Hilton Head Island: workouts, books read, and wrecks

 

I did my standard workout 118 times last year, which is the second highest number ever, exceeded only by 121 in 2021.  Of those I went to the 100 level 11 times.  I strive to do that once a month, but missed in April.  At the 100 level I increase every part of the workout and end up doing 200 pushups and crunches in sets of 100, 50, 50, instead of at my current age 162 in sets of 82, 40, 40.  I also increase knee bends and side leg raises.

I did my weight workout 52 times.  I use only two ten pound weights but with 30 repetitions of most exercises in three sets of 10 each.  I also do 100 crunches with both weights held on my upper chest.  And two minutes of planks.

I only used the resistance bands 11 times.  Shame on me.

The desired schedule is standard workout Monday-Wednesday-Friday.  Weight workout Tuesday-Thursday.  Resistance bands Saturday.  I take Sundays off.

I lost some days to stitches following skin cancer removal and some to sailing and travel and most to lack of self-discipline.

Still I did workout almost half of the days last year.

Books read July-December

                MODERN TIMES   Paul Johnson

JACOB’S ROOM   Virginia Woolf

UNDER WESTERN EYES   Joseph Conrad

I, JAMES McNEILL WHISTLER   Lawrence Williams

WAR IN VAL D’ORICA   Iris Origo

WARTIME WRITINGS   Antoine de Saint-Exupery

THE SHADOW OF VESUVIUS   Daisy Dunn

POSTHUMOUS MEMOIRS OF BRAS CUBAS   Machado de Assis

THE SEASHELL ANTHOLOGY OF GREAT POETRY

THE SHORTEST HISTORY OF CHINA   Linda Jaivin

THE KILL   Emile Zola

JOURNEY   Smithsonian

HUMAN VOICES   Penelope Fitzgerald

TO WAKE THE GIANT   Jeff Sharra

LI PO AND TU FU:  POEMS   

SHIP OF THE LINE  C.S. Forester

CATHAY   Ezra Pound

100 Selected Poems   Robert Frost

1939   Robert Kee

EARLY POEMS   Ezra Pound

JAPANESE DEATH POEMS

WINTER’S TALE   Mark Helprin

LENINGRAD:  SIEGE AND SYMPHONY   Brian Moynahan

THE POETRY OF ZEN

1945   Robert Kee

SOLO FACES   James Salter

BISMARCK’S WAR   Rachel Charstil

SHIP OF THE LINE   C.S. Forester

THE DEBACLE   Emil Zola

ZEN POETRY edited by Styrk and Ikemoto

THE KING MUST DIE   Mary Renault

THE FORTUNE OF THE ROUGONS   Emile Zola

RIVER-HORSE   William Least Half-Moon

BEING ALIVE   edited by Neil Astley 

  RISE AND KILL FIRST   Ronan Bergman

Of these the ones I found most interesting are 1939 and 1945 by Robert Kee in which he presents those years before and after WW2 through what was printed in newspapers and said in speeches at the time; LENINGRAD:  SIEGE AND SYMPHONY, about the almost three year siege of the city and Dmitri Shostakovich’s powerful Seventh Symphony written in part about it; WINTER’S TALE by Mark Helprin, a great work of the imagination I read for a second time;  BISMARCK’S WAR, which was the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-71 which unified Germany and was a significant cause of WW1; and all three novels by Emile Zola, of which THE DEBACLE, sometimes translated as THE DOWNFALL, is also about the war of 1870-71 and one of his greatest.

All three Zola novels are part of his epic twenty novel Rougon-Macquart Cycle set during the reign of Napoleon III.  I have read seven of them, some more than once, and, assuming I have time, intend to read one a month until I have read them all.

Some decades ago an editor asked who my favorite novelists are and I replied without needing much thought:  Hardy, Conrad and Zola.  They still are.

I found myself looking at iSailor last evening and my singular eye gravitated to the area around Cape Horn shown on the above screen shot.  I was struck as I expect you will be by the number of indicated wrecks.  Zooming in reveals there are even more than shown in that shot, but I think this is the best over all view.  Note that almost all are in the channels or on the west coast which is perhaps the world’s most dangerous lee shore.  The first man to make it past Cape Horn alone, the Norwegian, Al Hansen, who sailed east to west, died when his boat was driven onto the Chilean coast.

Two more observations about that chart.  You can see that it is possible to stay in the channels, wait for a decent day, duck out, round Horn Island, and then duck back in.  Some do this and call themselves Cape Horners.  They are not by my standards and probably would say they don’t give a damn, but inside they know they have faked it.  Rounding the Horn has traditionally meant going from 50 ºS in one ocean to 50 ºS in the other and still does to the honorable.

The second observation is that I measured the distance from the main Diego Ramirez Island to Horn Island.  On my first passage around Cape Horn I saw the Diego Ramirez but not Horn Island.  I was blown well south of Horn Island by a Force 12 storm.  I had thought the Diego Ramirez about thirty miles from Horn Island, but they measure 58 miles WSW.