Denver, North Carolina: the ranch at the end of the world

Two years ago Michael and Layne and their trusty dog, Rusty, retired—actually Rusty retired much earlier—and moved onboard a Dodge van with a custom interior which they named with my approval, GANNET 2.  After a shakedown cruise around the United States they headed south, crossing the border into Mexico at Laredo, Texas, on September 25, 2023.  Fifteen months and 17,000 miles later finds them at the blue dot on the map, near 55ºS, overlooking Harberton Ranch at the end of the world, only 75 miles from Cape Horn.  To put this in perspective, New Zealand extends to 47S.  Tasmania to 44S.  Africa to 35S.  Life on GANNET 2 is similar to living on a boat, but unless they actually start floating her, the crew of GANNET 2 have no where else to go except turn back north.  Well done, Michael, Layne, and Rusty.

You can follow their voyage at:

https://conchscooter.blogspot.com/

(Denver, North Carolina is just north of Charlotte.  Carol and I are visiting her family for a few days.)

Hilton Head Island: why Culebra?; Man On the Inside; Maria; lucky

I have been remiss.  Not the first time and certainly it won’t be the last.  I thought I had mentioned here before the previous entry that I intend to sail to Culebra in January, but in checking back I find only that I said once in November that I hoped to be at sea two months from then.  A couple of readers have asked “Why, Culebra?’   I have answered them but think the information might be of interest to others.

There are several reasons.  

Culebra is a good distance from Hilton Head Island.  About 1200 nautical miles along the rhumb line.  I have written that I don’t even consider it a passage if it is less than a 1000 miles, so by my own standard I haven’t sailed anywhere since GANNET and I completed my sixth and her first circumnavigation five years ago.  There is no consistent wind pattern on this coast, so it should take about two weeks each way.  Long enough I hope so that I settle into the rhythms of the sea.

I have stopped at Culebra on two of my circumnavigations.  I found it to have a good harbor, a beautiful anchorage at a nearby small, uninhabited islet, Culebrita, and to be quiet, uncrowded and unspoiled, unlike the U.S. and British Virgin Islands which have long been overrun by bareboat charterers and cruise ships.  I hope it has not changed too much and according to the island’s tourist site it seems it hasn’t.

https://culebrapuertorico.com/

Another advantage is that Puerto Rico being peculiarly part of the U.S. I don’t think that sailing directly from Hilton Head to there I have to clear in or out with officials.  I submitted a question about this to the CBP website and after several weeks got a completely useless response, so I will go to the Customs office in Culebra when I arrive and ask.

And it will be relatively simple for Carol to fly down and join me for a while, either by her flying or taking a ferry out to the island or my sailing the twenty miles to the east coast of the main island of Puerto Rico where there are several marinas.

We have recently watched two exceptional entertainments on Netflix.  One is an eight part series, Man On The Inside, starring Ted Danson as a man who is still understandably unsettled a year after his wife died of Alzheimers, and the other the movie, Maria, in which Angelina Jolie portrays Maria Callas in the last days of her life.

Man On The Inside is set mostly in a retirement home in San Francisco.  I don’t believe it will appeal to the young, but to anyone beyond the first flush of youth, it deals with aging with humor, intelligence and sensitivity.

Here is a review which I cannot improve upon.  Carol and I enjoyed the series greatly and hope there is a season two.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/erikkain/2024/11/22/a-man-on-the-inside-is-one-of-the-best-netflix-shows-of-2024-and-ted-danson-has-never-been-better/

Maria, too, was unexpectedly better than we anticipated.  The film has some flashbacks, but takes place mostly in Paris when the then 53 year old Callas no longer has the voice thought by many to be among the greatest ever.  Among the flashbacks is one in which Callas’s mother has prostituted her two teenage daughters to German soldiers during WW2.  I did not know that but conclude that there must be some truth to it or the scene could not have been included in the film.

Here is a review of the movie with which I agree.

https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/maria-angelina-jolie-netflix-film-review

I have written that I do not consider myself lucky, but Man on the Inside and Maria have caused me to rethink that.  

A vast amount, perhaps everything, of what we are is set at the moment of birth and totally out of our control.  Where we are born.  When.  To whom.  And what we get from the genetic lottery.  

Health and control of your own time are the greatest wealth.  

There is strong evidence that I got exceptionally good health from the genetic lottery.  I have had control of my own time for the past fifty years.  Consider Callas who lost her defining gift around age 50.  I often think of Reinhold Messner, three years younger than I, and arguably one of the greatest mountain climbers ever, who physically can no longer climb the highest mountains.  What would that be like I wonder?  Great athletes grow old young.  Their exceptional skills erode quickly and the careers of few extend into their forties.  Yet at 83 I can still sail to even the greatest capes and write and love Carol.  So I correct myself.  In some ways Webb Chiles is a lucky man.  He claims no credit for that.  It was chance.

Hilton Head Island: enisle; some work; a death bed poem and a poem about a death bed

 One of the many virtues of reading in the Kindle app is that when you come across an unknown word you can touch or click on it and usually get a definition.  A few days ago I came across enisle which was new to me and found it means ‘isolate on or as if on an island’.  The example of use given is:  in the sea of life enisled, we mortal millions live alone, a thought I have expressed elsewhere in this journal.  I am enisled.  I am charmed by the word.  It would make a good name for a boat or a book.

