Lake Forest: hot and cool

The less than two hour flight from Hilton Head to Chicago was uneventful.  The best kind.  I put on my noise cancelling headphones, read some of Machiavelli’s THE PRINCE and some of a novel, WINTER JOURNEY, by an Australian, Diane Armstrong, and we landed, and after a mere $120 taxi ride I was home. I knew it would be expensive.  Lake Forest is twice as far from O’Hare as is Evanston, but the real difference is that Lake Forest is beyond the standard Chicago taxi zone and the meter is multiplied by 1.5.  It is considerably cheaper to prearrange for a limo, which is what I will do on my few remaining returns to the upper flatlands.

There is more adjusting to be done than in the past.  I was here at the Lake Forest apartment only briefly when we moved in and since then Carol has reorganized and moved things around.  She is presently at the office and I am mostly finding what I am looking for and mostly remembering how things work.

At 1:30 PM the temperature is a pleasant 73F/22.7C which feels like 73.  Hilton Head is 92F/33.3C which feels like 112F/44.4C.  This is very much to the point.

Recently published research shows that parts of the world are becoming too hot and humid for humans to survive.

Here is a link to a WASHINGTON POST article.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/interactive/2021/climate-change-humidity/

Here is a graphic from that article.

And here is more detail of the part of that graphic covering the United States.

The darker red the dot, the more dangerous the heat combined with humidity.  One of the darkest red dots in the US is over Hilton Head.

If you read the article or one of the many similar others online, you will learn that the problem is heat combined with humidity so high that sweat doesn’t evaporate to cool the body.  I have twice experienced this in Hilton Head during the past few weeks.  One was serious.  Once less so.

When Carol and I returned to the slip after our brief sail I removed the Torqeedo from the transom.  This is not arduous.  The electric outboard breaks down into parts, the heaviest of which, the shaft, weighs only twenty pounds.  Yet by the time I had done so and moved it into the cabin, I was in trouble.  I could not stow it in the stern, but had to leave it on the cabin sole, close the boat and walk back to the condo.  Normally an easy ten minute walk, I almost didn’t make it.  Obviously I did and was saved by air-conditioning, drinking cold water, and ice on my neck and forehead supplied by Carol while I sat collapsed for an hour.

The second time was less severe and occurred during the last quarter mile of a bike ride to and from the supermarket.  I was not riding hard and I was fine on the way over and almost all the way back, but an invisible threshold was crossed as I neared home.  I had no choice but to keep on going, locked up the bike, took the elevator instead of the stairs, got into the air-conditioned condo and recovered quickly.

Part of this is my age.  Unquestioningly I can handle heat less well than when I was younger.  I spent years sailing in the tropics in my thirties, forties and fifties without problems.  But I believe the science.  Part of this is that the world is rapidly becoming too hot and humid.

I have learned that I am going to have to be careful in the summer in Hilton Head.  My directions for sailing from San Diego to Cape Horn are sail south until the rigging freezes over, then turn left.  I don’t think the rigging will freeze over on the way to Iceland, but having to consider being too cold next July is increasingly attractive.

Recently I wrote to a friend a year older than I that I have never believed in the good old days, but maybe he and I have lived them. 

Hilton Head Island: deranged and a surprise

People have said that I am mad so often and for so long that decades ago I prepared stock responses by quoting Aristotle:  No excellent soul is exempt from a mixture of madness.  And the Australian Nobel Prize winning novelist, Patrick White:  “You are mad,” shouted Angus, who had learned to cherish his own limitations as a sure proof of sanity.”  I am sure you all recognize those as quotes used in the front of some of my books.

Actually I am not called mad much anymore, at least not to my face, now that I am an established legend and have been married to the admirable and genuine American success story, Carol, for twenty-seven years.

However, I have written that no one ever lived in Chicago for the climate, or if they did they were deranged.  Tomorrow I fly to Chicago for the climate, which is more pleasant than Hilton Head Island’s in the summer.  I will not dispute whatever conclusion you reach.

A low drifting offshore just south of us was forecast to cause more rain than it did.  I was able to bike down between thunderstorms and prepare GANNET to be left for six or seven weeks, though I did not do all I would have if I were here and knew definitely that a hurricane was coming.  My biggest concern is the ferry boat on the other side of the dock.  It is big, heavy and has a lot of flat vertical surface for wind to push against.  The marina seems to me to be properly constructed, but the docks were never intended for that kind of vessel.  I and others have told the dockmaster that we wish it were gone, but it has now been there two years.  No point in worrying over what I can’t control.

