Hilton Head Island: waiting for Helene

   

The photo does not accurately capture what I am seeing and experiencing, which is odd considering how flawed my vision is.  Even damaged we are impressive constructs.

Light to moderate rain has been falling since dawn.  Now it is nominally sunset though there will be only a darkening of gray.

As I write a Great Blue Heron is squawking.  I cannot see him, but have lived here long enough to know the squawk.

The storm, which as you know I do not think should be named, will pass west of us between midnight and dawn.   Other than a possible tornado, about which we can do nothing—there is no safe place in this building—I do not expect much.  I believe that most experienced sailors become fatalists.  You know chance can kill you and so if you are intelligent you plan and prepare to reduce chance to the minimum.  But you cannot eliminate it.

I am on the screened porch.  A glass of Laphroaig is on the table.  Rain is falling.  The Great Blue just squawked again.  

It is pleasant out here, listening to the rain patter against the leaves of live oaks and the deck as I have often heard it patter on decks of boats.  A cool breeze.

I biked down to GANNET yesterday to tie a line around the tack of the jib to prevent it from possibly unfurling and to tie down the tiller.  I found I already had a line around the jib.  I did tie down the tiller, though I don’t know that makes any difference.

My standards are different from almost all, certainly the alarmist talking heads on television.

I know hurricane force winds.  Not category three or four as Helene may be upon landfall.  But all the talking heads who have experienced nothing offer only cliches and fear.

I came out to listen to music.  I left the choices to chance.  The first to come up was Lucio Dalla and Luciano Pavarotti singing ‘Caruso’ 

https://www.google.com/search?q=lucio+dalla+pavarotti+caruso&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&hl=en-us&client=safari

and the next Erik Bogle, who wrote ‘And the Band Played Waltzing Matilda’

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cnFzCmAyOp8

Rather good choices by the algorithm.

The rain continues to fall.

The stitches in my arm come out a week from today and soon after I hope to sail to Charleston.  

I am so much looking forward to sailing a month or two early next year.  It has been too long, particularly since I have so little time left.

I continue to read Tim Robinson and with regret have only five or six more days of his being a part of my mornings.  The oriental poetry I read now is a book of Zen Poetry, although I think those who believe in zen are so afraid of suffering in this life that they accept a life that is already death before death inevitably comes.  And I continue to read five Shakespeare sonnets each morning.  I am almost at the end of those written to a young man and am looking forward to those last twenty-eight to or about the ‘dark lady’. 

Shakespeare had some bad days, as we all do,  as shown particularly in several of the sonnets in the 70s.

I had to move chairs.  Rain is blowing in from the north.

Totally dark now,  The sound of rain,  A slight breeze against my face.

I’m going to listen to more music.