Hilton Head Island: contracted

I signed a book contract today with Mariner Media for GANNET 6.

https://marinermedia.com/

Check out their bookstore.

I m indebted to Kent, who maintains Audrey’s Armada of small boats, for bringing the book to Mariner Media’s attention.  Thank you, Kent.

This is an important day in my life.  Few sign book contracts often.  Or ever.  And even fewer at age 84.  

The day is not remotely as exciting as when I signed my first book contract fifty years ago.  That was so important.  Confirmation that perhaps I was what I thought I was.  I can still feel the exaltation I felt when I opened the letter from my agent.  Suzanne and I were living in my grandparent’s house in Mission Beach after the completion of what would become the first of many circumnavigations.   My grandmother and the man I think of as my grandfather were visiting relatives in Cincinnati.  I had only two thousand dollars left.  Living rent free that would have lasted a while, but the way forward was uncertain.  Suddenly it was less so, and when not long later I sold EGREGIOUS, there was space to breathe, and in a year to began to plan what would become the open boat voyage.  We splurged that night and dressed up and went to dinner at the Hotel del Coronado.  Signing the contract today electronically online causes quiet pleasure and proof that I am not retired.

Doing so relinguishes my control of the published book.  I will not set the price.  I do not know when it will be published.  As I have written here, because of the photos, it will only be published as an ebook, something not even imagined when I signed the contract for STORM PASSAGE in December of 1976.  In the contract the title is still GANNET 6.  

I know that the publisher wants to cut the manuscript by about a third.  It is almost twice as long as my other books.  I have seldom been edited by book or magazine editors.  I am good at what I do as a sailor, a writer, a lover of women, and as a writer provide a finished product,  but I welcome this judgement by others of what they think will be of least interest to readers.  I am curious to see what they delete.  There are parts I will fight for.

So an old sailor and writer has had a good day.

I am out of Laphroaig, so I will pour a glass of Calvados.

To life.

Hilton Head Island: a different experience than mine

Between World Cup soccer matches—and the Netherlands/Japan was a good one—I chanced upon this video on YouTube which is another superfluous proof of Gresham’s Law which states that in currencies the bad drives out the good.  I am not the only one who has observed that the law applies far beyond economics.

As I write the video has been viewed almost four hundred thousand times.  Presumably by those who dream of a great and comfortable ‘adventure’ with which they can then bore their friends at cocktail parties.

I often feel that I am not of the same species as these people, but with regret I suppose I am.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nw0SogLhH3I

Hilton Head Island: two views of us; two poems about the moon and one from an asylum

 

You and I are in the above photos from today’s Astronomy Picture of the Day which shows Earth from a distance that provides perspective.  In the photos I think I see you smiling.

https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/astropix.html

Ptolemy’s concept of the universe with our planet at the center was believed by the best and brightest for 1500 years until Copernicus in 1543.

I have written a poem about that with which you are not doubt familiar, but which will do no harm to print here again.

As I have written here before, until a little over a hundred years ago scientists thought that our galaxy comprised the entire universe.  Now we are told that there are about two trillion galaxies in the universe. The universe has grown a lot in a hundred years.  It is almost enough to cause one to wonder if we are really that important.

From Liu Tsung-yuan 773-819.

From Percy Bysshe Shelly 1792-1822.

And a poem which I had never read before which I find interesting and troubling because of its title.

Hilton Head Island: a night on GANNET

 I am spending the night on GANNET.

As you can see from the photo taken a few minutes ago it is near low tide.  

I am now at Central having moved below from sitting on deck, sipping Laphroaig, and listening to the soundtrack of OUT OF AFRICA followed by the soundtrack of THE PIANO.

From the condo we see beauty, but I truly am more at home here within an arm’s length of water that leads to the ocean.

I know I have written this before, but how odd that a child born about as far from the ocean as one can be is at home there as few others are and sometimes at peace there as he never is on land.

I need to spend more time on GANNET.

I look up and see the companionway bulkhead even simpler than when I last photographed it.

A GoPro mount and the base for the Raymarine wind display mount have been removed and painted over.  

Greater simplicity pleases me.

