Hilton Head Island: discrepancy; sensory deprivation

 

Each morning during the hurricane season I visit the National Hurricane Center site and I  also download GRIBs, both the European model and the US NOAA model, using the LuckGrib app. The European model has the reputation of being slightly more accurate.

Above you have images of downloads made about two hours ago this morning.  The top two are European.  The third NOAA.  The information in the upper right hand boxes of each are that of the crosshairs which I have centered on the highest wind I could find in each image.  You see a range of 72-77 knots.  At the very same time the National Hurricane Center Advisory stated sustained winds are 165 mph which is 143 knots.   Part of that considerable discrepancy may be due to the updating of the European model only every twelve hours and the NOAA model every six hours.  Both of the GRIBs were issued at 0000 UCT which was eleven hours earlier than I downloaded them.  Still the difference is dramatic.

Whatever its winds, Hurricane Beryl has by its rapid intensification again proven the present limits of our science which is incapable of predicting such intensification.  Perhaps AI will discover causal relationships not yet understood.

The other evening I heard a woman who has sailed as crew thousands of miles, including several crossings of the Atlantic Ocean, describe ocean passages as sensory deprivation.  I was  surprised and initially puzzled until I realized that she like almost all our species is a land and social animal to whom the ocean is an empty foreign element to be endured until land can be reached again.

As I expect you know that is not true of me.  I know I am repeating myself, but I am at home out there.  I want to be making progress.  I want to hear and feel the boat sailing well, but all my senses are fulfilled: the sight of the waves and sky, clouds, sun, moon, stars, and the books I choose to read; the only sounds natural ones of wind and water and the artificial ones of whatever music I choose to play; the iodine salt smell of the ocean; the touch of lines and winch handles and tiller; taste may be deficient, but then food is not of great importance to me, and some of what I eat at sea tastes good, and do the liquids I drink.  I am fulfilled at sea.

From time to time I am told that I seem most alive when I am at sea.  That is not completely true.  I am alive with Carol and I enjoy living here on the edge of marsh and continent, but that it is the edge is important.  Perhaps because I was born so far from the sea and took so long to reach it, I really do fear being trapped by land and am sustained by the hope and belief that I will yet again experience the monastery of the sea.