Sunday, January 30, 2022

Hilton Head Island: not a sea for solo sailing; a sad musical; a care package


 Above is a photo taken from space published in today’s NASA Earth Observatory site.

https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/images/149388/yellow-sea-night-lights

Most of the lights are from 1,600 fishing boats.  Not a place where I would want to solo sail.

On the passage from Auckland, New Zealand to Punta del Este, Uruguay, thirty years ago with Jill in RESURGAM, we were between the Falkland Islands and the mainland of South America when one evening as night fell we saw to the northeast the loom of lights of what appeared a city.  There was no land there.  I had an early GPS unit.  I checked it.  I checked the chart.  I went back on deck and we both stared at the loom of light.  I checked our position again.  We were seemingly seeing the impossible and realized the only explanation was a huge fleet of fishing vessels, which we later learned was the case.  We never saw any of the vessels, but the next day the ocean was cluttered with their cast off debris.



“Tits and Ass.”  I thought of using that as the heading for this post, but did not want to be too startling and they are not my words anyway, but the title and lyrics to a song from THE CHORUS LINE which I rewatched last evening.  It is a good, but deeply sad musical.  So many are called and so few are chosen, and their lives are totally dependent on the decisions of others.



Carol sent me a care package via Amazon yesterday.  Cheese, sausage, nuts, crackers, dried apricots.  Earlier in the day I found the bottles of orange juice and the powdered milk. I am improving and I am in no danger of starvation.  However, were I not flying away this coming Thursday, I would run out of wine and spirits in a couple of weeks, which would provide strong motivation to get well quickly.

L’Chaim.












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