I think it was Woody Allen who said, “Just because I’m paranoid doesn’t mean that someone isn’t out to get me.” I am not paranoid, but two articles I have recently seen online have caused me pause. The first lists the ten counties in the United States most vulnerable to hurricanes and the second relates that Illinois has had the most tornados of any state this year.
Here is the list of hurricane vulnerable counties according to one survey.
Hilton Head Island is in Beaufort County, South Carolina, number 6.
And here is a link to the article about tornados.
As you know I mostly live in one and am presently in the other.
I am surprised and skeptical about the list of hurricane vulnerable countries. Five are in South Carolina and only three in Florida, yet Florida is hit by many more hurricanes than any other state.
In any event I watch weather carefully.
I do not like crowds and rarely go to live events, but a former neighbor of ours was playing in a band at a club last Saturday and Carol and I went. The club was not crowded early and the band was good. A quartet: drummer, guitarist, woman vocalist who also plays electronic keyboard, and our ex-neighbor who plays harmonica and sings. I suppose they would be classified as blues/jazz. I most enjoyed how they really got into their music. They were feeling it. To my compromised ear they sounded as good as bands that are successful and rich. None of them are young. Our neighbor is retired. I found myself wondering if one of the differences is those who are willing to commit everything to do what they want/were born to do, and those who don’t. I also was interested to see that our neighbor has 12 different harmonicas. I asked him during a break and he said each is in a different key.
I was recently asked for a photo of EGREGIOUS, the engineless 37’ cutter in which I made my first circumnavigation. There is only one and it is above. I have none myself and copied it from the dust jacket of STORM PASSAGE. The photo was taken off San Diego by my long time friends, Susan and Howard, who are now camping across Canada and provided the recent photos of gannets. If you look carefully you will see that I am not alone. The other person in the cockpit is Mary, with whom I was living at the time.
I like cutter rigs. EGREGIOUS had no jib furling gear which was new and unproven at the time and I couldn’t afford it anyway. In the photo her larger jib top and larger staysail are set. For heavy weather, I had a smaller jib with a two foot pennant at the tack to keep it mostly above waves breaking over the bow and a smaller staysail which was strongly built to serve as a storm jib. In the Southern Ocean I always used the smaller sails and as the wind increased to gale strength lowered the jib and lashed it to the deck and sailed under staysail and reefed main or staysail alone.
From THE SEASHELL ANTHOLOGY OF GREAT POETRY:
No comments:
Post a Comment