San Diego: ready

 

I fit the Torqeedo and a tiller pilot today and then went up and did a load of laundry.  The photo was taken as I was sitting on deck sipping Plymouth gin and listening to Bach at 5:30 PM, but the water shows today’s negligible wind on an unusually oppressive day in San Diego.  Sweat poured off me at the least activity, from walking back and forth to the laundry room and later  to get a sandwich for lunch and dinner, to fitting the Torqeedo.  I wonder if this is because of the hurricane several hundred miles south of us off Baja California.

I got my sandwich, called an Outrigger, consisting of turkey, avocado, onion, and bacon, at the sandwich shop at the next marina.  They make good sandwiches.  I ate half of this one for lunch and the other half for dinner.  Each half was almost too much for me for one meal.  

I feel sorry for the people who own and work there.  Rent is still due.  I was there at 1 PM and saw only one other customer.  When I left a dollar in the tip jar I got more gratitude than deserved.  The greatest disaster of this pandemic is to the living, not the dead.

Tomorrow I will leave the dock.  I hope to sail.  I will try.  At the very least I will Torqeedo a quarter mile and anchor off South Mission Beach for the night.  An epic life indeed.

This photo comes from Steve and Wendy who own a house boat in the next finger.  I thank them for it.  That is Simon aloft.

I have written that one of the advantages of being an old man is that you can pay young men to do things you don’t want to.  If I remember correctly Simon told me he is 40, which isn’t exactly young, but I am almost twice his age.  When 40 seems young, you are old.  I embrace it.  I revel in it.  It is so unexpected.  So, as a magazine headed one of my articles decades ago, using the title of a song, ‘Against All Odds.’

A few of you have asked why I had the rigging work done here just before the mast will be lowered for the transit to Hilton Head.  The answer is trust.  I believe I am not just world class, but all time history class good at sailing boats alone across oceans—of small boats it might be beyond doubt—but I know what I do not know.  I am not a rigger or a sailmaker or for that matter a boat builder, so I evaluate those who are.  I have come across and in absence of alternatives had to use riggers in whom I did not have confidence.  Kasey and Pacific Offshore Rigging rigged GANNET’s new mast before the circumnavigation.  That they did so well is proven by the mast still standing after 30,000 sometimes difficult miles during which the masthead went in the water at least three times.  Maybe four.  So I have confidence in Kasey and the men he hires.  And there is a to me huge advantage in that Kasey and Simon and Gabe know who I am.  That they are working on a boat that may be seriously sailed and not just another marina sitter.  I sometimes get tired of bridging the gap between me and others, and with these men I didn’t have to.