Hilton Head Island: working without a net and an implied health bulletin

A reader recently emailed asking if I had a VHF radio on CHIDIOCK TICHBORNE.

I did not.

A current member of the famous high wire family, The Flying Wallendas, said that he regretted having to wear a safely harness to perform one of his feats as demanded by the network that was televising it and paying him millions and did not want to chance a live audience watching him fall to his death.  I did not see it and don’t recall what it was.  I believe him.  There is a seismic difference in working without a net.  He knew that.  I do too.  However he overcame his scruples and wore the harness and took the millions.

No one offered me millions, but for my first three circumnavigations I worked without a net.  I still work essentially without one and I regret that I could call for help with my Yellowbrick.  I do not carry it for that purpose, but to let Carol know where I am and if I could disable the SOS button I would.  I went to sea alone and with no way to call for help. I thought that just.  I went out there on my own and I had no right to expect the society I had chosen to leave behind to save me from trouble of my own making.  I don’t know that anyone else will understand that.  It is so at variance with current standards.  I do know that it is possible to be in a hurricane at sea and not call for either god or man to save you.  I’ve been there eight times and never did.  I don’t know that anyone else will understand that either. 

On my fourth I did have a handheld VHF radio after being troubled by South African port authorities for not communicating with them as I entered harbors.  So I could then have called for help if anyone was within seven or eight miles, as almost no one ever was.  There was then and as far as I know now no international regulation that a private sailing vessel carry any radio at all, but I gave in and bought a handheld VHF and have found that it does make dealing with authorities as I enter a foreign port easier.

This was 1987 or 88.  South Africa was on a war footing, having sent land forces north to Angola to try to intervene in a civil war and all ports and lighthouses were staffed by the military.

Jill and I sailed north from South Africa, which then governed what is now Namibia. The main port in Namibia is Walvis Bay.  I seldom enter harbors after dark but we approached the entrance to the harbor at 11 PM on a full moon night.  This was before GPS but I could see that if I followed a certain depth I would safely round the point and could steer directly for the docks where I would anchor and wait until dawn.  This I did.

At about 6 am I woke and called the Port Captain on my handheld VHF. 

In a strong South African accent he asked, “What time did you anchor?”

I said, “About midnight.”

He said, “When I came on duty an hour ago I called Pelican Point Light and asked ‘What time did the yacht pass?’  And they said, ‘What yacht?’  And I said to myself ‘So much for our defense forces.’

I just watched an interesting documentary on Amazon Prime, THE BECKONING SILENCE, about the deaths in the 1930s of climbers trying to be the first to scale the north face of the Eiger.  What is interesting is the story of how those climbers died, particularly the last of them after enduring all but inhuman struggle and suffering.  What is regrettable is that the narrator, who himself became famous by almost dying, calls climbing a game and admits that he has lost his passion.  Both are probably related and both prove that he is not real.  

I have never thought of pushing beyond limits as a game.  I have always known that our species needs a few such individuals and that it is what I was genetically designed to do.  And as an old man I know that, unless weakened by injury or health beyond your control, if you lose your passion it was not real.

That I am writing this is proof that I am feeling better.  I could not have written it yesterday.

Thus far I would class my COVID as less than a case of the flu.  I have a chest cough.  A runny nose.  But the main symptom has been fatigue.  Yesterday and the day before I had almost no energy.  Just getting out of bed was a struggle.  I slept intermittently for eleven hours last night and woke feeling much better today.  Not my usual self, but moving that way.  This is not a controlled experiment.  There is no way of knowing how the virus would have affected me had I not been vaccinated, including the most recent boosters.

I read that the uptake of the most recent boosters has been low.  Maybe only 7% of those eligible to receive them have done so.  I am starting to expect that we are all going to get COVID sooner or later, just as we all get flu sooner or later, and more than once.  If you die unvaccinated you get no sympathy from me.  You have self-selected yourself out.