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.