Hilton Head Island: restored

 

You have often see this view before.  It is normal here.  I saw an article recently about the ten restaurants with the best views in South Carolina.  One of them is a mile to the left of the photo. Almost the same view, but not as good because of absence of the live oaks.  As the sun lowers the colors will become more intense.  They are now so in the few moments I have been typing.  We live in beauty.  That is important to me.  I expect it is to most people, but not enough to do something about it, if they can, and most can’t.

I came out here with a glass of wine to listen to music after I complete this.  

The marsh has been perfect for several days.

The dangerous summer heat, which began in May, has been broken by a string of sunny days, moderate temperatures in the 70s, and abnormally low humidity.  Wonderful.

Each morning around 8 or 8:30 I bike down to work on GANNET.  Yesterday I was able to mark six tasks off my ‘to do’ list, but discovered two more to add.  Today I marked off four and added two.  I like to consider this progress.

Among the tasks marked off is ‘depth sounder’.  I wired the display directly to the battery and it came on which established that the problem was in the wiring.  I found the loose connection for which I am likely responsible.  It was a located near where when I am sleeping on the starboard pipe berth with the lee cloth up I place a flotation cushion to brace my knee against.  Probably when GANNET heeled too far I put too much pressure on it and loosened the wire.

So GANNET’s limited electronics, all of which had failed before or during the last offshore sail have been restored.  Not repaired, but replaced.  A new Velocitek for COG and SOG.  A new Raymarine I40 depth display.  A Calypso wind unit.  

I still have lots of work, mostly cosmetic, to do.  I just checked and my ‘to do’ is fourteen items long, three of which are optional.

I like routine.  I liked going to our guest bedroom every morning for seven or eight months writing.  I now like biking down to GANNET each morning and working on the little boat.

The sun has set beyond Pickney Island and a Great Blue Heron just squawked.

I am going to sip wine and listen to music.

It is a life.

L’Chaim.

Hilton Head Island: unpleasant things and some poems

 I have been doing unpleasant things with electronics for several days.

Our Internet went out last Thursday morning.  For the past two or three years we have had wireless internet with T-Mobile at a cost of $50 a month which is never supposed to be increased.  Of that we will see.  

Not to burden you with all the frustrating details, I spent hours Thursday and Friday on the telephone with T-Mobile support.  It was determined that our Gateway had failed and needed to be replaced by a newer unit anyway.  T-Mobile sent the unit over night.  Actually they sent two, but we don’t need to go into that although it required another phone call.  What they did not send was complete instructions on how to set up and activate the gateway.  More phone calls until finally one competent technician told me to remove the SIM from the new unit and replace it with the SIM from the old.  Hallelujah!  It worked.  Internet restored.

Then on Saturday the replacement depth finder was delivered.  I took it down to GANNET.  I had already removed the old unit.  I hoped it would be as simple as attached the wires to the new unit and it would work.  Again Hallelujah!  For a while.  The unit beeped and showed us in 13.1’ of water.

I turned the unit off and proceeded to mount it in place and then did another few minor tasks.  Just before I left GANNET I decided to turn it on again just to be sure.  Anti-Hallelujah.  Nothing.  No beep.  No numbers in the display.  Nothing.  I removed the wires and then reconnected them.  Still nothing.

I came home.

I went to GANNET this morning and checked some of the wiring.  I found a loose connection and hoped that was it.  I put a new crimp connector on the wires.  Nothing.  

Carol will go down with me tomorrow or the next day to help me trace wires that require people on both sides of a bulkhead to follow.

The good news is that the Calypso wind unit continues to function and amaze.

When I first installed it the battery was at 17%.  The next day it was at 58% and the day after that 100% where it has stayed.  This is amazingly efficient, considering that there is no off switch.  The unit is always on.  Always measuring, calculating, transmitting, and the solar cell on the top is very small, not much bigger than two postage stamps.  I will be very happy if it continues to perform.

There is consolation in poetry.  I have needed some lately.

This from the tragic Scott return from the South Pole.

This from Lord Byron’s DON JUAN.

Of publishing, while I do not yet have a contract, I believe GANNET 6 has found a publisher.