Skull Creek: 9º

        Our clear blue sky has been replaced  by clouds which have brought with them temperatures 9ºF/5ºC warmer.  45º in the Great Cabin when I woke this morning and this afternoon temperature in the mid-50s rather than the mid-40s.  A surprisingly dramatic difference and reduction of discomfort.

        I oiled the interior wood this morning, went ashore, biked to a supermarket that I thought had Medjool dates and dried figs.  It didn’t.   I’ve looked at the other two supermarkets I can bike to without success.  I may look again.  I also still would like to buy a 12 pack of Heineken which I could not carry back today.

        In passing, permit me to say how much I like to bike ride on the paths and trails here.  It is simply an old man having fun.

        I came back to GANNET and touched up the deck paint and stowed a few things.

        I am through with the deck, which is not a good job, but will pass my standard of being viewed a boat length away.  I would like to put a second coat of oil on the interior wood, which I expect to do tomorrow morning if it is not raining.  Once the wood is oiled, I need to get off the boat to let it dry.

        GANNET and I presently smell of paint, Deks Olje, and turpentine.  Not quite a breath of the open ocean. 

        I also would like to scrub the Raptor non-skid pads.

        David emailed me with the observation that from the GRIBs Monday would be a good day to depart,  He is absolutely right, but I won’t be ready to leave.  GANNET will only have been back in the water a week on Tuesday.  A package I expected to be delivered today is now shown for delivery Tuesday.  It is not essential and I could leave without it, but as many of you will know I like to prepare for passages in a measured manner.  I never do anything at the last minute.  And I like once preparations are complete to sit and look around and consider.

        So I won’t depart Monday.  And I will hope that a month of strong south winds does not develop.

Skull Creek: this can't go on

        6:30 PM.  Total darkness outside.  The sun set an hour ago.  

        GANNET has refrigeration.  Naturally.  35º last night.  My morning orange juice was nicely chilled, as is the Plymouth gin presently beside me.

        Yesterday at Walmart I saw gloves that claimed to be useable with touch screens.  They only cost $14 and were warm enough, so I bought them.  This morning to my surprise I discovered that they do work with touch screens, so with sleeping bag as lap robe, my heaviest Polartec, and gloves, I was reasonably comfortable.

        This afternoon saw temperatures in the high 40sF/8C. The label on the can of Interdeck gives drying times down to 40ºF/4.4C, so I painted the areas between the Raptor non-skid pads.  While the total area is not great, curves and edges slowed me and it took two hours instead of the one I anticipated.  Naturally after I cleaned up, I noticed spots I missed.  I will paint them tomorrow.

        What cannot go on is the chaos inside GANNET, and now that I’ve painted the deck, it won’t more than another day or two.

        Long time readers know that the little boat’s interior has two modes:  harbor and passage.  In harbor I sleep on the v-berth.  In passage waterproof and duffle and trash bags live on the v-berth and I sleep on a pipe berth.

        At present the interior is in between.  I can’t stow everything until after painting the deck and oiling the interior wood because the paint and Deks Olje cans are stowed beneath the v-berth and unreachable once bags are on top,  Deck painted, I’ll oil the wood tomorrow and soon go to passage mode and get everything organized.

        GANNET’s interior is showing the wear of 25,000 miles, many of which saw water below deck.  When I can I will remove everything and repaint the interior, which hasn’t been done since just after I bought the little boat now almost eight years ago,  I am considering painted the interior wood white, which would make the interior brighter,  If I do, I will need a power sander to remove the Deks Olje.  I have a voyage to compete first,

        I still have a few things to be delivered, including the replacement, replacement halyard shackle and protein powder, but I only need one more bike trip to a supermarket to complete provisioning.  The remaining things on the list are beer, chocolate, dried fruit.  I already have some dried fruit, but would like to get dates and figs.

        We may have rain tomorrow and likely will on Sunday.

        GANNET will be ready to sail by Tuesday at the latest.  I will then be looking for a favorable GRIB.

Skull Creek: Tibetan wisdom

        I bicycled eleven miles today and walked four, all just going about my business.  I am not even weary.  The great thing about muscles is that when used they strengthen quickly even in old bodies,

        I was walking out the pier to the marina just before sunset with beautiful slanting light on Skull Creek and spartina.

