Hilton Head Island: a gale warning; provisioned; the purpose of lists; fragments

We have a gale warning.  As usual there are not gale force winds on this side of the island, but as you can see enough to make the Spanish moss dance.

I have said that the two parts of sailing oceans I most dislike are provisioning and dealing with officials, though I have provisioning down to a near science and I have in fact had few bad experiences with officials.  

Of officials, being jailed in Saudi Arabia is in a class by itself; followed in second place by an official in Panama when I sailed there in GANNET refusing to believe for three frustrating and irritating hours that I had sailed directly from Hilton Head; and in third the most invasive inspection ever in Fremantle, Australia, after a hard passage from Cape Town in THE HAWKE OF TUONELA.  Mostly officials have been competent and courteous, but sailors, particularly solo sailors, are likely to have had limited sleep the night of making landfall and dealing with bureaucracy is always tedious even when you aren’t tired and maybe wet.

Of provisioning I dislike the intermediate clutter.  I keep my boats in order.  GANNET is in order in what I call harbor mode and she is in order in passage mode, but during the transition between them she is not.  At this moment she is not.

Preparing to sail to Culebra is unusual because I already had most of my provisions, they were just divided between the boat and the condo to which I moved most of my freeze dry meals a couple of years ago when I wanted the condo to be prepared for me to be self-staining for at least two months in case of a major hurricane.

I had an enjoyable afternoon last Friday inventoring what was on GANNET.  The answer is a lot of cans of tuna fish, some too stale oatmeal and trail mix, a little protein power, and 29 freeze dry meals.  But I felt good preparing to go to sea for a while.  I have said that if it is less than a thousand miles I don’t consider it a sail, so by my own standards I haven’t really sailed since GANNET and I completed my sixth and her first circumnavigation almost six years ago.

I expect the sail to Culebra to take ten to fourteen days, but it could easily take more if I am slowed by too little wind, too much wind, or head winds.  I can top up on water and food on Culebra before the return, but I am provisioning GANNET for two months.  Actually more because I took two bags of freeze dry meals back to her from the condo and now have around 100 dinners on board.

Carol has driven me twice to supermarkets and a liquor store.  I bought six cans of chicken, three circles of Laughing Cow cheese, instant coffee, powered milk, three bars of chocolate, 16 small boxes of fruit juice, three packages of cookies, a box of Cheese-Its, a can of Pringles, two boxes of crackers, a box of Band-Aids, two packs of WetWipes, a box of Cabernet Sauvignon, a box of Sauvignon Blanc, 12 cans of Heineken O, a bottle of Plymouth gin, and, of course, a bottle of 10 year Laphroaig.  I already had oatmeal, trail mix, more protein powder, and various protein bars at the condo.  I also have had to take paper towels, Kleenex, and toilet paper from the condo.  Doubtless there are things I am forgetting to mention, but that is pretty much it and it is at this moment disorganized, some here, some on the boat whose interior is in neither harbor nor passage mode.  I will work on that tomorrow.  However there is no chance I will depart this week.  Perhaps next week though the forecast is not particularly favorable.  Like much of this country Hilton Head is having cooler weather than normal for January, though here that only means lows around freezing, not real winter.  I have no deadline other than being back for Carol’s birthday in late April.

A friend wrote about my keeping lists of workouts and books read.

Of workouts I started doing so twenty-one years ago because I found that I was kidding myself about how often I worked out.  That is not possible when I record each workout on the calendar in my computer and count them up each month.  When I totaled workouts a few days ago for 2024 I was surprised to learn that I did my weight workout only 49 times.  I thought it would be more like 70.  I am supposed to do that workout twice a week which would be 104 a year.  There are valid reasons not to do it, such as having stitches after two skin cancer removals and the hernia repair and our trip to the Azores, but they do not account for the slippage.  So I will try to be more diligent this year though I will lose maybe two months on the upcoming sail. 

Of the list of books read, I often find it useful to look back and see what I have read and when.  I started keeping that list in June 2009.  I am presently rereading the excellent AHAB’S WIFE by Sena Jeter Naslund.  I have forgotten much of it and find that I first read it in July 2013, so perhaps I can be forgiven.

From Ezra Pound’s EARLY POEMS:

From William Butler Years:

‘No Second Troy’ was written about Maud Goone, the actress and revolutionary, with whom Yeats was in love for years and to whom he proposed marriage several times and was rejected.