Hilton Head Island: on engines, seas, mermaids, and tangles

Douglas in Scotland recently sent me this quote from one of the books by the sailor/mountain climber, Bill Tilman.  

I read some of Tilman books sixty years ago and so know of this remarkable man, though he was not my kind of sailor.  

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Tilman

We had with us no Belloc whose love for the sea and sail was equalled only by his hatred of machinery. 'I would rather die of thirst', he writes, 'ten miles off the headland in a brazen calm, than have on board what is monstrously called an auxiliary... For it is with headlands as with harbours, if you have machinery aboard your craft is gone. Whether it is done under sail or power, the rounding of a great cape, more especially a cape that divides two oceans, has about it something both solemn and elating. Although it is a normal and long foreseen step, the moment the cape looms in sight the pent-up hopes and fears of a long voyage focus themselves upon its successful rounding.

I replied to Douglas, who also is I think responsible for making me aware of Vital Whey protein powder for which I am very grateful:

I know of Tilman and read some of his books a very long time ago.  Thanks for the quote which I will pass on in the journal, though I no longer agree with not having an engine.  As you probably know I had EGREGIOUS built without one, CT never had anything but sails and oars, and GANNET can’t power more than a few miles.  But a sailor is more independent now by having an engine than he is not having one because the harbors of the world are now set up with the expectation that vessels are able to power at least short distances.  If not, you will have to ask for or pay for and wait for a tow at times no matter how well you and your boat sail.  There are many places in harbors to which you cannot sail unless the wind and tide are exactly right.

I recently finished PESSOA AND COMPANY, one of the anthologies I have of the poems of the Portuguese poet, Fernando Pessoa.  Toward the end I came across one which my aged memory tells me I have posted here before.  If so, it was a while ago and worth reading again.  This tiny nation claims to be first in all oceans.  Perhaps they weren’t quite, but close enough.

After finishing Pessoa I am now reading the anthology, BEING HUMAN, the third in the successful series which began with BEING ALIVE.  

Here are the last lines of ‘The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock’, a poem I admire about a man with whom I have nothing in common.  The mermaids sang to me.

And last from ONE HUNDRED LEAVES a poem that brought a smile.

I write sipping Laphroaig.

To life.