Hilton Head Island: an anniversary

Twenty years ago this week—I think twenty years ago today—Carol and I sailed from Boston for the Azores in the resumption of my long interrupted fourth circumnavigation.  I completed my first circumnavigation in less than a calendar year; my fifth in less than eighteen months; but my fourth took thirteen years, two boats, and two wives.

We had made a five year plan to escape from the land.  This was my second such plan.  I stuck to both and succeeded both times.  The first led up to my first circumnavigation.

Boston is an interesting city with American history, fine colleges, a world class orchestra, rabid sports fans, and an abundance of aggressive and discourteous drivers, but I do not like northern winters and places where I cannot sail year round.  I recall thinking as we started across Massachusetts Bay and I turned and watched the Boston skyline recede beneath the horizon that I would not see it again.  I eagerly turned my back on it and looked east toward the Azores and the future.  How wrong I was.

At Carol’s request I had several pieces of equipment on THE HAWKE OF TUONELA then that I have never had before or since, including an EPIRB, a life raft and radar.  HAWKE had a two cylinder Yanmar diesel, but I have never been willing to run an engine every day to charge batteries.  However, I had determined that the two solar panels we carried on deck were sufficient to run a radar scan for 30 seconds every ten minutes.  I hoped that it could stand collision avoidance watch for us at night, but it proved to provide far too many false positives and I soon rarely used it.

In the next six months we sailed to the Azores, Portugal, Gibraltar, Senegal and Brazil.

Christmas found us in Salvador, Brazil, where an email arrived from one of the founding partners of Carol’s former architectural firm asking her to return to work.  Before our departure Carol was joint number two of the firm of more than fifty architects, behind only the two founding partners.

I told Carol to do whatever would be better for her, but that I hoped never to live again full time in the U.S. and until the past two years I haven’t.  She wanted to see South Africa and told her firm that she would return in June.  We sailed from Salvador to Rio de Janeiro, from Rio to the Bay of Ilha Grande, from there to CapeTown, where after land touring Carol flew back to being a productive member of society and I again became a solo sailor.

Later than year I sailed from Cape Town to Fremantle, Australia, a rough six week passage through the Forties, with eight storms of gale force, four of Force Ten or above, at least two of which went to Force Twelve.  The ‘at least’ is because a wave in one of those storms knocked THE HAWKE OF TUONELA down, masthead below water, and tore off everything up there, wind instruments, tricolor, and Windex.

In 1993 I sailed from Fremantle to Sydney, finally completing by far my slowest circle begun there thirteen years earlier in RESURGAM.

The EPIRB and life raft made it to New Zealand, where one day I chanced upon the EPIRB and found the antenna had broken off.  I disposed of it in the trash and gave the life raft away.