Hilton Head Island: looking out

7:15 PM here.  Long after sunset.  I am sitting near the bedroom window and by leaning forward  can see the green flashing light marking the Intracoastal channel.  That pleases me.  That is the way to ocean.

A fine winter’s day here.  At 8:30 this morning I got a phone call that the rigger would soon arrive to install the wind transducer.  I went down to GANNET.  He arrived at 1:15 in the afternoon.  In the meantime I moved the stuff temporally stowed on the v-berth while I painted back to its more or less usual positions.  Some normally rests on the pipe berths which don’t presently exist and so sit on the sides of the hull or the cabin floor.  Still GANNET’s interior is again reasonably organized.

When the rigger and his coworker arrived he went up the mast with the wind transducer and proceeded to drop it.  It fell into the water.  His coworker instantly leaned overboard to retrieve it, over balanced and went into the 50ºF water and came up with the unit.  He and it back on the dock, he was in good spirits and denied my offer of a towel.  The unit seemed to connect and transmit.  We sent it up to the masthead on a messenger line.  This time it was successfully screwed in place.  

The Windex was also re-secured.  It had been wobbling when last I sailed.  The rigger said he thought the threads in the plastic base may have been stripped and it may happen again.

Not long after the riggers left the wind unit stopped transmitting.  This is disappointing.  Maybe it will be working tomorrow.  Whether it is or not, I will spend no more thought or money on it.  If it does not work, I will write it off as an unsuccessful experiment.  I have had others.  I may be one myself.

From Dan comes a link to a piece from the NY TIMES about one of Katsushika Hodsuai’s ‘Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji”.  I hesitated before including the link because it has nothing to do with sailing and I don’t know that many of you will be interested, but I was and am. This is a remarkable and new way of offering art evaluation.  I knew of Hodsuai’s work though I would not have been able to recite his name.  An artist is his work, not his name.  I learned and am enriched by the piece.  I thank Dan.

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/08/07/arts/design/hokusai-fuji.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thirty-six_Views_of_Mount_Fuji

Few have responded to my request that you define yourselves in six words or less.  There are times I think this is an uneven relationship.  Well, some of you do give back, as did Dan, and I am grateful to have anyone reading.

Only three responses:  a worrywart, a tyrant bunny, a moveable ballast.

You had your chance for immortality and missed it.

Yesterday Carol and I walked along a nearby street we had not walked before and came across  lush landscaping that seemed to come from Jurissac Park.  I don’t know what the plant  above is or that the photo accurately shows the voluptuous texture of the leaves.