Friday, November 15, 2024

Hilton Head Island: mind set; sinking?

Levis, not shorts.  Socks.  And a jacket.  54F/12C and sunny.  Fall has come to the marsh.  We will be back in the 70sF/low 20sC and shorts in a few days.  This alternation is what the weather will be on the island until next May or June.  Carol misses the seasons.  I do not.  I hope never to see snow again except in photographs.

Carol drove us to Dolphin Head this morning and we walked a couple of miles beside Port Royal Sound.  There were white-caps on the sound and maybe one foot waves.  I estimated the wind at 12-14 knots.  Having had some practice I am pretty good at that.  When I checked later the wind at the nearby airport at that time was reported to be 13-15 knots.

We saw a few dolphin and a sailboat about 40’ heading up the sound under power.  No sails set.  I thought this odd because if they had been the boat would have been just forward of a starboard beam reach, an excellent point of sail.  As we walked I wondered why she was not under sail and then I realized it was a matter of mind set.  Those on board are not sailors, they are power boaters with a mast.  Sailors think about sailing first.  Those who aren’t don’t and power even when sailing would be faster and quieter and cost less.







You have probably seen the report that a Disney cruise ship ‘rescued’ four ‘sailors’ from a sinking catamaran a couple of hundred miles off Bermuda as shown above.

Am I the only one who sees that the catamaran is not sinking?  She is on her lines and the seas are moderate.  I am told by the owner of a similar size catamaran that catamarans can’t sink.  I do not know what went on, but this does not compute.



2 comments:

  1. You probably saw that the Coast Guard said Serenity had "blown a gasket" in a hatch on the underside of the bridge deck. There are pix on the interwebbs of the owners replacing that hatch a while ago. When a cat straddles a wave passing under it you can get a real whomp underside of the bridge deck; if it blew off they could take on a lot of water and maybe they were afraid of that possibility. Maybe the Mouse insisted they be rescued so the publicity could pay for the cost of the diversion.

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  2. I have my own thoughts about that, Ernie. You can probably guess what they are. The mast is standing. They have sails. It is only two hundred miles or so to Bermuda.

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