Hilton Head Island: Captain Cook’s Journals

 

I am rereading Captain Cook’s Journals for the first time in more than forty years.  That can happen when you get old.

I am reading an abridged edition which covers all three of his voyages and still runs to 615 pages including a final chapter about his death.

Cook was a few months short of his fortieth birthday when the ENDEAVOUR departed England on what would become his first circumnavigation on August 25, 1768 and he was fifty when he was killed in Hawaii on February 14, 1779.  He explored and charted much of the world  in those ten years.

I am greatly enjoying his journals, in part because I have now sailed most of the places he did.  I am still on his first circumnavigation during which among many other places he stopped and named New Zealand’s Bay of Islands.  I am at the point where he has just left Botany Bay, which he also named, and has passed the much better harbor at what would become Sydney on his way several hundred miles north to put the ENDEAVOUR on the Great Barrier Reef which he does not yet know exists.  If you have sailed off Sydney Harbor you will not be surprised that he bypassed it.  Three headlands overlap and from the seaward there seems to be only a shallow cove, not one of the greatest natural harbors in the world.

I first read the captain’s journals at the end of 1980 or the beginning of 1981 at Carins, Australia, after sailing there following CHIDIOCK TICHBORNE’s pitchpoling and my drifting for two weeks until I reached what is now Vanuatu.  Suzanne had joined me in Carins, which being only seventeen degrees south of the Equator is hot,  We were living on CT at anchor just off the heart of the town and to escape the heat spent many of the days at the air-conditioned Carins Public Library, which had copies of the Journals, which were edited by the great Cook authority, the delightfully named Professor Beaglehole.

I am presently reading a Kindle edition on my iPad Pro and my iPhone.  During the day I read on the iPad.  When I wake at night, as I often do, I read on my iPhone which casts less light so as not to disturb Carol.

Captain Cook has become controversial—isn’t everyone now?—because his explorations were followed by colonialism.  I admire him as a great leader and a consummate sailor who did not come from a seafaring family.

Hilton Head Island: a new sail cover; Warwick Tompkins, Jr.

 

Above is my new mainsail cover.  Doug, whose boat is next to GANNET on the dock, says he prefers the old one.  So do I, but this one does have the advantage of cost.  $19 from that great sailmaker, Amazon.

You have no doubt already correctly concluded that the old mainsail cover was showing its age and I took it to what is as far as I can tell the nearest canvas shop which is on St. Helena Island on the other side of Port Royal Sound.  There used to be a canvas shop on Hilton Head, but it has closed.  A remaining one does repairs, but would not make a new cover from scratch.  The straight line distance to the shop on St. Helena is about ten miles.  However much of that is across water and Carol had to drive 55 miles and more than an hour to reach it.  I left the old cover as a pattern.  The new one will not be delivered for six or eight weeks, so the tarp will keep the sun off the main until then.

I thank William for a link to a video about Warwick Tompkins, Jr., one of the world’s most experienced sailors.  He planned his birth better than I and was born into a sailing family.  He rounded Cape Horn on his father’s boat at age four, a bit younger than I, who at age four had never even seen the ocean much less been on a sailboat.

I met Warwick Tompkins, Jr,. generally known as the Commodore, in New Zealand’s Bay of Islands.  He invited me on board FLASHGIRL and was friendly and courteous even though as you will learn if you watch the video by his definition I am not a gentleman.  So it goes.  I enjoyed the video and highly recommend it.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=wTnYwMTahoY&t=1s&pp=2AEBkAIB&ra=m

Hilton Head Island: ”feels like’ and ‘heat index; The Final Set; and two poems

I continue not to be doing much of interest these days.  

The can of spray paint for the bow sprit is now not due until Monday and the heat is serious.   I read.  Presently a book, WICKED RIVER, about the Mississippi River before it was tamed by the Corp of Engineers.  I was born and lived and went to college beside the Mississippi and am from the quite well written book learning much that I did not know.  I listen to music.  I workout.  But this is a pause.  Odd that I who have always had enough time, still have enough to pause when my remaining time is short.  Perhaps that is because I have lived so that I do not regret in my old age what I did not dare to do when I was younger.  Before the paint comes.  Before Carol and I make our now customary escape from the heat in August.  This year we fly to Oregon on August 4 where we will rent a car and Carol will drive us slowly down the coast to San Diego.  While I lived in Oakland, California, for a year, bought my first boat and taught myself to sail there, I never travelled much north of the Bay area, so the Oregon and Northern California coast will be new to both of us.  And it might well be my last visit to San Diego where much of importance in my adult life took place.  I am looking forward to the trip.

