Hilton Head Island: heated; clutched; the end is nigh; HIGH NOON; Capt. Cook and other explorers

I seek no sympathy from those of you who have already experienced much colder temperatures, but today is overcast, rainy and raw by Hilton Head standards and it is only 48ºF/9C in mid-afternoon and I have turned on the heat for the first time since early in the year.  We have a gale warning for near coastal waters, but on this side of the island as usual there is much less wind.  The oaks and Spanish moss are swaying, but not yet frenzied.

I biked to GANNET on Wednesday and installed the new double halyard clutch and returned yesterday to give the bolts a final tightening after the sealant had set.  The new clutch is Spinlock.  The old was Lewmar.  Naturally the mounting holes did not quite match.  In the photo the darker blue line is the spinnaker halyard.  The lighter blue line in the middle is the main halyard.  And the gray line is the spinnaker pole topping lift.  I only set asymmetrical spinnakers and gave away my spinnaker pole years ago in Hawaii.  I’ve kept the line possibly to set the storm jib as a staysail, although I never have, or to help stabilize the mast should there be rigging damage.

This clutch is said to work with lines as small as 4 mm.  My main halyard is ¼”/6mm.  So hopefully it will hold and not slip.  If it does I have a 5/16” halyard which will also fit in the clutch.  This is much bigger line than GANNET requires, but if necessary I will try it.  Threading line though the Spinlock is easy.  On the Lewmar it is not.

James, a journalist who came to see me Tuesday morning, took me to nearby Bluffton to see his boat, SEA GYPSY, a Pearson Electra.  Along the way we stopped for coffee and outside I saw this sign.  It is quite enough that the United States considerately planned ahead and made my birthday a national holiday even before I was born.  But coming to an end on that day is simply too much.

I say farewell now.  It has been a pleasure to know you.

Last night I watched the 1952 Gary Cooper film, HIGH NOON, on Amazon Prime.  I saw it when it first came out and I was ten or eleven years old.  I have seen it since but not for many years.  It is one of the greatest movies ever made.  Perfect in stark black and white and every detail.  It was nominated for best picture, but did not win.  I googled and find that THE GREATEST SHOW ON EARTH did that year.  An egregious error.

I have written that I was formed in part by the epics of ancient Greece and the American West.  HIGH NOON was surely an influence.  If you haven’t watched it for a while, you should give yourself that pleasure.

Another James—you people are everywhere—recently emailed that the 293rd anniversary of Capt. James Cook’s birth will be this Sunday, November 7.  November is obviously a month of great sailors.

I wrote back:  I have read much of Cook, who did not circumnavigate three times because he was killed in Hawaii during the third.  He definitely changed during the eleven years from the beginning of his first circumnavigation to his death.  Too much almost constant stress.  Yet here was a man of rare ability who was in the right place at the right time and more than fulfilled the unlikely opportunity that opened for him.

Of explorers I recently came across in the STAYING ALIVE anthology, T.S. Eliot’s ‘Four Quartets’ part of which I have quoted before.  As I approach 80 it is appropriate to quote it again.