Hilton Head Island: an apology; a perspective; and three poems

 

Above you have our forecast and radar from the Apple weather app.  You will note that the temperatures are moderate and we are going to have rain.  The extreme heat usually ends this month, but this is early.  In fact since we returned from the Azores on August 21, only two or three days have been uncomfortably hot, and that is very early indeed.

As regular readers know I like living here and may have sensed that I don’t like sailing here.  The summer heat and the hurricane season are among the reasons.  Another is that from GANNET’s slip it takes hours to be truly free of the land.  1.8 miles to the mouth of Skull Creek.  5 more miles to the mouth of Port Royal Sound.  7 more miles to be in 30’/9 meters of water and beyond the shoals.  And 3 or 4 more miles to be beyond most of the buoys and the line of anchored ships waiting to enter Savannah Harbor.  On a daysail you never make it.  When I invented the word ‘captiterraphobia’: fear of being trapped by land, I was thinking of being trapped inland far from the sea as I was growing up in a suburb of Saint Louis, but in ways I feel trapped by the land even here on the coast.  To escape requires a determined effort.

Now that the heat has ended, we still have the hurricane season which as you probably know has thus far been much quieter than forecast.  I do not criticize the forecasters.  Meteorology is a very young science and the variables are immense.  I don’t recommend that others follow my example, but there is still something to be said for looking at the sea, looking at the sky, and looking at the barometer, and having confidence based on experience in your own skill and ability to endure pretty much whatever happens.

All this is in way of apology for my not going sailing.  I expect that almost all of you are here because I am a sailor, and I haven’t sailed much this year.  So please accept my apology.  I had intended to sail soon, but have just learned that I have to go back in next week and have the skin cancer on my arm rechopped, so it isn’t going to happen at least until the stitches come out.

I have plans to sail to Charleston sometime this year and a plan to sail much farther, spending a month or two on GANNET, early next year.  And if I am still healthy and alive when I turn 85 in a little over two years, I will attempt to sail beyond the edge again.  So if your attention span is long enough, hang in there.  Some of this will be about sailing again.  Some, I hope, relatively soon.

I thank James for a link to a one minute video that puts our lives in perspective.

https://youtube.com/shorts/cHyrZEPbhxA?si=oQozRqzpKQv4ud6S

One might be discouraged by this.  But as I have written one might also take it as a challenge to do what we can in our brief lives.

The ANCHOR BOOK OF CHINESE POETRY ends with those written last century.  It even includes poems by Mao Zedung.  I prefer the older poems to those influenced by the modern West, but a few have merit.

This one was written by Dai Whangshu, 1905-1950, while he was imprisoned by the Japanese during what we call World War 2.

And from Emily Dickinson, 1830-1886:

The sea.  The sea.