Hilton Head Island: sex change; delayed; cost/benefit ratio; number of religions; the restaurant on the top of the world

I had a sex change yesterday.  Relatively painless.  Requiring only an hour at the DMV office to which Carol drove us.  She insisted on my getting my I.D. card corrected.  Killjoy.  I really would have liked to see if anyone ever noted the ‘F’ for female.  However I am again designed M.  Presumably for male, but maybe for mundane.

Later yesterday I received a telephone call from the surgeon’s receptionist stating that he has been taken ill, so I will not be repaired until June 7 at the earliest.  This is a serious disappointment.  I want to get this done and my life back.  Permit me a long sigh.

In CONQUERORS I read that Vasco da Gama’s first voyage to India resulted in a profit of sixty times its cost.  I also read that in the seven years from that first voyage in 1497 to 1504, of the 5,500 men who sailed to India, 1,800 died before returning to Portugal.  That is a death rate of 33%.

This morning In A LITTLE GAELIC KINGDOM I read of the Peacockes (sic), a family that ran a hotel carrying the family name for several generations in Connemara.  The Peacockes were Protestant in that overwhelmingly Catholic region.  I quote:  When a new Catholic Bishop came out from Galway to test.the local children’s preparedness for confirmation and asked ‘How many religions are there?’, he was puzzled by the answer he got:  ‘Two.  Our religion and the peacocks.’

I thank Larry for this link to ‘climbing’ Everest the not so hard way.  Yesterday was the 71st anniversary of when Hillary and Tenzing reached the summit after a somewhat different experience.

https://dnyuz.com/2024/05/25/spa-sushi-posh-digs-the-bougiest-way-to-climb-everest/

The logical progression is obvious.  Soon an entrepreneur will build a helipad 100’/30 meters below the summit.  If you can helicopter to base camp and avoid weeks of dreary walking—and walking is so last century, why not fly near the summit and avoid all that tedious climbing too?  Not to mention having to stand in line.  Having deplaned, the wealthy ‘climber’ would have access to an escalator to carry him the final few feet to the summit where there will be a revolving restaurant where he can enjoy the view, dine in style and sip champagne while taking a selfie to celebrate his ‘conquering’ Everest.

Hilton Head Island: sex on the deck; ship’s weasel; unleaked; repair

Calm down.  Not me and Carol,  Anoles, of which I have written here before.  Very small gecko-like lizards.

The weather in the marsh has been similar to South Florida for the past few days.  Sunny mornings; thunderstorms in the afternoons.  Requiring me to cover and uncover our deck furniture and bring in cushions from the chairs on the porch.

Yesterday morning was again sunny and with a ten knot breeze quite pleasant on the deck, so I took my uncooked oatmeal out there.  I found the corner in front of our deck chairs already occupied by a brownish female anole.  How I know she was female will soon be revealed.

She was motionless to the point I wondered if she were dead, until I saw slight movement of her head.

In a few minutes she was joined by a second anole.  This one slightly larger than she and bright green.  He moved to within about two anole lengths of her and after a while raised his head and puffed up his throat like an orange ballon.  Ballon deflated.  Then soon repeatedly inflated and deflated.  Clearly a mating ritual designed to impress.  Whether the female was I am uncertain.

After this went on for a while, he made his move circuitously, slithering to the metal deck railing, climbing up and then along it until he was a few inches above and beside her.  Then a dash, resulting in an equally quick dash by her over the edge of the deck, following by him in what could only be considered hot pursuit.

I assumed that was all I would ever know of this lascivity, but after a few minutes he climbed back onto the deck and stopped.  Perhaps in satiated rest.  Perhaps in disappointment.  A few seconds later her head appeared above the edge of the deck and she gazed at him coyly.  And then a bird flew overhead and they both vanished down the side of the building.

I knew that in the days of sail ships often carried cats on board to reduce the rat population, but in THE CONQUERORS, which is about the unparalleled thirty year explosion of the Portuguese maritime empire beginning with the voyage of Vasco da Gama and which I am now reading, I have learned that they also sometimes carried weasels for the same purpose.  The idea of a ship’s weasel appeals to me, though I don’t expect to share GANNET with one.  Or a rat.

Carol and I walked to GANNET yesterday before it got too hot and I went down below, plugged in a fan, closed up the cabin, and Carol extensively hosed down the deck over the port pipe berth where I have frequently been finding a puddle of water after rain.  I searched for drips and found none, re-enforcing my belief that there is no leak and that the water is coming in from the port side of the closed main hatch.  With the way I have gear stowed when GANNET is at dock she heels slightly to port.