I was also able yesterday to go for my third swim.  It has come back quickly.  What was awkward the first swim is again natural.  It is good exercise that uses muscles my other workouts, walking and biking do not.  If there is no lightning around this afternoon and no one else at the pool which prevents me from doing laps, I’ll go again this afternoon.

Also deranged, and far too rich, are all the people on the eight to ten week waiting list for a plate of $200 French fries at a New York City restaurant.

https://www.cnn.com/travel/article/serendipity-new-york-city-french-fries-intl-hnk/index.html

It is enough to turn one into a socialist.

While my name is known to a few, almost all are in The West.  I did not believe that anyone of the billions in China and India had ever heard of Webb Chiles or read a word I have written.  A link to the page below from Ralph came as an unexpected and pleasant surprise.  I thank him.  The quotes they chose are interesting.  I don’t remember the first and last, but I’ll stand by them.

According to the first, I am not yet old.  I am not remembering, I am planning.

I don’t know if you can see in the top photo a Great Blue Heron and a Great Egret.  Rare for the two to be hunting so close together and it didn’t last.  The Great Blue soon chased the egret away.

Hilton Head Island: Mozart and Oh, My!

 My friend, Larry, is doing my work for me.  He is responsible for bringing both the items in this entry to my attention.  I thank him.

First, why if he were alive Mozart would not be participating in online composition forums.

And now click on the link below and say,  “Oh, My!”  Or words of your own choosing.  After seeing this I wrote back to Larry and told him he had made my day.   Of course it was all for charity, so it must have been a good idea.

I found that the previously posted link was not working, so have changed it to this.

Other reports said he was trying to ‘walk’ to New York.  He lasted less than one day.

https://www.fox10phoenix.com/news/man-running-on-water-inside-bubble-for-charity-washes-up-on-florida-beach

Hilton Head Island: versions of paradise with murder; swimming; more Laughlin; two poems

 Evening. 

I am sitting as usual at this time of day near our oversized bedroom window looking out on the above.  I think most would agree that it is beautiful.  This place is a version of paradise, if one accepts that paradise may be for a few months overheated.

My observation of conceptions of paradise is that paradise is not the same for all people and that for most it is over the next hill, not where they are.  

I saw this most clearly when early in the CHIDIOCK TICHBORNE voyage in the Marquesas Islands, which are certainly one legitimate version of paradise, I was invited into a local home where the teen age son had put up posters of snowy mountains and skiing in the French Alps and was looking forward to being drafted into the French army in hopes he could go there.  I am reasonably certain at that same moment there was a boy in the French Alps dreaming of the Marquesas.

As far as I can tell this condo on Hilton Head Island is the best version of paradise possible for me.  ‘Possible’ is the key word.  Would I rather live in New Zealand’s Bay of Islands?  Of course I would, but that is not possible.  I am far too old to meet New Zealand’s immigration rules, which the last I knew had a cut off at age 55.  I understand the reasons.  But even if it were possible for me to live permanently there, I probably wouldn’t because of the Hiscocks.

Some of you, perhaps most, will know of Eric and Susan Hiscock, who were the best known cruising couple of their generation.  They were English and liked New Zealand’s Bay of Islands as much as I do.  Eminently respectable, they still had difficulties in obtaining permanent residency.  Eventually they did, but when Eric died, I was surprised that Susan soon sold their boat and returned to England.  Now with more age I understand and I would probably not live permanently in the Bay of Islands because of Carol who will almost certainly far outlive me.  Her family is here.  After my death she would be too isolated in New Zealand.  So I am constantly aware and grateful for my not quite perfect version of paradise, which is after all more perfect than I am.

My friend, Grant, on whose mooring off Opua GANNET swung during her time there, has just been sailing in the Bay of Islands and sent me these photographs that bring back memories and emotions of a different paradise.  I thank him for permission to share them with you.

While writing I saw motion from the corner of my eye and glanced up to see a murder of crows landing in the live oak just beyond our deck.  I remembered that there is an unusual collective noun for a group of crows, but confess I had to google to find ‘murder’ which brings a smile.

I went swimming this afternoon in our condo pool.  Once I was a strong swimmer.  My summer and winter jobs in college were as a life guard.  I got married the first time on my then minimum wage earnings of $1.25 an hour, although in the summer we did get the big bucks of time and a half for more than forty hours a week.  And I did make the long swim of twenty-six hours, covering more than 130 miles with the help of the Gulf Stream after I sank RESURGAM; but that was all a while ago and, while still a magnificent animal, I accept that I am not what once I was.  Swimming was awkward, unnatural.  I was a fish out of water in the water.  I will attempt to correct that with more time in rather than just on my natural element.

