I know that the publisher wants to cut the manuscript by about a third.  It is almost twice as long as my other books.  I have seldom been edited by book or magazine editors.  I am good at what I do as a sailor, a writer, a lover of women, and as a writer provide a finished product,  but I welcome this judgement by others of what they think will be of least interest to readers.  I am curious to see what they delete.  There are parts I will fight for.

So an old sailor and writer has had a good day.

I am out of Laphroaig, so I will pour a glass of Calvados.

To life.

Hilton Head Island: a different experience than mine

Between World Cup soccer matches—and the Netherlands/Japan was a good one—I chanced upon this video on YouTube which is another superfluous proof of Gresham’s Law which states that in currencies the bad drives out the good.  I am not the only one who has observed that the law applies far beyond economics.

As I write the video has been viewed almost four hundred thousand times.  Presumably by those who dream of a great and comfortable ‘adventure’ with which they can then bore their friends at cocktail parties.

I often feel that I am not of the same species as these people, but with regret I suppose I am.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nw0SogLhH3I

Hilton Head Island: two views of us; two poems about the moon and one from an asylum

 

You and I are in the above photos from today’s Astronomy Picture of the Day which shows Earth from a distance that provides perspective.  In the photos I think I see you smiling.

https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/astropix.html

Ptolemy’s concept of the universe with our planet at the center was believed by the best and brightest for 1500 years until Copernicus in 1543.

I have written a poem about that with which you are not doubt familiar, but which will do no harm to print here again.

As I have written here before, until a little over a hundred years ago scientists thought that our galaxy comprised the entire universe.  Now we are told that there are about two trillion galaxies in the universe. The universe has grown a lot in a hundred years.  It is almost enough to cause one to wonder if we are really that important.

From Liu Tsung-yuan 773-819.

From Percy Bysshe Shelly 1792-1822.

And a poem which I had never read before which I find interesting and troubling because of its title.

Hilton Head Island: a night on GANNET

 I am spending the night on GANNET.

As you can see from the photo taken a few minutes ago it is near low tide.  

I am now at Central having moved below from sitting on deck, sipping Laphroaig, and listening to the soundtrack of OUT OF AFRICA followed by the soundtrack of THE PIANO.

From the condo we see beauty, but I truly am more at home here within an arm’s length of water that leads to the ocean.

I know I have written this before, but how odd that a child born about as far from the ocean as one can be is at home there as few others are and sometimes at peace there as he never is on land.

I need to spend more time on GANNET.

I look up and see the companionway bulkhead even simpler than when I last photographed it.

A GoPro mount and the base for the Raymarine wind display mount have been removed and painted over.  

Greater simplicity pleases me.

Hilton Head Island: restored

 

You have often see this view before.  It is normal here.  I saw an article recently about the ten restaurants with the best views in South Carolina.  One of them is a mile to the left of the photo. Almost the same view, but not as good because of absence of the live oaks.  As the sun lowers the colors will become more intense.  They are now so in the few moments I have been typing.  We live in beauty.  That is important to me.  I expect it is to most people, but not enough to do something about it, if they can, and most can’t.

I came out here with a glass of wine to listen to music after I complete this.  

The marsh has been perfect for several days.

The dangerous summer heat, which began in May, has been broken by a string of sunny days, moderate temperatures in the 70s, and abnormally low humidity.  Wonderful.

Each morning around 8 or 8:30 I bike down to work on GANNET.  Yesterday I was able to mark six tasks off my ‘to do’ list, but discovered two more to add.  Today I marked off four and added two.  I like to consider this progress.

Among the tasks marked off is ‘depth sounder’.  I wired the display directly to the battery and it came on which established that the problem was in the wiring.  I found the loose connection for which I am likely responsible.  It was a located near where when I am sleeping on the starboard pipe berth with the lee cloth up I place a flotation cushion to brace my knee against.  Probably when GANNET heeled too far I put too much pressure on it and loosened the wire.

So GANNET’s limited electronics, all of which had failed before or during the last offshore sail have been restored.  Not repaired, but replaced.  A new Velocitek for COG and SOG.  A new Raymarine I40 depth display.  A Calypso wind unit.  

I still have lots of work, mostly cosmetic, to do.  I just checked and my ‘to do’ is fourteen items long, three of which are optional.

I like routine.  I liked going to our guest bedroom every morning for seven or eight months writing.  I now like biking down to GANNET each morning and working on the little boat.

The sun has set beyond Pickney Island and a Great Blue Heron just squawked.

I am going to sip wine and listen to music.

It is a life.

L’Chaim.