I am scheduled to be repaired Friday.  However I had become tired of being inactive and so cautiously resumed my workouts last Friday.  I did not feel even a twinge and have continued to work out, both my standard and weight workouts.  I might as well build some muscle while I can because I expect that after the surgery I won’t be able to for a while.

Hilton Head Island: downsizing; bored teen-agers; Slackport; last words

 

I have downsized to a GANNET size computer.  You see it above, an 11” M4 iPad Pro next to my 13” MacBook Air.

There are several changes to this new design.  The M4 chip is Apple’s most powerful, far more than needed by almost all of us, including me.  So much so that the Ars Technica review of the new iPad Pros is headed ‘Well, Now You Are Just Showing Off’ addressed to Apple.  The new iPad Pros have a new display said by reviewers to be the best display on any consumer device and it is indeed impressive.  The new Pros are incredibly thin and light, which is important to me.  And I was most tempted by the new keyboard accessory described as exceptional by all the reviews I read.  My main computer was once a 12” MacBook with which I was quite happy and I thought if I could type comfortably on that and if this keyboard is as good as claimed, I can type on it.  It is and I can.

I have had the new iPad since Tuesday and am writing this post on it, as I have the past two.  It is also serving as my e-reader, so is replacing two devices—a 12.9” iPad Pro and an iPad mini.  There are a few activities I cannot perform on iPads, so I still have the Air, but now this small device is my main computer.

Setting up the new iPad and transferring data from the old 12.9” iPad Pro took a while.  In doing so I was pleased that all my iSailor charts transferred.  None of my iNavX charts did.  I do not know what iNavX’s current policy is, but the last time I checked they still permitted only two downloads per purchase and you had to buy a different set of charts for iPad and iPhone.  I deleted iNavX from the new device and decided to add to my charts in iSailor. I now have complete coverage of the Southern Hemisphere—make of that what you will—on four devices:  iPad Pro 12.9”; iPad mini; iPhone 12 Pro; and 11” iPad Pro.   Unless war breaks out and nations destroy one another’s GPS satellites, that should be enough, and if they do I have a sextant and know how to use it.

I accept the hazards of sailing small boats across oceans alone, but bored teen-agers ought not to be among them.  Good grief!  

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2024/05/24/killer-whales-attacking-sinking-boats-are-bored-scientists-say/73558157007/

This morning I finished THE LAST POOL OF DARKNESS, The second volume in Tim Robinson’s wonderful Connemara trilogy.  I will start the third, A LITTLE GAELIC KINGDOM, tomorrow, and have already ordered his two books about the Aran Islands.  His writing and his books are a very great pleasure.

In the final chapter he offers the possible source of the name of Slackport.  “The local origin myth is that some sailors came ashore here once and enquired for the pub; when they learned it is five miles away in Ballyconneely they said, “Well, this is a very slack port!’

And the last words in the book are:  ‘two hints that it is time to throw my book away, a paper boat adrift on the unknown waters of other people’s minds, unballasted with summation or conclusion.’

Hilton Head Island: two poems by Richard Murphy and one by me

This morning I read several poems by the Irish poet Richard Murphy whom I mentioned yesterday.

Some of the facts about his life are difficult to discover.  He was born in 1927 and died in 2018.  He was married at least once.  Possibly twice but I am not certain.  He had two children.  ‘Grounds’ is about his first and perhaps only divorce.

‘

Here is a poem I wrote about one of my divorces,

Galway Hookers are not my kind of boat, but I like the poem and believe some of you will too.

Hilton Head Island: confused; surviving the perfect storm; the purpose of writing

I am confused.

By chance yesterday afternoon I discovered that my official South Carolina I.D. card lists my sex as “F’.  I accept life’s uncertainties, but I never expected to turn into an ugly old woman with a mustache.

The ID card is good for eight years which is probably longer than I am.

We may go back to the DMV office in Bluffton and sort out what I hope is a clerical error, but I am inclined not to.  The printing on the card is small and I doubt anyone will ever check beyond name, photo, and perhaps signature.  The card has already been twice accepted as identification.  Conducting the experiment is tempting.

Sunday Carol noticed that the film, THE PERFECT STORM, was being telecast, so we watched.  We had both seen the film before and I have read the book.

You may recall that in addition to the fishing vessel that is the primary focus, the film and book both follow a sailboat also caught in the storm.  The boat was a Westsail 32.  A sister ship is shown in the film.  On board were the owner of unknown experience and two women without any sailing experience heading from New England to Bermuda.  Why they were trying to do so in October I do not know.  I would have waited until later in the year.

