Hilton Head Island: a rainy day; next step; two poems and the path through danger

A rainy day in the marsh.  Slow, steady rain began mid-morning and is expected to continue through the day.  Often I only know it is still raining by seeing the drops splash on the deck.  Tiny birds, much smaller than sparrows, are flitting about the live oaks.  They weigh so little that when they land, the slightest twigs don’t bend.

I have resumed normal life, doing my workout Monday for the first time in more than three weeks.  My shoulders still hurt some, but I did my age in push-ups.  On GANNET I usually am pushing or pulling my body up with my arms rather than using my legs.

GANNET is back in good condition.  Other than having too much stuff on board, she was never in bad condition during the recent sail.  I have a few small tasks, but they are not critical and won’t get done today.  Oddly a clevis pin pulled out of a mainsail luff slide.  It was secured by a split ring which is highly unlikely to have come off, but did.  The pin itself is small and thin.  I could not find a replacement online, so called North’s Charleston loft and after figuring out the exact part, which is metric, they are kindly mailing me a replacement.

Another task is to create a specific place to stow my iPhone.  I navigated and read on the phone and slipped it into one of the two compartments beside Central when I went on deck and with GANNET’s motion it slid around and was difficult to find when I came back.  I looked for mounts online, but think I will just use shock cord as I do to secure the handheld VHF.

I am dealing with in part new to me problems.  I don’t think I will write about them in detail because I expect that what I would say would likely be misinterpreted, however, the next step tentatively is a no where in particular sail for a week or two before the hurricane season, probably in late April after Carol’s birthday or in May.

As regular readers know when I finish a book of poetry I scroll down on my Kindle app in which books are arranged by ‘Most Recent’ and reread whatever is farthest down.  At present that is THE POETRY OF ZEN and the STAYING ALIVE anthology.  This morning I came across these two poems which I know I have posted here before and given enough time probably will again.

FromTHE POETRY OF ZEN, a poem by Wang Fan-Chin 590-660

And from STAYING ALIVE by the Greek, C.P. Cavafy 1866-1933

I am also now rereading Alan Furst’s NIGHT SOLDIERS in which is found this good advice.