Hilton Head Island: love and hate

 9:30 PM.  I am sitting on the screened in part of our deck with a plastic of Plymouth gin at hand. I have already had enough to drink, but it has been a frustrating evening.

So lets deal with love first.

Several men worked today on our air conditioning,  There were thumps and screeches from the attic.  However they didn’t quite finish.  For the third or fourth day in a row it was said that they will be finished tomorrow.

The lack of air conditioning was not a problem today which was overcast and relatively comfortable with a high about 80.  

Carol and I had our morning coffee on the unscreened part of our deck, watching a Great Blue Heron seeking his own breakfast.  It was lovely.  

That the water is so close, that I have whatever I am doing only to glance up and see it is such a pleasure.  I am aware that that closeness may in a hurricane destroy this place and kill me.  I knowingly accept the trade off.

The marina office is a six or seven minute walk away.  Today I let Carol drive me to the parking lot about half way along and hobbled out and paid for GANNET’s slip for a year in advance.  This saves almost six hundred dollars a year and makes her slip here that much cheaper than it was in San Diego.  At the office I saw Fred, the former dock master, Marc, the office manager, and Ben, the current dockmaster.  There has been a change in ownership of this marina since I sailed away in January of last year, but the people here are the same and really nice.

This evening Carol made the maiden voyage on the kitchen’ s induction stove.  I observed.

If you have been here a while you know i am not technology adverse.  I am in fact often the world’s oldest early adapter, as I am with OpenWind.  I am willing to take a calculated chance and leap into the unknown  However as some of you know an induction stove doesn’t remotely look like a stove. It is a touch screen and as I observed it works.

Carol made us a one pan Greek gyro dinner that was very good.  

I learned enough so I can boil water, which is all I ever want to do.

From time to time today I checked with disappointment the Yellowbrick tracking page.  GANNET remained in the big rig parking lot near Weatherford, Texas.

Positions are updated GMT which with the East Coast being on summer time is 2 am/pm and 8 am/pm here.  I accepted the lack of motion until 8 pm this evening.  The last I was told was that GANNET would be here tomorrow afternoon.  The parking lot west of Weatherford, Texas, is 1120 miles from Hilton Head Island.  Now I am going to say something really vain, but perhaps excusable because it is quantifiable.  I don’t expect anyone to function as I do.  How many people do you know who do what they say they will when they say they will?  Much less do so while doing things no one else ever has.  So I try to make realistic expectations.  But when I saw GANNET still in the parking lot west of Weatherford, Texas at 7 pm tonight I became expletive deleted angry.  She was 1120 miles from where I was told she would be tomorrow afternoon.

I made a phone call to Chris, the owner of US Hauling and got an answering machine.  I said what is happening?  You told me the boat would be here tomorrow.  If not, why not?

A few minutes later I sent an email saying the same thing and saying I would rather have a response by email than phone.

I received one not long later.

Sandy's truck had a problem this morning. He left at 5 am to travel east. But had to turn back. Its good he turned around because we found he had a bad injector dumping fuel into the oil pan which could have caused the trucktch fire. They worked on the truck all day and already have the motor going back together. He should be on the road in the morning and will be arriving Thursday night latest. If his truck is not complete by 11 am tomorrow, I plan on connecting to the trailer myself and finishing the trip personally. The boat will be in SC for unloading no later that Friday AM garenteed. 

I replied:

I understand from my voyages that things happen beyond one’s control. It might have been better to have kept me up to date earlier. Another day or two doesn’t matter. I expect you can understand my frustration at not knowing what is happening. Just keep me informed. We do have to coordinate with Marine Tech at this end.

(This is automatically formatting in a weird way that I don’t want to deal with.  I just want you to know this is not my idea.)

The love is for Carol enjoying cooking on her new induction stove.  We gutted this place.  Only the shell is the same.  Everything single thing and surface inside is changed and all the changes are Carol’s.

The hate, and it is not too strong a word, is for me to be dependent on others.  I understand this.  It comes from my childhood,  I probably need to repeat what I have written before that of the almost eight billion homo sapiens on this planet I am the least deserving of sympathy.  As an aside I do get tired of having repeatedly to bridge the gap.  I long for the time that no workers are in this condo and I long for the time when GANNET is in her slip in Skull Creek Marina, mast up, and again solely mine.  I will have her hauled out of the water again from time to time to antifoul.   Use riggers and sailmakers again.  But I will never let her out of my control again as she is  now.  I truly hate it.

It is by the way really nice out here.