When they encountered the storm, the inexperienced women panicked and one of them got on the radio and sent out a distress call to which the Coast Guard responded.  Once the Coast Guard is present they have the power to order everyone off a vessel, which they did.  The women went gladly.   The owner wanted to stay with his boat but was not permitted to.

What is not mentioned in the film is that his boat survived, eventually being blown onto the New Jersey shore.

In THE LAST POOL OF DARKNESS Tim Robinson introduced me to the Irish poet, Richard Murphy, of whom regrettably I had not known.  Murphy liked to sail and lived alone for several years on High Island just off the Connemara coast.  I have bought a kindle edition of his collected works, THE PLEASURE GROUND:  POEMS 1952-2012.  After finishing with Wilfred Owen I began it and thus far have enjoyed and been impressed by the poems.

I also very much like the epigraph at the beginning from Samuel Johnson: 

The only end of writing is to enable readers to better enjoy life, or better to endure it.

 

Hilton Head Island: hurricane preparation month and worlds visited

If you live on this coast you probably already know that May is hurricane preparation month.  The National Hurricane Center site states that the Atlantic Hurricane Season runs from June 1 to November 30.  Hurricanes that appear outside those dates are heavily fined.

This season will be different because Carol is here.  In the past I had no way to evacuate myself and no intention of doing so no matter what storm was approaching.  There is a number to call for those without transportation, but spending days living in a high school gymnasium with several hundred of my closest friends has slight appeal.  Assuming I survived the storm’s passing, I was provisioned and prepared to be self-sustaining for at least two months.  Now evacuation is possible.  If an evacuation order is issued, I would want Carol to evacuate, but it is unlikely I would go with her.  As some of you know I have been in hurricane force winds at sea at least eight times.  I have never been in such winds on land.  GANNET has, surviving on the hard Irma that hit the Florida Keys in 2017.  Our condo is on the landward side of the island and less exposed than waterfront property facing the ocean.  The problem is rapid intensification, such as that of the storm which struck Acapulco last year, strengthening from a tropical storm to a Category 5 in a few hours.

I am not at this instant fully provisioned, but I soon will be.  Oatmeal, trail mix, powered milk all last and are eaten after the season ends and I still have two months of freeze dry meals.

I expect that what I will do will be decided at the time.

I remain on hold.  Tomorrow I have a preliminary appointment with the surgeon.  Not wanting to risk making the hernia worse I have not been working out and I am restless.  I will be very glad to be repaired.

What I have been doing is reading even more than usual.

Each month I visit the Second French Empire through a novel of Emile Zola.  This month’s was the seventh in his Rougon—Macquart series, L’ASSOMMOIR, sometimes translated as THE DRAM SHOP, a vivid depiction of the decline through alcohol to destitution, madness and death.  It was the novel that made Zola famous and is enough to cause one to stop drinking, which I did.  For two days.  As you may recall this was not a hardship because for several months Carol and I have refrained from drinking on Tuesdays and Wednesdays.  By Thursday I had recovered sufficiently from reading the novel to have a martini.  Or two.

Also each month I visit Nineteenth Century Brazil through the short stories of Machado de Assis.  I have a kindle edition of his complete short stories.  He published seven volumes of them and I read one volume a month.  Three more to go.

At present each morning I visit China of the Tang period, 618-907 A.D., though its poems, the trenches of the Western Front of the First World War though the devastating poems of Wilfred Owen, and the Connemara, Ireland of Tim Robinson.  And I am also at present with Theodore Roosevelt in the South Dakota badlands recovering from the almost simultaneous deaths of his mother and his young wife.

Today is a lovely day in the marsh, after a front passed through yesterday.  Sunny, 76F/24C, with a moderate breeze.  Carol and I will have drinks on the deck.  I will raise my glass to words.

Hilton Head Island: evening

I am sitting again by our bedroom window looking out at Skull Creek and the sun lowering over Pickney Island.  A small glass of Plymouth gin is on the teak table before me.  ‘Seven Days Waiting’ by Ludovico Einaudi on my AirPod Pros so I won’t disturb Carol who is nearby sneezing.

We were away for three days, visiting Carol’s family and an old friend of mine.  All good people, but I am so glad to be back in the marsh, in my own space and beauty.

I am at peace.  How rare.  How welcome.

I am on schedule.  Two and a half years before I go beyond the edge again if time and chance do not destroy or weaken me too much before then.

I have written that the secret to my success, such as it has been, is that I do so little.  So I am planning years in advance.  Yet, immodestly, doing so little, I have accomplished a lot, at sea, with words, and with lust and love.

It is good.  I am old and I am still doing what I ought to do and enjoying beauty and Carol’s love.  I started to say ‘along the way’, but that is wrong.  The beauty and Carol’s love are ends in themselves.