Here part of the poem, which is long and titled To Una who was his wife.

The marsh weather has been lovely and I have done some work on GANNET each of the past few days.  The Pelagic is completely removed.  Holes filled, sanded and painted.  The new stern light installed using some of the wiring I had run for the Pelagic.  Life lines tightened.  The mainsail raised to see if it would lower easily with the new thicker halyard.  It does.  Various bits and pieces used or leftover from the projects properly stowed.  I still have to inventory food and have the bottom cleaned, but I will be ready to sail for Culebra sometime in January.  I am very much looking forward to that.

The death bed poem was written by Kaga no Chiyo, a woman who lived 1705-1773.  Death bed poems are a Japanese tradition.

The poem about a death bed was written by Robinson Jeffers 1887-1962.

I just remembered that I may have written my own death bed poem a half century ago at sea on EGREGIOUS.  I had not thought of it for years, but was able to find it in STORM PASSAGE.  It includes double meanings of ‘senseless’.

                wind and waves of torment cease 

                to become a poem of this senseless voyage

Hilton Head Island: in good company

I thank Jay for sending an email that included:

Ran across this in today’s TRIBUNE.

The quote that stands out, by a Shackleton contemporary (Vilhjalmur Stefanson) is “Adventure is a sign of incompetence. “  

Sounds like something you’ve written!

In fact it does.  As some of you know on the lines page of my main site can be found:

Amateurs seek adventures.  Professionals seek to avoid them.

And I have quoted Roald Amundsen:

Adventures are the result of bad planning.

For the record I wrote my line years before knowing of the other quotes.

We each understood that when you are embarking on an endeavor that is difficult and dangerous you do not want adventure.  You know that chance can destroy you and so you plan and prepare to minimize the consequences of chance, though you know you cannot eliminate them completely.  You want not to need good luck to succeed, but only extremely bad luck to cause you to fail.

I take pride in being in such good company.

Hilton Head Island: a rainy morning, a decorating gannet, and a hurt hawk

 

A rainy morning in the marsh as a front passes.  We have a gale warning for coastal waters but only 16-18 knots of wind on Skull Creek.

Yesterday was beautiful, sunny and 70F/21C and I worked on GANNET for three hours, mostly removing the components of the Pelagic tiller pilot.  I like the design, which I think should prevent water from reaching the motor and electronics, but I have never been able to get a Pelagic to work for very long.  I would like it to work, but there is pleasure in making GANNET less complicated, and I can sail around the world with nothing more than sheet to tiller steering.  You may recall the writer and early aviator Antoine de Saint-Exupery saying of airplanes, one is perfect not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing more to remove. GANNET approaches such perfection.  I checked and find I have an ample supply of shock cord and fittings. The removal requires lying on my back half into the dead space at the aft end of the pipe berths in awkward and uncomfortable positions.  I did that part of the job that can be reached from the port pipe berth yesterday.  I will do the part at the end of the starboard berth when the weather clears.

I also reeved a new main halyard.  The old one started again slipping a few inches in the clutch.  It was ¼”/6mm Dyneema, more than strong enough for GANNET.  In fact you could lift the little boat twice over with it, but I bought a length of 5/16”/8 mm, which has for the little boat an absurd breaking strength of over 8000 pounds, in the hope that the clutch will hold it better.  We will see.

Of GANNETs this one is not actually decorating, but bringing back materials to make a nest.  I don’t recall where I saw the photo, but I do recall that it was taken in Yorkshire, England.

I am very much enjoying the poetry of Robinson Jeffers.  I knew of him and had read some of his poems decades ago.  

He was quite famous in the 20s and 30s, even appearing on the cover of TIME magazine.

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

As I have mentioned he came back to mind when I recently read him in an anthology.  I am now reading a selection of his work, THE WILD GOD OF THE WORLD.  Here is one. 

Hilton Head Island: tolerance of the hard of hearing

I am partially blind and deaf.  My loss of vision caused by glaucoma is unusual.  My loss of hearing is not.  According the American Academy of Family Physicians, “A 25 decibel hearing loss affects about 37% of adults 61 to 70 years of age, 60% of adults 71 to 80 years of age, and more than 80% of adults over 85.”  I am presently 83.

I am more blind than deaf.  My hearing loss is classified as moderate, but is the more difficult to live with.  That is because of people.

People are generally considerate of those who cannot see.  When after some of the five surgeries on my right eye I had to wear an eye patch, people treated me with courtesy and even in busy airports gave me space.  The almost instinctive reaction to those who have trouble hearing is frustration, irritation and sometimes anger, as if the one who cannot hear is doing so deliberately.

For myself I have worn eyeglasses since I was a child.  I have worn hearing aids since my early seventies.  My vision seems to be stable.  My hearing will only get worse.

So I suggest you try to be tolerant of the hard of hearing.  It will not be easy.  

You might do so because if you live long enough you are likely to become one of them.  Or you might do so just because it is kind.