You may not have noticed a comment on one of my journal entries about Lacklan Morgan.

https://self-portraitinthepresentseajournal.blogspot.com/2021/07/hilton-head-island-winded-suited-again.html

It includes a link to a video of him and his older brother biking half way across Australia from Port Macquarie on the east coast to Uluru in the continent’s center which I found interesting, even if I do not share some of their humor.  I note that the ride was made eight years ago when they were even younger, and I am of course old.  Still he is original.  And as you may know I have no higher compliment.

https://youtu.be/QqoKsDBQCTY

I recently wrote that I am enjoying ancient Chinese poems more than contemporary Western, but yesterday I came across two contemporary poems in the BEING ALIVE anthology that  may be sad and give me pause.

Hilton Head Island: Iceland; an old friend; ‘The Seafarer’

In seeking information about sailing to Iceland I learned of the above guide from the RCC and ordered a copy from Landfall Navigation.  When several days passed without it shipping I called and found that it is not in stock and won’t arrive for three or four weeks.  That it is not in stock is hardly surprising.  I doubt there is a big demand.  However in three or four weeks I won’t be here.  So I cancelled the order and googled more and learned that a PDF version is available from Google Play, which I have never used.  After jumping through a few hoops, including downloading a Google Play app, I bought and through the wonder of the Internet instantly have the book.  I even saved $20 over the hardcover edition.

Only a small part of the book is concerned with Iceland and being caught up in a very good biography of the Roman Emperor Augustus, I have yet to read it.  But this may be taken as proof  that I am getting serious.  As I have noted Hilton Head Island is too hot in the summer.  I am reasonably certain Iceland won’t be.

I have been following the weather in Reykjavik, Iceland’s capital for a while.  For the past few weeks it has been similar to that in Opua, New Zealand.

Of course it is winter in New Zealand and summer in Iceland, but I have spent winters on the unheated THE HAWKE OF TUONELA  on her mooring off Opua without discomfort.  

Note that sunset is at 11:08 PM.

If you are interested, and of course you are, the Sea Distance calculator shows the distance from Savannah, Georgia, the nearest major port about twenty miles from Hilton Head Island, to Reykjavik to be 3230 nautical miles.

From time to time I have the pleasure of coming across in an anthology a poem that I know and admire.  It is a chance meeting with an old friend.  This happened yesterday in the BEING ALIVE anthology.

Some of you may recall that I have run this poem here before.  Allegedly it’s subject is a Pope who abdicated a few months after his elevation, but surely it has wider meaning.

Yesterday I also came across ‘The Seafarer’ translated from Old English by Ezra Pound.  The original dates from about a thousand years ago and parts speak to me.  It is too long to publish here, but if you are interested below is a link.  I have read it now three times with interest and pleasure.

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/44917/the-seafarer

Hilton Head Island: The League of Village Idiots

I came across an article yesterday that pointed out that had the politicization of vaccines which currently plagues us—a deliberate choice of words—existed in the 1950s we would never have eradicated polio.  I had not thought of that, but it is so obviously true.

In the United States and the rest of the developed world you would have to be my age or older for polio to be more than a word from history.  I went to grade school with a boy who was crippled by polio.  He could barely walk with crutches and leg braces.  He died when we were in high school.  I do not know the numbers, but polio was a common disease then.  I expect most people knew someone who had it.

I remember when Dr. Salk’s vaccine became available.  The year was 1953.  I don’t know exactly when I received the vaccine, but it was administered at school via swallowing a sugar cube.  There was no controversy.  No resistance.  Only grateful acceptance and relief that this terrible disease would no longer cripple and kill.

Fast forward to 2001.  Carol and I sailed from Gibraltar to Dakar, Senegal, to obtain visas for Brazil.  We were there two weeks and were at first confused by the number of cripples we saw every day on the streets, pushing their maimed bodies, legs shriveled and twisted, on carts propelled by their arms, or just sprawling helplessly on the sidewalks.  We learned that they had polio.  This almost fifty years after the vaccine become available.  How could this be?  The answer is superstition, stupidity, and religious fanaticism.  Health workers administering the vaccine in many countries have been killed by religious fanatics.

I am pleased to read that now twenty years later polio is said to have been eradicated in most of the world, including Africa.

But now we have the madness of COVID vaccine resistance.  

The difference between now and the 1950s is the League of Village Idiots.

There have always been village idiots.  There always will be.  Until very recently, during our lifetimes, the village idiot wandered around, mumbling to him or herself, and unless he or she was violent, was tolerated and given some simple task and lived out his or her life in confused obscurity, never knowing there was one or more like him or her in the next village.  Now the village idiot can go online and find the idiot in the next village and in villages all over the world.  They are no longer alone.  They can chant and re-enforce their fears and frustration and rage—rage has become so popular a word that surely a movement will develop to amend the Bill of Rights:  Life, liberty and the pursuit of rage.  Screw happiness.  We want rage.

I am long on the record that to name our species homo sapiens, which means ‘wise or knowing man’, is a cosmic joke.  There is a constant, overwhelming flood of proof.  Among them that there is any controversy about COVID vaccines, beyond that many in the less developed world do not yet have access to them, and that we live in an age of the League of Village Idiots.

Hilton Head Island: sunny with waterspouts; inexperience

Another sunny day with a chance of waterspouts.  We live on the right side of the island.  There are none in sight on Skull Creek.  

I woke early yesterday morning and biked down to GANNET before 7 am intending to do some work before it got too hot, but I was already too late.

I installed the mounts for the Raymarine wind display.  One in the cabin; one in the cockpit.  This required nothing more strenuous than screwing in three small screws for each.  I didn’t even need to drill holes because I could see where I had filled the screw holes from the previous mounts.  Nevertheless by the time I had taken the few minutes needed to do this, sweat was blinding me.

I sponged a little water out of the bilge.

I went up on deck and tried to remove the torn non-stick pads and learned that Raptor uses strong adhesives and this is not going to be easy.

And I got on my bike and rode back to air conditioning.

My GANNET to do list:

New wind instruments (obtained but not yet installed)

New Windex  (obtained but not yet installed)

Two new snatch blocks  (ordered)

Sand and oil or paint interior wood  (battery sander and sand paper discs obtained)

Replace non-skid torn by Panama rigger  (sheet of Raptor non-skid obtained)

Solve slipping main halyard

Re-bed forward hatch  (Butyl tape obtained)

All work to be deferred until at least mid-September.

As noted here before each issue of the BBC MUSIC MAGAZINE costs me money.  This month it caused me to buy an excellent recording of Bartok’s First and Second Violin Concertos performed by Christian Tetzlaff and the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra.

Also in that issue an article about Camille Saint-Saens quotes Hector Berlioz, who was serving on the jury for the Prix de Rome, which Saint-Saenz did not win reportedly because he was already too famous, as saying of Saint-Saens, “He already knows everything, but he lacks inexperience.”

Hilton Head Island: Channel Fever; a hint

I am sitting in my favorite chair near the bedroom window, sipping chardonnay and listening to Schubert’s “Death and the Maiden” on new Sonos One SL speakers.  I bought a pair for the living room and like them so much I bought two more for the bedroom.   These are the least expensive Sonos speakers and differ from the Ones by having no voice control.  I have no desire to talk to speakers.  They are small, unobtrusive, and sound good to my old defective ears. Perhaps the very best thing about them is that the setup is easy and flawless.  Sonos has got this.  I thank them.

Yesterday I received an email from Roger, an experienced cyclist, who puts Lachlan Morton’s achievement in clearer perspective.  Here it is and my reply.

Webb,

I'm an old cyclist, and am somewhat familiar with endurance, long distance cycling. I have never, and will never even dream of doing what this guy has done, with 360 miles in 18 hours, but I will say that in 24 hour contests to see how far a rider can go, I have never seen anyone even come close to this mileage. 

You have congratulated him, and I do also, but this accomplisment may never be bettered.

Roger

Hello, Roger,

I of course have no personal experience on which to judge his ride, but am in awe of the numbers and appreciate your comments based on what you know better than I.   I will pass them on in the journal.

I have a sense that he was as a cyclist feeling what sailors in the past called Channel Fever.  At the end of a long voyage as they entered the English Channel they wanted it to be over and pressed hard.  I have done that myself on passages, being content in the middle, but pushing for it to be over at the end.  

I believe Lachlan has achieved a greater accomplishment than winning the Tour, but then I am perhaps biased toward the individual rather than the team.

Webb 

I sometimes talk to myself in this journal, putting tentative thoughts into words in an attempt to clarify them.  Doing so publicly may or may not be wise, but I am a writer.

I did not mean to tease about the passage I might make next summer, but I also do not like people who talk about what they might do.  I prefer those who report after they have done.  Nevertheless having mentioned a possibility, I want to clarity.  

It is too hot on Hilton Head Island in July and August.  It is not too hot in Iceland.  I have sailed in those temperatures.  Perhaps I still can.  I am not totally committed.  I was totally committed to all my previous voyages and I am not certain one can make a difficult passage without such commitment.  But that is what I am considering.

We will see what does or does not happen.

Hilton Head Island: books read Jan-June 2021; price drop; in Paris

January—June  2021

SWORD OF KINGS   Bernard Cornwall

SATCHEL   Larry Tye

SHACKLETON’S FORGOTTEN MEN   Lennard Bickel

THE HORSE’S MOUTH   Joyce Cary

BAD LAND   Jonathan Raban

EMBERS   Sandor Marai

EXTRAORDINARY LIVES   various

IT CAN’T HAPPEN HERE   Sinclair Lewis

VEXATIONS   Caitlin Horrocks

NEVER LET ME GO   Kazuo Ishiguro

WOLVES OF EDEN   Kevin McCarthy

DRACULA   Bram Stoker

HISTORY OF THE WORLD IN 100 OBJECTS

Neil MacGregor/British Museum

PEELER   Kevin McCarthy

GULLAH DAYS   Barnwell/Grant/Campbell

ARCH OF TRIUMPH   Erich Maria Remarque

CAPTAIN WILLIAM HILTON AND THE FOUNDING OF

HILTON HEAD ISLAND   Dwayne Pickett

THE PERFECT MILE   Neil Bascomb

DEAD SOULS   Nikolai Gogol

MACHINES LIKE ME   Ian McEwan

CONVERSATIONS WITH BEETHOVEN   Sanford Friedman

ALONE   Michael Korda

1984   George Orwell

RETURN TO THE SEA   Webb Chiles

There are many very good books in that list.  I saved the best for last.

I bought a speedometer/odometer for my bicycle.  It actually is a mini computer with a display the size of my Apple watch that attaches to the handle bar and records many things besides distance and speed.  It functions via GPS.  It cost $36.

Some of you may remember that I bought my first GPS, a handheld unit made by Sony, thirty years ago this fall in New Zealand.  The GPS system was not officially in operation, but the satellites were up there and it worked.  The Sony handheld was one of the least expensive available at the time.  It cost $2000.

Lachlan Morton is in Paris.  He made it faster than I expected, riding through the night and covering the last 579 kilometers/360 miles in nineteen hours.  Impressive, indeed.

I have not been in Paris for many years, but I remember the traffic and thought the most dangerous part of Lachlan’s ride might be those last few miles.  From the photos it seems he wisely arrived after dark.

https://www.rapha.cc/us/en_US/stories/the-alt-tour

Hilton Head Island: winded; suited again; Lachlan Morton

 My hope springs eternal Raymarine wind instruments have arrived and been duly registered to extend the warranty from two years to three.  I wonder why I think I need that.

Raymarine has changed the color of the case for the display unit from cream to charcoal.  I like the new color.  And they have paired the display with the masthead unit at the factory.  This is most welcomed.  In the past the user had to pair the units which I found to be a cumbersome and often frustrating procedure.  

I still do not know how and when the masthead unit will get attached to the masthe

Steve Earley who has the same brand of dry suit I do, Stohlquist, but a different model wrote that his has a zipper from one shoulder to mid-chest which makes it easier to get on and off than mine.

When I successfully put mine on the other day, I did so partially while standing and I have realized that on GANNET I am going to have to get into it while sitting or sprawling, so this morning I sat on the living room carpet and managed to get in and zipped.  I am now confident I can do this.  After removing it, I spayed all the zippers again with teflon.  

I have been watching and enjoying the Tour de France.  Today is a rest day for the racers, but not for Lachlan Morton, the Australian who is racing the peloton on his own.  On Friday’s broadcast of the Tour he was interviewed live.  Here is his tracking page then:

He started behind the racers, but passed them on the second day and as you can see was then far ahead.  He cycles about twelve hours a day, then finds a place to camp, puts up a small tent and cooks his dinner, presumably on something like my JetBoil.  He estimates that his bike and gear weight about 50 pounds.  The bikes ridden in the race weigh about 15 pounds.

Lachlan needed to be far ahead of the peloton because in a few days all the racers will fly 400 miles from Bordeaux to near Paris.  Lachlan will bike the distance.

I just checked his tracking page again.

He’s going to do it.  He’s almost there.  I am smiling.  What a great challenge.  What a great thing to have done.  Good on you, Lachlan.