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 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.