Port Royal Sound: sunset from a different perspective

 

I left the slip at 1 PM with light NW wind, motorsailed for two hours at 3-4 knots and anchored at 3 PM in about 40’ of water.

I removed the ePropulsion from the stern and stowed the shaft and tiller arm.  I am presently charging the battery from the ship’s batteries.  In theory I could leave the outboard in the water and as we sail it would charge itself.  Dragging a prop through the water for hundreds of miles is not appealing.

I like living in our condominium.  Natural beauty is outside all our windows and glass doors and almost within arms reach  It is almost like living on a boat.  Almost.

I have not spent a night away from the dock in months.  It is a pleasure to be out here.  To feel the wind, which in one of my poems I said is “more essential than blood”, blowing through the forward hatch behind me.  Of course that is poetic license.  Without blood we cannot survive.  But perhaps it is not completely poetic license.  Perhaps some of us cannot survive without wind.  I think such people are called sailors.

In my preparations I forgot to bring my iPhone case and to buy another canister of wipes.  I have one previously unopened on board.  

I had an air temperature gin and tonic on deck during the above sunset listening to Bach’s French Suites.

Since completing my sixth circumnavigation I have no longer understood my relationship with the ocean.

Tomorrow I will sail off the anchor and go offshore to learn if the ocean still has anything to say to me.

My second and last gin and tonic is at hand.

L’Chaim.