Hilton Head Island: the early Webb catches the bird; a Webb: hell in paradise; a poem

 

I was an early Webb this morning.

I woke at 6 am.  Dug shorts and t-shirt from the dirty clothes bag because I knew they were going to get sweaty.  Had a drink of water and biked down to GANNET to stow properly the Evo outboard, which I had left on the Great Cabin sole and rearrange the interior.  This was at first light, but before dawn.  On the dock I disturbed egrets and night herons seeking their breakfasts.  I apologized and noted that they quickly regrouped behind me.

On board I did my work, confirmed that the failed battery charger is still failing, sweated profusely though the air temperature was only 79F/26C, and biked back to the desirably air-conditioned condo before 7.

I did not plan to go outside again today, but 8:30 pm finds me writing this on the screened porch, sipping vodka, seeing post-sunset color fade from the sky and its reflection fade from Skull Creek.  Skull Creek is pewter.  A narrow dark band of land and trees.  The sky a slightly darker gray than the creek.  Occasionally voices from condos next to ours.  The hum of a motor somewhere.  But tranquil.

In line with being of service to my fellows being my highest goal—well, perhaps I have given in to a moment or two of self-indulgence—I have invented a drink which I modestly call a Webb.  Actually it is a simplification—I am immodestly good at simplyfying—of a drink Peggy, my sister-in-law makes, called I think a Winter White Cosmo.  Not having on hand all the ingredients for that, I came up with The Webb.

I have read that a cocktail differs from a mixed drink by having three or more ingredients, while a mixed drink has only two.  If so, a Webb is a cocktail.

The recipe:

Equal parts of vodka and white cranberry juice.

I generally have two ounces of each.

Pour both into a glass full of ice.

Add a splash of Elderflower liquor.  I did not know until recently that Elderflower liquor existed.  Be careful with this.  Too much is too much.

Stir.

Add a raspberry for accent.  I suppose a strawberry would do.

Drink.

Thank me.

Your biggest problem will be finding white cranberry juice.  Try Amazon if your local supermarket does not have any.

For eight or nine months Hilton Head Island is a valid version of paradise.  In the northern summer it is not.  I don’t know that Hilton Head is hotter than Hell during what is the prime tourist season on the island—more unneeded proof that we are not an intelligent species—but it is too damn hot.  

 Carol found research that our body sensors to overheating become less sensitive with age.  That is my experience.  I spent many years in the tropics, often doing my workouts on deck in the heat of late afternoon followed by a shower ashore or a solar shower in the cockpit;  Yet three times in the past year or so I have been seriously overheated here with far less exertion.  So summers here for me are limiting.

Starting next Monday every afternoon will have a heat index—feels like—temperature of 115-121F/46-49C.

No wonder to me New Zealand’s Bay of Islands, which never knows such numbers, and is much less susceptible to hurricanes/cyclones is my true unobtainable paradise.

I will need supplies next week.  I am out of Laphroaig.  I am almost out of vermouth.  I will run out of fresh berries for my morning uncooked oatmeal.  Neighbors have offered me rides, but I don’t like to accept help, so I may have to Uber.

As you may know I read some poetry each day and I listen to some Bach.

The poetry now comes from THE OXFORD BOOK OF ENGLISH VERSE and an anthology of native American titled WHEN THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD WAS SUBDUED OUR SONGS CAME THROUGH.

I must confess to being mostly disappointed with the native American poems, in which the most common theme is self-pity.  However justified by history, self-pity is not attractive or useful to the person who feels it.

However here is a poem from the anthology I read today and like.  It was written by Ed Edmo.

As I sip the last small double walled glass of vodka, I am listening to Linda Ronstadt singing ‘King of Bohemia’.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DCxZ82Cwg9I 

Hilton Head Island: home

I was going to paraphrase that to “Home is the sailor, home from the sound.” and thought to check to see who wrote it.  I had forgotten that it was Robert Louis Stevenson’s self written and chosen epitaph which I have read at his grave overlooking Apia, Samoa.

In any event I am in the condo, showered, sipping iced tea with ice in it, and enjoying air conditioning.

