Hilton Head Island: corroded

I am making an effort to go sailing for a day or two before the chopping starts.  I, who seldom have any appointments, now have three.  Each of my skin cancers requires a different surgeon and will be done individually starting new week.  With follow ups to remove stitches I will presumably end up with at least six appointments in coming weeks.

I am not certain I will go sailing.  Partly that is because I am in writing mode.  I work first thing every morning and am reluctant to change focus.  And partially the weather may not cooperate.

I did charge the Evo battery that is here in the condo and I went down to GANNET a few days ago to charge the second battery that is on board.  However I discovered that both the electrical outlets in the Great Cabin were not functioning.  The one to port is a cigarette lighter fixture.  The one to starboard has two USB outlets.

I went back yesterday and spent three hours in the contorted positions GANNET imposes, replacing the cigarette lighter and wire end fittings and tracing the wiring to the USB fixture, which required removing it when it strenuously did not want to be removed, until I found the corroded splice and replaced it and end fittings.

I then plugged the Evo battery charger into the new cigarette lighter socket, a UE Boom speaker into one of the USB outlets and left them to charge overnight.

I was pleased when I biked down this morning to find that both had.

I then intended only to scrub two small bird droppings from the deck, but when I had, the contrast between where I scrubbed and the rest of the deck, which until then had looked quite acceptable, was dramatic and I ended up scrubbing the entire deck and cockpit.

The cockpit needs painting as do the rub rail stripes and the hull touched up and probably the interior as well.  Heat prevented work from about mid-June to mid-August, but no longer does.

Whether I will get GANNET away from the dock in the next week I do not know.

In rereading the journal from 2015 I came across this from Saint-Exupéry’s WIND, SAND AND STARS:

Flying is a man’s job and its worries are a man’s worries.  A pilot’s business is with the wind, with the stars, with night, with sand, with the sea.  He strives to outwit the forces of nature.  He stares in expectancy for the coming of dawn the way a gardener awaits the coming of spring.  He looks forward to port as to a promised land, and truth for him is what lives in the stars.

Drop ‘with sand’ and he could have been writing about sailors, too.