Hilton Head Island: from view to view

We arrived home on a rainy Saturday afternoon.  We enjoyed our time in the Blue Ridge Mountains which were beautiful and tranquil and cooler than the marsh.  We were both also glad to be home.

I could see the top of GANNET's mast and so knew she was still there and walked down this morning.  Except for some rain water in the bilge I found her as I left her.  Not even any bird droppings on the deck or the dock.  There are either fewer birds around or those that are have become dock broken.  I sponged the water from the bilge and walked home.  

Last year when we returned on August 21 from the Azores the extreme heat had ended.  I have hopes that it has this year too, but although the temperature was only 84, GANNET's Great Cabin was 96 when I first went down below today.  Despite opening the forward hatch and turning on the fan it did not improve much while I was on board.

A comment on an earlier post asked if I have any sailing plans.  I do, but there are two problems in sailing the North Atlantic:  summer and winter.  At this latitude winter is limiting only in that you can't go very far north.  Summer is limited by heat and hurricanes.  Heat has kept me from spending much time on GANNET since June.  The heat today still does.  When it becomes tolerable I will sail for a day or two and anchor out.  I will sail some over the winter.  I have no destination in mind, and I am considering a sail for next summer.

I have in fact a three part plan for the next year which when you are one of the oldest 1% of our species is long enough.  

A few weeks ago I began writing a book about GANNET's circumnavigation.  Using the passage logs and journal entries as sources it is progressing well.  I write an hour or two each morning and stop when I know what the next sentence will be.  I am presently almost ready to leave Vavau, Tonga, for the final leg across the Pacific to New Zealand.  However it will be months before I am finished with the first draft and then there will be inestimable re-writing.  l am pleased to be engaged in a long endeavor.  What I will do with the book when it is finished I have not yet decided.

Part two is to video myself reciting all of the poems found on the poetry page of the main site.  People don’t read, so perhaps they will watch and listen.  Two have already been videoed.  'Ithaca, Illinois' and 'Departure'.  The first is on my YouTube Channel.

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The second in the SafeHarbor Storytellers video.

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And a third has been put to music.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aBw2C7PzBqY

Part three is the sailing I may do next summer.  This is not my now discarded five year plan.  I like living in the marsh.  I like living with Carol, who with the difference in our ages likely faces a long widowhood.  That plan would have kept me away from both for too long.  I am still considering part three.  If I embark on it, you’ll know.

Amicalola Falls Lodge, Georgia: bad news

Taken together these two explain a lot.

As many of you know I am a reader.  Among the many ways you can divide our species I believe readers and non-readers is among the most significant.  As I have written here before if what you are is what you actually do as opposed to what you like to believe you are, I am a sleeper, as are all of us who spend roughly a third of our butterfly’s cough of consciousness sleeping, and then I am a reader.  I have spent more time sailing than all but a few men, but I have read more than I have sailed and still do.  I read for the pleasure I find in skillfully combined words, but I also read to learn, even now as an old and extremely experienced and read man.

I have often felt for other reasons that I am an anachronism.  I never considered that I would be one because I read or that as a writer I have become as obsolete as a lamplighter.

https://www.theguardian.com/media/2025/jun/17/social-media-overtakes-tv-as-main-source-of-news-in-us-analysis-finds

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/aug/20/reading-for-pleasure-study

Mineral Bluff: last view

As you will have realized from the sunrise photo our view is to the east.  For unknown reasons when we first arrived I thought we were looking north.  This house is about as far north as you can go and still be in Georgia, so though perhaps some of the mountains on the left edge of the photo are in North Carolina, most of what we see is Georgia.  I am no judge of how far we can see.  As I am writing the Apple weather app shows visibility of fourteen miles.

The house is said to be in Mineral Bluff, but Mineral Bluff is a crossroads several miles distant and a thousand feet below us.  It is said to have a population of 220.  

This whole area is mostly wilderness.  There are a few other houses nearby, though except for the one across the road, mostly hidden by trees, but none seems presently inhabited.  I expect almost all are second homes and/or rentals.  The one next door is for sale with an asking price of 1.3 million.

One comment to a previous journal entry asked if we came here to escape Erin.  We did not.  Erin has never been forecast to have much effect on Hilton Head Island.  Carol planned this long ago to escape the summer heat in the marsh and to celebrate our 31st wedding anniversary which we did with a bottle of champagne on the porch last Saturday.

Almost every day we walk up the road to the top of the mountain, which is 130' higher than the house, and each afternoon Carol beats me at pool.  This is not difficult because I have never played pool  and she is a shark.  Well, perhaps a minnow, which is enough to beat me.  I did win one afternoon when she inadvertently sank the 8 ball.

The house is big and has more amenities than we want or need.  Below is the link to the rental listing if you would like to see more.   

We leave Thursday.

We have very much enjoyed our time here and are likely to return, though not next summer when I have other plans.  

https://www.airbnb.com/rooms/53859411?c=.pi80.pkTUVTU0FHSU5HX05FV19NRVNTQUdFX0VNQUlMX0RJR0VTVA%3D%3D&euid=840eca7e-85c5-a0de-3dc4-9064ea6e6bf7&source_impression_id=p3_1755621462_P34j2SjPiORaJkbj

Mineral Bluff: rose

The sun and I rose at the same time this morning.  I grabbed my phone and took the above.  The sun just kept on rising.

This house and our condo are both about the view.  Carol has observed that the view here is usually static, like looking at a painting, while the view from the condo is alive.  In part that is because here we are looking at greater distance and there are few people.  The clouds and shadows change as does the angle of light and it is very quiet.  From the condo water ripples, Spanish moss and live oaks sway, squirrels and small birds flit about, egrets and herons wade and hunt in the spartina, pelicans glide, boats are underway, people walk the docks.  

Both views are beautiful and the differences appreciated.

We are taking short walks.  Short because the roads end not far away and are nearly vertical.  I exaggerate, but they are steep and challenging for those of us who are used to sea level flat land.

Mineral Bluff: elevated

 

I am atypically at altitude,  2533', in northern Georgia's Blue Ridge Mountains where we have rented a house for ten days.  As you can see the view north into North Carolina is spectacular.  Last evening while sitting on the deck sipping drinks Carol and I counted five separate ridge lines.  The place is quieter even than Skull Creek.  We came to escape some of the heat in the Low Country, but in fact it has not been bad there for the past week or so.  Upon our arrival yesterday afternoon I did my usual workout.  I wondered if I would be short of breath a half mile high.  I wasn't.  There are a few other houses nearby, but we have seen no other people.  We did see a deer walk down the road this morning.

Hilton Head Island: poems and gannets

There are three species of gannets.  One in northern Europe and eastern Canada.  Another in southern Africa.  And a third in New Zealand and Australia.  They are coastal birds, and although GANNET and I are pelagic, they are beautiful and graceful and I am glad I named the little boat after them.

I thank Martin for links to two short videos of one of the biggest northern European gannet colonies on Bass Rock off Scotland.

While I watched I found myself wondering at the number of fish needed to feed all those birds.

watch

watch

As some of you know I read poetry each morning, some ancient Chinese or Japanese, some usually modern Western.  When I come across a poem I think worth sharing, I make a screen shot of the page.  Having recently been preoccupied with RETURN TO THE SEA, I have been remiss in passing those on.  So here they are.  

The Chinese are from 300 TANG POEMS.  The Tang dynasty ran from 618-907.

The Western poems are from the BEING HUMAN anthology.

I don't think you will have any difficulty knowing which is which.

'On A Political Prisoner' is by William Butler Yeats.