        Part of my biking was to a supermarket where I bought more provisions and to a nearby liquor store where I bought a bottle of Plymouth gin, a crystal glass of which is to my left, and a bottle of Laphroaig, which will soon be opened.  Boxed red wine last evening was not satisfactory.

        I stowed and rearranged.  I removed the Torqeedo from the stern and charged its battery, which was only down to 94%.  I ordered another halyard shackle, which Jay suggests will as soon as it is fitted result in the discovery of the first one.  Jay has also suggested that I solicit any information or contacts that any of you have that might ease GANNET’s way across Panama, which I hereby do.  An email address for me can be found on the main site.

        A cold north wind blew today.  I wish for it to be blowing when I am ready to depart.

        I have started downloading GRIBs in LuckGrib.  The iPad version differs from the Mac version and has useful tutorials built in.  As with most apps, I prefer the iPad version.

        Here is a screen shot of a GRIB from a couple of days ago.

        My route will be from Hilton Head Island outside the Bahamas through the Windward Passage at the east end of Cuba and then to Panama.  Trade winds from the Windward Passage on.

        I find it satisfying that the completion of this voyage can be seen in this GRIB.  I am increasingly inclined to sail from Panama directly to San Diego.  The final stretch hard on the wind should be less than a thousand miles.  It may not all be strong wind.  I will try to find an angle against it that is not too hard on a little boat and an old sailor.  And there is the possibility in winter of a low that will bring south wind.

  The next two days and nights here are due to be cool.  Highs in the 40sF, lows in the 30sF.  I have a good sleeping bag, actually part of a three part system with another sleeping bag and a water resistant cover that can all be zipped together, a gift from Tom Head, so I will be fine,  Until I reread the article I wrote about sailing up here a year ago, I had forgotten that the night I reached Hilton Head and anchored in Port Royal Sound the temperature was 38º.  And I do have that upopened bottle of Laphroaig,

I thank Roger for this, with which I fully agree and try to live.

Skull Creek: from Central

        7:30 PM.  I am happily sitting at Central despite having nothing better to drink than boxed red wine.  Somehow I left GANNET spiritless, a catastrophic deficiency I will rectify tomorrow.  It is wonderful to be here.  To be sitting precisely at sea level.  To have water beneath me, not land.

        When I walked down to the tiny boat yard at 9 AM I found GANNET already gone.  I saw her in the travel lift at the far end of the pier just about to be lowered into the water.  I made it there in time to see her smooth clean white bottom.  Compare with the photos posted last Thursday.

        The yard workers turned GANNET around so her bow was pointing out and asked if I wanted to tie up.  I pushed the button on the Torqeedo which started, bless its electronic heart, said “No.”  One of the men pushed the bow away from the dock and we whirred back to our slip.

        The difference between the way GANNET moved through the water returning with a clean  bottom from when we moved toward the haul out last week was dramatic.

        Once we were in the slip, I hosed down the deck which was littered with leaves, and then went below and just sat at Central for a few minutes, glad to be home.

        Then I found a dock cart and became a beast of burden.  Two trips to the condo and back, followed by a few hours sorting and stowing.

        I had bought replacements for all five of the Blue Performance cockpit sheet bags, however Blue Performance has slightly redesigned them so that the attachment loops don’t reach the hooks that the old ones did,  After futile efforts to make them stretch, I ended up tying loops of Dyneema into the lower loops of the bags.  They are in place.  Whether this will withstand the sea is not yet known.

        Not everything is yet properly stowed and there are still two bags of freeze dry meals at the condo and perhaps the new halyard shackle,  I recall thinking that it might get lost, but what I did with it I do not know,  So far I haven’t found it.  I’ll check the condo tomorrow.  It is only a $30 item and I may order another,

        I inventoried my oatmeal, powered milk, and lunches.  Other than buying Laughing Cow cheese and crackers, I’m set, as of course I am for dinners.  I need more Starbucks instant coffee, dried fruit, Cheese-Its, chocolate, cookies, paper towels, and, of course, spirits, but I am already more than 90% provisioned,

        I was listening to music before I began writing and will again after I post this.  At present almost perfect silence broken only slightly by the sound of a distant halyard against a mast and GANNET’s fenders softly nudging the dock from time to time.

Hilton Head Island: some of us are

        I walked down to the tiny boat yard this morning at 9:00 and found it locked and deserted.  I called the office and learned that they plan to put GANNET back in the water tomorrow morning.  Work was supposed to resume on the condo today.  That didn’t happen either.  So I biked to Walmart and bought some provisions and read on the screened porch this afternoon, which was quite pleasant.

        I have been meaning for a while to write about a chance circle of friendship and admiration brought about by the Internet, which does some unanticipated evil, but makes possible some previously impossible good.

        I may have some of these details wrong, but the broad stokes are right,

        Go back roughly thirty years and Michael, who would then have been about thirty years old, is living on a 20’ Flicka in Santa Cruz, California. He reads STORM PASSAGE and admires it.

        I don’t know that the book was in any way an inspiration to him, but a few years later, he and his wife, Layne, and two big dogs, a Labrador and a Husky, cruise south from California on a 34’ Gemini catamaran, whose lack of heeling was in consideration of the dogs, to Panama and then to the Florida Keys, where they settle and Michael becomes a 911 dispatcher for the Key West Police Department.

        Jump forward to 2016 and I get an email from Michael who must have known of my website for it came via the email link found there.  I just searched and found it and am smiling that it was addressed to ‘Mr. Chiles’, which demonstrates good manners but between us has long been too formal.

        We corresponded and when GANNET and I reached the Keys in 2017, we met and have become friends.  I have also met Layne and Rusty, the current dog in his life,

        Just over four months ago, Michael was crunched.  I define his life as BC and AC:  Before Crunch and After.  He was riding his motor scooter to work when a driver suddenly pulled onto Highway One directly in front of him, causing him to fly through the air and land a broken heap.  When I recently read Faulkner’s AS I LAY DYING, I thought that is what Michael must have been thinking as he lay there.  That he didn’t die was in large part because a Sheriff’s helicopter soon reached him and transported him a hundred miles north to a major Miami hospital.  Before that happened, Michael took a self-portrait of what he thought might be the very last image of himself—‘selfie’ is too shallow a word for this—and a woman, a stranger, came and held his hand.  Later, again through the Internet, they connected,

        Now you may believe that everything happens with a purpose,  I will never dispute your belief, but I do not share it.  As I have often written, I believe that time and chance happens to us all, and that Michael was crunched by time and chance.

        Michael is a fine photographer and writer who has chronicled his life in the Keys for many years in his Key West Diary and on Instagram,  I think he also has a Facebook account, but then no one is perfect.

        He has written and photographed his recovery, which is not yet complete, extraordinarily well.

        He has likened it to a rebirth, from initially being as immobile and helpless as an infant to now being able to walk with a walker and sometimes even achieving tripod status with a cane, and being able to work half shifts.

        The top photo shows him as tripod.  I trust that soon he will again be a biped.

        These x-rays show the pins and screws used to bind him together.

I wonder what will happen when he passes through airport security.

        When he first arrived at the Miami hospital, they stabilized his internal bleeding, and then the doctors must have spent considerable time figuring out how to put the shattered jigsaw puzzle he had become back together.

        Throughout all of this terrible ordeal, Michael has acted with courage, dignity, and cheerfulness.  If you go back through his sites, you will see a lot of smiles.  I cannot imagine that in those helpless nights in a hospital bed there were not dark thoughts.  If so, Michael has absorbed them and kept them to himself.  In neither his public postings nor in our personal correspondence have I ever seen a trace of “Why me?”

        Unfortunately Michael is not the only of my friends to be facing adversity with grace and courage.  I will name Patrick and Louise.  I know of others but not well enough to invade their privacy.

        Some time in the next few months I am going to be cold and wet and suffering and perhaps at mortal risk.  Of the mortal risk, I am old far beyond expectation or even belief.  I am a self-propelled machine.  I don’t fully understand that.  But when in coming months I am suffering a little, I am going to think:  You chose your fate.  Michael and Louise and Patrick and others did not.  So get on with it old man.

        There is a cliche that all of us are in this together.  That is not true.  But some of us are.

Hilton Head Island: Limbo

        There is beauty here.

        The two sides of Hilton Head Island are very different.

        The ocean side has the sound and smell and sight of the open ocean and a beautiful wide white sand beach ten miles/sixteen kilometers long, half to a third of which on the water side is hard packed and excellent for walking and biking.  It also has a lot of people.  Tourists naturally gravitate to the ocean.

        The land side is quieter, has different species of birds, wading blue herons and egrets—this afternoon I watched a small woodpecker attack an oak tree just beyond our terrace—fewer cars, and often beautiful sunsets.  I enjoy watching the dying light change on trees, Spanish Moss, and water.  It also has great bike trails.  I pumped up my bike’s tires, lubricated various moving parts, and rode a few miles this morning.  And, for me, close proximity to GANNET.

        I am presently in limbo.  

        Most of my life is on the little boat in the travel lift a few hundred yards/meters away.  At the moment nothing has a proper place or focus.  I had to put on a spare pair of eyeglasses this morning to find my usual eyeglasses.  That will change when GANNET goes back in the water, hopefully tomorrow.

        I have organized and packed my freeze dry meals into three doubled bags of 34 meals each.  

        Sailing the world in small boats makes one an expert in odd subjects, among them trash bags.  

        South Africa has a world class brand that claims, almost legitimately, to be ‘as strong as steel.’  I still have some on GANNET.

        But I found no name ‘leaf  bags’ at Walmart that are huge and strong.  A roll of 30  cost $9.95.  My freeze dry food is in them.

        The last light has vanished as I have been writing.  Black night beyond the terrace  broken only be a few white lights in the marina and a green flashing light on an Intracoastal Waterway marker.

Hilton Head Island: VICE; removed; books read; freeze dry food bought

        Predicted rain fell all yesterday afternoon, so we went to a movie theater and watched VICE.  Regardless of one’s political views, Christian Bale’s portrayal of former Vice President Dick Cheney is extraordinary.

————

        Today is sunny and cool.

        We walked on the beach before checking out of our hotel, then drove over to the condo, swinging past the locked boat yard, where GANNET is still in the travel lift slings.  However, the tape at her waterline has been removed which leads me to believe that they have finished painting and she will go into the water Monday.  Three premature cheers.

————

        Here is the list of books I read from July through December:

A NARRATIVE OF THE CAPTIVITY AND RESTORATION OF MRS. MARY ROWLANDSON   Mary Rolandson

THE OLD MAN AND THE SEA   Ernest Hemingway

CHESAPEAKE   James Michener

CANNERY ROW   John Steinbeck

SEVEN BRIEF LESSONS ON PHYSICS   Carlo Rovelli

D DAY THROUGH GERMAN EYES   Holger Eckhertz

D DAY THROUGH GERMAN EYES BOOK 2   Holger Eckhertz

ARMOR AND BLOOD   Dennis Showalter

GENESIS   Eduardo Galeano

ANNA KARENINA   Leo Tolstoy 

THE WIND IN THE WILLOWS   Kenneth Grahame

MADAME BOVARY   Gustave Flaubert

CHESAPEAKE OYSTERS   Kate Levie

THE GUERNSEY LITERARY AND POTATO PEEL PIE SOCIETY Mary Ann Shaffer, Annie    

               Barrows

WHAT WE BECOME  Arturo Perez-Reverte

FIRE   Sebastian Junger

THE FIRE AT MORNING   Scott Ridley

UNDER FIRE  Henri Barbusse

STORM OF STEEL  Ernst Junger

AT FREDDIE’S   Penelope Fitzgerald

TELL THEM OF BATTLES, KINGS & ELEPHANTS   Mathias Enard

EUROPE CENTRAL   William T. Vollmann

A TOMB FOR BORIS DAVIDOVICH   Danilo Kiš

THE STORY OF MY ESCAPE   Giacomo Casanova

SUGAR MONEY   Jane Harris
AS I LAY DYING   William Faulkner

————

        A friend asked what freeze dry meals I bought and which are my favorites:

        Here is what I bought.  The order is how Amazon shipped them to me.  I’ve put an asterisk by my favorites, though most of my favorites are New Zealand’s Backcountry Cuisine, which I can’t buy in the US.  Several of these I have not tried and so am taking on spec.  If they are terrible, I probably have enough others so I won’t have to eat them except in emergency.  I have indicated those with #

MH = Mountain House

MH Beef Stew *

MH Italian Style Pepper Steak with Rice #

MH Chicken with Dumplings #

Backpackers Pantry Potatoes with Gravy and Beef #

MH Sweet and Sour Pork

MH Chicken Breast with Rib Meat and Mashed Potatoes #

MH Rice and Chicken *

MH Beef Stronganoff with Noodles

MH Spaghetti with Meat Sauce

Backpackers Pantry Louisiana Red Beans and Rice *

Backpackers Pantry Sante Fe Style Rice with Chicken *

MH Pasta Primavera 

MH Chicken Fried Rice #

MH Chicken Stew *

Alpine Aire Leonardo da Fettuccine *

Alpine Aire Three Cheese Chicken Pasta

        The choices are completely subjective.  Many people might hate them all.

