After a week of almost constant gale warnings, though as usual there was not that much wind on this side of the island, Monday morning was calm as forecast and slack water coincided with first light at 7 AM, so I biked down and moved GANNET from slip A5 to A21.
AyeTides showed the turn from high water at the mouth of Skull Creek to be at 7:30. It is about 40 minutes earlier at the marina, but I was surprised to feel how strong the current already was in the first hour of change. I had to compensate for the tide pushing GANNET toward the B dock. The tidal currents here make this the most difficult place to leave a slip in any place I have ever kept a boat.
I am happy with the move, even though in time there will probably be boats on the end tie outside of our new slip that will compromise the view, and even though the wakes of passing boats are much more felt than they were in A5.
Here is a wider view.
You are looking south on Skull Creek. The land ahead is Hilton Head Island. About two miles on Skull Creek makes a sharp turn to the right before going under the only bridge onto the island. The land to the right is Pickney Island, a National Wildlife Refuge, on which there is no development. A red marker on the Intracoastal is visible. Heading south it should be left to starboard.
GANNET needs a lot of cosmetic maintenance.
I go down daily and do some. Today scrubbing the deck which very much needed it.
I will go sailing soon, but I don’t know where.
While down below on GANNET yesterday sorting out the interior, I heard my name called. I stuck my head through the companionway and found a man who I learned is named Mark and is a decade younger than I. He has a sloop about the size of THE HAWKE OF TUONELA and lives in Massachusetts. I conclude he is a snowbird for he has passed this way frequently enough to know that GANNET has moved. He also knows of me and our voyage and he told me that when he stops here he goes to GANNET and meditates. I did not think to ask about his meditative thoughts, and I am not sure I would have anyway. That might be too private, and though I have shared much of my life, I respect privacy.
Still it gives me pause.
I often wonder about the value of my life.
Perhaps it has touched some of whom I do not know.
In three days I will finish THE PENGUIN BOOK OF ENGLISH POETRY. This has been a tough passage. I commend myself for having almost completed it.
It has not been all bad. The anthology includes Chidiock Tichborne’s Elegy and a few other poems that I admire, but I have enjoyed less than one hundred of its eleven hundred pages. This is a rarity for I have no problem of stopping reading a book I do not like. I persisted with this anthology because I was curious if it would get better. It didn’t much.
Here are links to two poems I have enjoyed. They are too long to include here.
The Sword of Achilles by W. H. Auden
and
The Pike by Ted Hughes.
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