If you know much of my life—and it is there in words and videos—you know I have known great joy and great despair.  The despair has often almost killed me.  The joy prevails.

So I lift my almost empty glass, which I will refill, to life and to you if you have been here a while.  I don’t often check numbers of readers, and I will do what I believe I ought to do even if no one else ever knows, but as I have written and understand, every work of art is an attempt at communication, and I am glad that at least of few of you are there for me to communicate to.

Hilton Head Island: grounded; the old Ulysses; amnesiac

 

The sun is setting behind Pickney Island after a glorious day in the marsh.

The front that passed yesterday left drier and cooler air behind.

Carol and I walked a couple of miles beside Port Royal Sound and saw dolphins and a bald eagle, a big and impressive bird and the first I have seen on the island.

I biked down to GANNET in mid-afternoon.  Carol is driving us to North Carolina tomorrow for a few days to visit her family and I wanted to see if much rain had made its way below.  It had not. 

I enjoyed being on the little boat.  I want—I need—to go sailing, but that is not going to happen soon.  I hesitated before writing in the last entry about my hernia.  Unlike many, particularly the young who think that they must share everything in order to obtain illusory validity from others, I don’t have any desire to share everything.  I make a determined effort that what I write is as true as I can write, but I know truths I do not share, and I only wrote about the hernia because I have not sailed for months and legitimately some might start to wonder if the old man has given up.  I have not.  I can hardly express how much I wish I were at this moment hundreds of miles offshore.

If I remember correctly Tennyson wrote his ‘Ulysses’ when he was young.  It is a great poem and a great feat of imagination.  He captured an aged spirt that accepted he was not what once he was but could still strive.

Here is the end of the poem.

I suggest that even Tennyson never imagined a Ulysses in his 80s. 

And here is a photo I saw this morning of those who have paid $50,000 to $100,000 to stand in line to summit Everest.  Think what you will.  For myself I do not like to stand in lines.

Tim Robinson wrote:  Time is the great amnesiac.

I have written that life is redeemed by moments of joy.

Seek those moments.

L’Chaim

Hilton Head Island : hors de combat or the perils of moving

A dark and stormy night morning in the marsh.  Rain, lightning, thunder, and a tornado watch.

Carol and I have been solving problems sequentially as is our custom.  All of the stuff we brought with us has been stowed and we have been dealing with bureaucracies Federal and state, but this has caused me to neglect GANNET now for more than two months.  I had planned to spend more time with her next week, but that is not going to happen.  During the move from Carol’s apartment I did some heavy and awkward lifting which as I learned yesterday has resulted in a hernia that will require surgical repair.  I do not yet know when this will be done and it may even not require hospitalization.  The hernia itself is not painful, but left untreated could become worse which might be unpleasant at sea a month or two away from medical care.

Also yesterday we officially became South Carolinians.  

Carol drove us to the SCDMV office in Bluffton where she got a South Carolina driver’s license and I got an I.D. card and we both registered to vote.  

One man, one vote sounds good, but it doesn’t actually work that way.  Under our vestigial and absurd Electoral College system our votes will be as meaningless in South Carolina as they would have been in Illinois.  South Carolina’s delegates to the so-called college will vote for the Republican candidate.  Illinois’s for the Democratic.  And the election will be decided elsewhere with the winner possibly being the man with the fewer votes cast by the public nationwide. 

We’ll vote anyway.

Hilton Head Island: HENNING;; GANNET; the hard road

 

Above is HENNING, a 10’ Bahamian dinghy a year or two older than I.  She is the latest addition to Kent and Audrey’s ever expanding Armada.  At least I think she is the latest addition.  It is hard to keep up.

Kent and Audrey have diligently removed her aged paint and fiberglass sheathing and wanted to see how the wood would swell, so they launched her in the kiddie pool.

I thank them for permission to share the photos and  look forward to seeing HENNING under sail on longer voyages.

You can follow further at:

http://smallboatrestoration.blogspot.com/

I have been down to GANNET several times since our return to the marsh.  I found her in good condition.  Not even any bird droppings on the deck, although there was water on the port pipe berth.  I have noted this before and hope it is coming in around the closed companionway during rain storms, but cannot be certain.

The little boat needs some cosmetic work and anti-fouling.  I have delayed the latter by paying a diver to clean the bottom from time to time.

We are still settling in after this final move to the condo and taking up sequentially the many tasks of establishing ourselves as permanent South Carolinians.  Carol is proving that retiring is hard work.  So I’m not going to.  

Thus far the bamboo plant is doing well.

From 300 TANG POEMS: