Saturday, July 3, 2021

Hilton Head Island: hung; wasp nest; bull’s-eye


Hanging Day at Skull Creek went well.  A fifty-five pound mirror with a wide wood frame was the most difficult.  Carol and I had mounted it in Evanston and knew what to expect.

There is a lot of New Zealand on our walls.  You may recognize the view from the lookout on Roberton Island above taken by my friend, Rob.  There is also a landscape watercolor that I bought at a gallery in Opua and a chart of the country.  Enough to cause one to think that I like the place.

The two kerosene lamps are the last vestiges of THE HAWKE OF TUONELA.



THE WASPS is a play by Aristophanes which I read a very long time ago and what I found when I opened GANNET’s dock box yesterday.   I biked down to the little boat to stow the Torqeedo properly.  It was so hot inside the cabin when we returned from our morning sail the day before that I left it on the cabin sole.  After moving the outboard to its normal stowage position at the foot of the port pipe berth, I went to look for gear stored in the dock box.  When I opened the lid I was greeted by a couple of dozen wasps who were not happy to see me.  They had built a nest on the underside of the lid.  I retreated for the boat hook and dislodged the white honeycombed nest about the size of my fist.  This did not improve their mood, which became even worse when I turned the hose on them until finally they buzzed away.  I hope this does not become an ongoing battle.




Tropical storm Danny made landfall several days ago five miles northeast of where I am sitting.  In this hemisphere, the east side of a storm is the more dangerous, but Danny didn’t do any damage anywhere.  Storms are named when they reach Force 8, gale force, starting at 34 knots.  As I have said before I consider this a mistake.  Such a storm is nothing more than a bit of unpleasant weather.

So still early in the season and another storm, Elsa, is headed our way.  If you connect the dots between 2 AM Wednesday and 2 AM Thursday, her center will pass directly over me.  Carol flies back to Chicago on Monday.  You will also note that while Elsa is now a Category 1 hurricane, she is expected to weaken over Cuba and be only a tropical storm when she reaches my friends in Florida.  A GRIB I just downloaded indicates that she will not be significant, but there is always the uncertainty of rapid intensification, a phenomenon seen increasingly in recent years.  

I am not quite ready for a severe hurricane, but I can be in a few hours of hauling supplies up from GANNET.  I expect that Elsa will not even require me to to bring in the deck furniture, but sadly the world does not always live up to my expectations.


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