A fine day.  The front that caused the serious storms the past two afternoons has moved on.  I woke at 6 to find a light north wind which by 8 had turned east.  Though I was a little early for the change of currents at the mouth of Skull Creek, I needed to sail two miles west to get there and this wind was too good to waste, so I raised anchor, which again came up clean in 40’ of water, and sailed slowly over under jib alone.  I get tidal information from an app called AyeTides.  From it I have learned but do not understand that the current changes at the mouth of Skull Creek two hours before the tide does.  This morning the current changed at 10 and started flowing back into the creek while low tide wasn’t until noon.

The wind died almost completely, so I turned on the Evo about a half mile off the entrance.  I kept the jib up and it helped some from time to time.

Of the Evo I took the battery below to charge last night.  All was well until about 3 a.m. when I woke and glanced at the battery.  No lights were showing.  When charging a red light glows that turns blue when the battery is fully changed.  Also no light was on the charger itself.  When plugged in a red light is on.  I think it is broken.  Already.  Sigh.

I did not know the state of the battery until I took it out and attached it to the shaft in the morning, which I am getting good at.  Fortunately it read 95% charged.

I ran the Evo slowly, keeping our speed to around 2 knots.  Sometimes with a bit of wind it was 2.5 or 3.  I became dizzy with speed.  We reached the slip with the battery still at 86% which is quite pleasing.  However that the charger has already died is not.

These few days were not a bust.  I don’t know quite what they were.  I had some good sailing.  I enjoyed living on GANNET.  All equipment and systems functioned as they should, except the battery charger.  I obtained hydrocharging, though of limited use.   I no longer know what I want to do or even worse what I ought to do, if anything.

I will ponder that or not in a couple of hours over a martini.  Or I might just forget it all and watch the next episode of Peaky Blinders.

L’Chaim.

Hilton Head Island: an interesting day

 

I am anchored again in Port Royal Sound a mile north of where I was last night.

In the photo you are looking toward the mouth of Skull Creek two miles distant.

I woke at 6, drank orange juice, made a cup of coffee, read news online, and raised the anchor at 7.  The anchor came up clean as it usually does in the Sound.  The wind was 8 knots on the beam and we had the tide with us.  Under jib alone we sailed at 5 and 6 knots.  Sometimes tide assisted 7.  Dolphins swam with us for a while.  Another sailboat came out behind us under power and turned north.

We had anchored five sailing miles from the slip which had taken us five hours to sail.  From that point we still had nine miles to open water free of shoals.  We made that in less than two hours.  Still it is a long way from GANNET’s slip to being free of constraints.

I did not bring the Evo battery in last night to charge.

I checked and the Evo was hydrocharging, but slowly.  Only one or two percent per hour and I was sailing at an average speed of close to six knots.  At 9 am the battery was at 58%.  At 12:30 pm it was 64%.  At that rate one would have to sail for more than twenty-four hours to half recharge the battery.

Unexpectedly I found a half dozen ships anchored ahead of us.  Being free of shoals meant only that we were in 50’ of water.  

I did not think I could hydrocharge enough and I did not want to fight the outgoing tide with light north wind Friday morning, so I turned around and headed back in.  I turned about halfway between the the Yellowbrick 1200 and 1500 UTC positions.

We had good sailing on the way back although the wind gradually headed us and we ended up closehauled, heeled over too far.  I leaned back and saw that the Evo propeller was not fully in the water which reduced charging and so partially furled the jib.

My Apple watch showed a notification of a marine weather warning.  Severe thunderstorms again due in the afternoon.

As we moved up the sound, I furled the jib completely.  We were still making 5 and 6 tide assisted knots under main on port tack in 16 to 18 knots of wind.  That is until I tacked and we went instantly from 6 knots to less than 1.  I still do not understand this, but we were stalled close enough to where I wanted to be, so I decided to anchor.  Yesterday I was pleased by how quickly and smoothly I anchored.  Today I was not and the anchor and rode were fully accessible where I had left them under the forward hatch, but somehow the 20’ of chain came on deck with a knot in it which I did not see until I had already lowered the anchor off the bow.  We were in 35’ of water so the anchor was not on the bottom.  Eventually I cleared the knot in the chain and got the anchor down in choppy water with the tide holding our stern into the wind.

Anvil headed clouds formed over the land and merged.  I brought the Evo’s battery into the cabin   to charge before they hit.

Urgent weather warnings were almost constant.  Winds with gusts to 60 mph, half inch hail, lightning strikes, and possible waterspouts.

We did not have any of those.  I saw only 30 knots of winds briefly and only light wind fell on GANNET.  A graphic I saw on the Weather Channel site showed many lightning strikes on Hilton Head Island, including some close to our condo.  Carol advises me that our Nest thermostat and Schlage door lock are still online, so I conclude the condo is still there.

I expect another bouncy night.

The Evo battery is sitting beside me with a light indicating that it is being charged.  Unlike the Torqeedo the tiller arm does not connect directly to the battery so I can’t read the charge level.

I reread the owner’s manual this afternoon and find that charging is supposed to begin when a speed of 6 kilometers per hour is achieved for 4 seconds.  That is 3.24 knots.

I also read that the battery if left unattended will discharge to 60% which is stated to be optimum for long term storage.

One detail on the Evo that is very superior is the electrical connections which are metal rather than plastic as on the Torqeedo and require only a few turns.  On the Torqeedo both the tiller arm and the battery connections require many turns and are susceptible to cross threading.  I hope the morning finds the Evo battery at 100% when I attach it to the shaft.

North wind is predicated for tomorrow morning which is fine for sailing down Skull Creek.  Low water will be around noon, but I will probably head in sooner.

Port Royal Sound: not as planned

If you check the YellowBrick you will find GANNET motionless anchored in Port Royal Sound.

I left the slip at 9:40 with nine knots of wind, but it weakened as I made my way along Skull Creek and died once I was in Port Royal Sound which was brutally hot.  I had to turn the outboard on for a minute to prevent the tide carrying us backwards into a red buoy.

A little wind returned, but the tide was now against us, and behind us a black line of clouds formed.  I heard thunder and expected strong gusts and heavy rain.  Just before it reached us I lowered the sails and anchored.  Good decision.  I saw gusts of 34 knots, ten or fifteen minutes of 30+.  That line is now south of us out over the ocean and left no wind behind.  The sun is coming out.  But I have checked Storm Radar and another line is due in an hour or two, so I am staying put and will see what tomorrow brings.

I’ll probably bring the Evo battery in tonight and charge it from the ship’s batteries.

Hilton Head Island: ready

The GRIB, the Windy app, Dark Sky, and the Savannah NBC television forecaster are now pretty much in agreement that the wind will be light tomorrow morning, increase to double digits in the afternoon and be good on Thursday, reaching near 20 knots around midnight, be lighter again Friday.  Of these, I have the most confidence in LuckGrib.  So unless I find a change tomorrow morning, I will go sailing, heading offshore on a reach.  I will probably turn around sometime Thursday, but the timing is not certain.

I biked down to GANNET this morning and fit the Evo.  This was the easiest mounting on the transom yet.  The battery locked in place on my second attempt.  Turning the motor sideways so that it is parallel to the transom which reduces the distance I have to reach out makes a significant difference.

The battery shows 82% charge.  The Evo manual states that unattended the charge will drop to 70% in twenty days.  I do not know if it will continue to drop beyond twenty days.  My experience with Torqeedo batteries is that unattended they remain at 100% for months.

I also filled water containers and rearranged the interior into semi-passage mode.  Only semi because I did not tie everything down stowed on the v-berth, only the freeze dry meal bag that blocks the oval in the main bulkhead so that nothing can fall into the Great Cabin.

Although the temperature was only in the low 80sF, my modest labors resulted in profuse sweat. This place is not paradise again until probably mid-September.

As I biked home it began to rain.  To me, already saturated, the rain was refreshing.

This is a two-fold experiment.  To see if I can get the Evo to hydrocharge and to see if this kind of sailing, maybe stretched out to a few weeks, can be enough for me.  

Hilton Head Island: loss; The Awakening Land; last call; going sailing

During the night of March 23, my friend, David, put his impeccable Bristol 40, ANTARES, on a reef in Venezuelan waters.  She was a total loss.

I know those waters.  There are several groups of tiny islets off Venezuela.  Las Aves;  Los Roques.  Jill and I cruised them in 1985, serenely anchoring behind uninhabited bits of coral and sand with great snorkeling.

David’s experience was very different.  He has written of it eloquently.  I believe that most who read my journal will be interested.

https://sailingantares.me/2022/06/05/loss/

David knows he has my empathy, for what little that is worth.

As I have observed life can change in the passing of a single wave, in a single moment.  His did.  Perhaps life often does.

I wish him resolution of his loss.

I am almost finished with THE TOWN, the final volume of an outstanding trilogy by Conrad Richter, known as The Awakening Land.

Richter was born in 1890 and died in 1968.  He was a very fine writer.  I have read other books of his and was brought to this trilogy by the publisher offering the first book, THE TREES, on BookBud in the hopes that readers would then buy the next two at full price. With me they were successful.  I bought THE FIELDS and THE TOWN even before finishing the first volume.

All are set in what is now Ohio and begin when a family walks there from Pennsylvania about the time of the American Revolution.  

As I have written, growing up in a suburb of St. Louis my mind moved west.  I read about the exploration and expansion of the United States that direction, but I never much thought about the settlement of the land to the east, except along the coast.  These books have given me insight and perhaps some understanding of what those early settlers experienced and endured.  And the main character in all the books is a remarkable woman, Sayward, who was a girl when her family first moved into what was to them wilderness, and ages through the novels.  I expect THE TOWN may end with her death, but I am not quite there yet.  

I am trying to be careful with words because I know that the land and forest into which they walked were not uninhabited.  They were populated by people who had been there for hundreds and thousands of years.  With the coming of Europeans, it all changed.  Not in an instant.  But very quickly and completely.  In this case less than the life of one woman.

From my friend, Tim, comes this, which brings a smile.  I thank him.

I expect to go sailing for a few days, leaving Wednesday, to try to get the new outboard to hydrocharge.  I’ll set GANNET on a reach and go offshore for a day or two, then turn around and work my way back.  While I don’t think it will be of much interest to others, I will turn on the YellowBrick so I can view our track when I return.  It will be set to upload a position every three hours if you want to look in.

If I change my plans, I’ll let you know.

Hilton Head Island: what I am seeing now

 

Hilton Head Island: an apology to the twenty; the damned; and the thing itself

Just after 7 pm.  I am sitting on the deck.  I like being on the screened porch, but I like being out here exposed to the air and sky more.  Above is what I am looking out upon.  Not spectacular, but beautiful.  Live oaks.  Spanish moss.  Skull Creek.  An overcast sky.  The marina.  And serene and quiet.  Far better than being in any city, although those who own condos costing tens of millions of dollars overlooking Central Park would not agree. I have lived a different life. When I came out here I intended to play music, but realized for now I prefer quiet.

I am not always certain what I have shared here, so had to check to see if I had said that Carol has left.  I see that I did.  She will be back in four weeks and then on July 11 I will fly with her to Illinois and be there until around Labor Day.

A low that the media hysterically cry may become a named storm is moving over south Florida.  It will pass south of us, but leave a hole in the wind behind that the latest GRIB shows should fill in on Wednesday.  I have no desire to go out and drift, so will wait until then to go sailing.  Maybe even longer.

I owe an apology to the twenty or so who read the post I later deleted last week.  It was open to misinterpretation.  I am completely at fault.

I have heard from several of the twenty who were disturbed that it seemed a suicide note.  It was not.  

I am not opposed to suicide.  Were I a certain kind of scientist I would investigate whether there is a suicide gene.  

If I were to get a diagnosis of some cancers I would at my age not be willing to undergo severe treatment to linger a few months longer, but would if I could crawl down to GANNET and go out to sea.  I do not look Japanese, but I share their values about suicide which are of course un-Christian.  

As a side note suicide is I believe an unforgivable sin to the Catholic church, yet my grandmother was given consolation after my father’s suicide by a Catholic priest who was perhaps a better man than a church official.  

But that was not at all what I intended in that post.  I pride myself as a writer, but here, not wanting to make a suggestion of something I may never do, I failed.

Of what I might do, most of you would be pleased.  Carol will not, but then she won’t read this.  But I am still trying to reach forward.  We will see what time and chance permit.  I have outlived any imagined Ulysses and would happily die one night in my sleep.  I don’t think it will be that easy.  It must have hurt getting in here, though we do not remember, and it will likely hurt getting out.

I was looking for something to watch last evening and found trending on Netflix a 1960s semi-western, THE PROFESSIONALS, with an all star cast of Ralph Bellamy, Lee Marvin, Woody Strode, Burt Lancaster. Robert Ryan, Jack Palance. and one of Italy’s more voluptuous exports, Claudia Cardinale.

I am not going to give the plot.  This is not a great movie, but of what it wants to be it is good and to me entertaining.

In one scene Burt Lancaster says, “Well, I’ll be damned.”  And Lee Marvin relies, “Most of us are.”  Indeed.

I have been watching some of the French Open tennis.  Rafa Nadal and Novak Djokovic both have net worths of more than $200 million.  The money no longer means anything.  Yet they both want to win so much.  Ego?  The desire to make their mark on history?  To be the best ever?

I wrote a piece about Joshua Slocum returning to the love of the thing itself.

https://www.inthepresentsea.com/the_actual_site/thingitself.html

I am not sure that Rafa and the Joker are returning to the love of the thing itself, but maybe they are: seeking the pure maximum fulfillment of their abilities.

I understand that.  So am I.  Money is not the measure of all things.  

Rafa is 36.  Novak is 35.  They are getting old for their sport.

I am 80.  I am just old.

Today I went to the 100 level on my workout for the first time in a long while.

I am still trying to understand and I am still trying.

 

Hilton Head Island: a discrepancy and a quote

Carol flies back to Chicago tomorrow and I have been looking at the weather to determine when to go sailing to test the Evo’s hydrochaging.

Here is what is forecast by this morning’s GRIB for a point just off Hilton Head this coming Sunday at 0400 EDT.

Here is what is shown in the Windy app for Sunday at the same time.

Presumably clarification will come with time.

From my friend Jay, who will sail his Olsen 34, SHOE STRING, tomorrow evening for the first time in more than a year after a dismasting necessitating a complicated recovery for which I commend him, comes this quote for which I thank him.

"There are very few accomplishments of any value that can be gained without practice, and that which takes the least time to learn is usually the least valuable when learned." -The Eagle Bicycle Co. catalog 1890 

Hilton Head Island: validation; racial purity

A few evenings ago I uploaded a post that I woke in the middle of the night and deleted.  Only about twenty of you ever saw it.

I’ve reread it and this is what is left.

After sunset here.

I am siting by the bedroom window, listening to music on headphones—at the moment Ismael Lo singing Samayaya.

Carol is asleep near me.

As I have been writing the light has faded from the sky which is now dark, broken only by a few lights in the marina.

In early October 1976 I sailed EGREGIOUS into San Diego Harbor,  I do not know the exact date and it does not matter.

I sailed to what what was then the Police Dock at the end of Shelter Island.  I remember waiting until they brought an unhappy German Shepherd on board who made his way uncomfortably down and later up EGREGIOUS’s wet steep companionway ladder.  The crack in the hull, repaired in New Zealand, had opened again on the final mostly upwind passage from Tahiti to San Diego.

I do not recall how I moved from the police dock to Suzanne and my grandmother in Mission Beach.  I think I sailed EGREGIOUS to an anchorage in the bay, but I have no memory of making my way ashore.  Obviously I did.  And obviously I sailed the engineless EGREGIOUS every inch of the way.

What is significant is that I had just set a world record and I told no one. 

I did not need validation from anyone else.  

I needed only to prove myself to me.

I never notified Guinness.  

I did write about the voyage and ultimately Guinness contacted me through a  man named Nobby Clarke and so I was in the book for a few years.

I have considered paying someone to write a Wikipedia page about me.

I could write it myself far better than any hack, but there are Wikipedia protocols that I don’t want to deal with.

But in the same way I did not notify Guinness, I do not need validation from Wikipedia. 

If no one ever thinks enough of me to write such a page, so be it.

“The commonwealth is greater than any individual in it.  Hence the rights of society over the life, the reproduction, the behavior and the traits of the individuals that compose it are limitless, and society may take life, may sterilize, may segregate so at to prevent marriage, may restrict liberty in a hundred ways.”

The words are not from Nazi Germany, but from Professor Charles Davenport, who taught at both Harvard and the University of Chicago early last century.  He was the chief proponent of eugenics which sought to improve the species by among other tactics forced sterilization.  

In 1907 Indiana became the first state to pass an eugenic sterilization law.  By 1935, not long before I was born and when Hitler was expressing identical views, thirty of the then forty-eight states had such laws.

By the 1970s when most of the laws had been repealed or were no longer being enforced, between 40,000 and 70,000 involuntary sterilizations had taken place.

I did not know any of this until yesterday when I read a chapter on Charles Davenport in VILLAINS, SCOUNDRELS, AND ROGUES by Paul Martin, a National Geographic editor.

Davenport’s writings were quoted by the defense at the Nuremberg trail of Nazi war criminals in 1946.