I look at several weather apps each day, among them Apple Weather.  This shows among other things the forecast temperature by the hour and the ‘feels like’ temperature.  I thought ‘feels like’ and ‘heat index’ are the same, but our local TV news often gives ‘heat index’ figures ten or more degrees higher than the ‘feels like’ in the Apple app.  So I goggled and found that in summer the two should be the same.  In winter ‘feels like’ includes wind chill and so may be different.  However right now at nearly 8 PM, the Apple app shows a ‘feels like’ of 87F and the National Weather Service station at the Hilton Head Airport shows a heat index of 102F.  A dramatic and serious difference which I do not understand.  So be advised to be skeptical of the Apple app ‘feels like’.

Carol and I just watched CHRIS AND MARTINA:  THE FINAL SET on Netflix and it exceeded our expectations.  Great rivals on the court who gave up a budding friendship in the effort of each to become the number one women’s tennis player and regained it years later when both had cancer.  A very human and touching story about far more than tennis told without sentimentality.  I highly recommend it.

Hilton Head Island: a man of leisure

I woke this morning at 5:15, glanced at the time, rolled over and went back to sleep, waking again at 6:30 when I got up, made coffee, poured a half glass of grapefruit juice, and returned to bed to read what poses as the news and some poetry.  Rather pleasant being a man of leisure for a while.

Two mornings ago I woke at 5:30 and was at GANNET before 7:00 intending to wax and polish the port side of the hull.  I only did a small portion of the hull near the bow before it became obvious that this wasn’t going to work.  I painted the hull almost fourteen years ago and the paint is too old and dead to be revived.  So I stopped and biked home.  

I was surprised that the heat bothered me so early in the day, until back in the air conditioned condo I checked the National Weather Service at the Hilton Head Airport, three miles from our condo, and found that at 8:51 the heat index there was 103.  It remained over 100 until 6 PM, topping out at 105.

I have not decided if I will pay to have the hull painted or sail down to the boat yard at St. Marys and do it myself.  If I do, it won’t be until after the summer heat has abated.

The next item on my GANNET to do list is to paint the carbon fiber bow sprit.  I am waiting for a can of spay paint to be delivered before I can do that.  Perhaps late this week.  In the meantime I will be sleeping in.

Hilton Head Island: painted and oiled

 

Hilton Head Island: words not quite spoken; Spain: poems

 8:30 PM.  I am on our screened porch, looking out at a grey and green-black world.  Only 81F and comfortable with the fan on over head.

I woke around 5 AM this morning.  Poured a half glass of grapefruit juice and made coffee, and retired to read the reports of the most recent vacillations by our so-called government in the conflict—not war—with Iran.  I planned to bike down and touch up the port side of GANNET’s topsides, but when I checked my weather apps, all said that rain would fall this morning, so I didn’t.

Heavy rain did fall today within a few miles of here.  More than three inches in some places.  But not a drop on us.  So there is tomorrow.  

The world is filled with people who do not have enough time.

I have always had enough time.  I still do until I do not.  

So I’ll go down tomorrow.

It is a common, almost universal, mindset of our species to expect present conditions to continue into the indefinite future.  

I know better and have written a book titled A SINGLE WAVE because I know life can change in an instant, in the passing of a single wave, or an earthquake, or a flood, or a word.  

Life is at risk every moment, even though most do not know that.  And some words once spoken can never be retracted.  

So today some words were on the brink and they were not spoken.  

Of course I watched France/Spain in the World Cup semi-final today.  Going in I expected France would win.  They have appeared to be the strongest team thus far, but Spain is exceedingly difficult to score against.  I think they have allowed only one goal so far in this competition.  So they won.

I deplore that many players on both teams frequently engaged in dives.  Win at all cost has clearly supplanted honor.

I am reading two very long poetry anthologies.   One is called POEM COLLECTION and is 2206 pages long, a lot of which I have not admired.  The other is AN ANTHOLOGY OF CLASSICAL JAPANESE POETRY and is 1581 pages long.  Usually I read ten pages of a poetry book each morning, but of these I read twenty-five.  I often relate more to the ancient Chinese and Japanese, but here are four that I have I have enjoyed recently from the West, including one of adventure and perhaps you know what I think of adventure, but this is what I once felt.

Hilton Head Island: The Birds and The Daughters of Mars

 

Almost 7:30 PM.  As perhaps you can see rain is falling.

We are in a South Florida summer weather pattern with sunny mornings and thunderstorms in late afternoons and evenings.

I am sitting by our bedroom window watching the rain fall and listening to distant thunder while sipping from a small glass of Laphroaig.

You know I like it here.  It is not New Zealand’s Bay of Islands, but it is as good is possible for me as far as I know.  

I see the ripples on presently gray Skull Creek at high tide.  The water is not more than fifteen yards away.  Maybe less.  

The sun is still perhaps ten degrees above the trees on Pickney Island.  Part of the creek is silver and part white.

The Spanish moss on the Live Oaks is hanging down.

A fellow sailor whose boat is docked near GANNET is impressed that an 84 year old bikes down to the marina and works on his boat each morning.  I had not thought anything about it.

If you read the last post, you will know that the publisher is playing up the age at which I made that voyage.  It was unusual, but far less unusual than that it was a sixth circumnavigation and that the book is exceedingly well written—forgive the immodesty, or not.  That voyage was ten years ago.

I do not have nostalgia for the past, but I woke last night after a dream in which I was on CHIDIOCK TICHBORNE in Tahiti in 1979.  I was then in my late 30s, and I felt the strength I had then, the sense of joy of making a voyage beyond the edge of human experience.  I do not want to be young again, but it was good to feel what I was.

I believe I can legitimately claim to be about as good as any of our species can be at 84.  I do not claim credit for that.  It is genetic chance.  But even now, when having written a book in the past year that validates my claim not to be retired, and when my body tends to stiffen when I sit too long in one position, I wonder, perhaps under the influence of Laphroaig, if I have another voyage in me.

The marsh gets too hot in summer, which is odd for this is Hilton Head Island’s busiest tourist season.  I understand that this is caused by summer school vacations and people inland wanting to  be on the beach and ocean.  But for those of us who live here, summer is the least desirable season.

Before Carol retired I flew back and spent part of July and August with her in Illinois.  I never thought of Chicago as having a good climate, but the summers there in the suburbs were quite pleasant compared to Hilton Head.

Since her retirement we have gone away in August to escape the heat and to celebrate our wedding anniversary which is in August.

We will do so again in a few weeks, flying to Portland, Oregon, where we will rent a car and Carol will drive us to Astoria and then south along the coast all the way to probably my last visit to San Diego.

The trip is open ended.  We do not have reservations for a return flight.  But Carol has rented an Airbnb house for us in Bodega Bay, California, for four nights where we will celebrate our 32nd wedding anniversary. 

You may recall, as I did not, that Bodega Bay is the site of most of Alfred Hitchcock’s movie THE BIRDS.  It is one of Carol’s favorite movies, and we rented it last night from Amazon Prime.  This was a colorized version, but the colorization was well done and seemed natural, yet I think the movie is better in black and white.

The film dates from 1963, the long ago year in which I graduated from college and moved to California.  Bodega Bay has no doubt changed much since then, but Carol tells me one of the cafes in the movie still exists.

Next month we shall see.

Both of us had seen the movie at least twice before, but this time I noticed as I had not before that it is based on a short story by Daphne du Maurier.  So I goggled and found the story.  Permit me to pause and observe how amazing that is.  Impossible to do only a couple of decades ago.

Daphne du Maurier was a very good writer.  It is a very good story, and particularly interesting to compare with Hitchcock’s version.  If you want to here is the link:

https://mrnsmith.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/the-birds-by-daphne-du-maurier.pdf

I happened to look back at my recent post about books read and realized that I did not mention DAUGHTERS OF MARS by Thomas Keneally, the Australian who is most famous for having written SCHINDLER’S LIST.

THE DAUGHTERS OF WAR follows Australian nurses who served in Europe in WWI.  It is a unique perspective on war and I highly recommend it to any who are among the few remaining readers.

Hilton Head Island: what?!

 

A little while ago after watching England squeak past Norway, I received the above as a Google Alert.  I looked at the number and thought:  We are not going to sell very many copies.  

After my initial shock, I studied the image more closely and saw that it is from Amazon.in.  Amazon India.  So I checked the exchange rate of the Indian rupee to the U.S. dollar and find that 1524 rupees equals $15.99 US dollars.  Not so bad.

I don’t set the price and this is the first time I have seen a publication date.

I was once mentioned in an Indian newspaper.  I forget why.  India is the most populous country in the world.  I doubt that very many of its almost 1.5 billion people have ever heard of Webb Chiles or are going to buy GANNET 6 at any price, yet it is first on sale there.

We live in a strange world.

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 above 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 egret does not.  There are two species of large white egrets 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.