Hilton Head Island: cleaner; an appointment in Samarra

        Just before noon yesterday we drove to the boat yard where I found a young man named Jackson sanding GANNET’s bottom.  The yard is doing a better job than I would have.

        Naturally I was particularly interested in inspecting the area of the keel repair.  As expected it appears perfect.

        We drove by again in late afternoon.  The yard was locked and from a distance I could not tell if the first coat of paint had been applied.

        Rain is due this afternoon.  Next week looks to be dry.

        Hopefully GANNET will be back in the water Monday or Tuesday.

        I wrote to a friend:   I take pride in routinely in making voyages no one else would, but I confess that I am sort of like a 77 year old kid, were such a creature possible, in being back at sea level and about to make more ocean passages on GANNET.

————

        I just finished rereading APPOINTMENT IN SAMARRA, John O’Hara’s masterful first novel.   Originally published in 1934 and set in 1930, it portrays the seemingly senseless self-destruction of a young man of the country club class in a small Pennsylvania town.  I last read it decades ago, but had not forgotten that the title comes from a passage from Somerset Maugham quoted at the beginning.

        There was a merchant in Baghdad who sent his servant to market to buy provisions and in a little while the servant came back, white and trembling, and said, Master, just now when I was in the market-place I was jostled by a woman in the crowd and when I turned I saw it was Death that jostled me.  She looked at me and made a threatening gesture; now, lend me your horse, and I will ride away from this city and avoid my fate.  I will go to Samarra and there Death will not find me.  The merchant lent him his horse and the servant mounted it, and he dug his spurs in its flanks and as fast as the horse could gallop he went.  Then the merchant went down to the market-place and he saw me standing in the crowd and he came to me and said, Why did you make a threatening gesture to my servant when you saw him this morning?  That was not a threatening gesture, I said, it was  only a start of surprise.  I was astonished to see him in Baghdad, for I had an appointment with him tonight in Samarra.

Hilton Head Island: out

        GANNET was hauled from the water yesterday afternoon.

        While fouled and black with slime, her bottom was not as bad as I expected.  Remember when looking at these photos that her bottom paint is white.

        Because of the shallow depths on the sides of Skull Creek, the travel lift has to carry boats farther here than anywhere else I have experienced, about a quarter of a mile/.4 kilometer.

        We left as the bottom was being pressure washed.  We will drive over this morning to see how the little boat looks.

        The rain is holding off and I expect the first coat of paint will be applied today.  Tomorrow does not look promising for coat number two.

Hilton Head Island: from the balconies

        Our two hour flight to Savannah took all day due to a failure in the aircraft monitoring system just before take-off—better before than after—resulting in a return to the gate and transfer to another aircraft, all of which was handled as efficiently and courteously as possible.

        We landed in Savannah at sunset, several hours later than scheduled, and Carol then drove the forty miles to our hotel on the ocean side of Hilton Head, arriving after dark and a stop for a bottle of champagne.  From our balcony we could hear and smell the ocean, which was wonderful, but not see it.

        The champagne was consumed with fish tacos from room service, mine blackened mahi-mahi, Carol’s shrimp.  Both good.
        While I am routinely awake at midnight during passages, I almost never am on land and wasn't last night.

        This morning we drove to the condo, where boxes containing about half my freeze dry meals were waiting—most of the rest is due today—and then went to GANNET.

        We found the little boat pretty much as I left her, though a little clammy inside.
        The batteries were at full charge.

        I fit the newer Torqeedo which started as it should.

        I tested the three Raymarine tiller pilots, all of which are working.

        The depthsounder works.

        The wind instrument works.

        All this is suspiciously as it should be.

        I mopped up a little water in the bilge with two paper towels and we left to return to the hotel and a walk on the beach.

        On this sunny January 1, with a light breeze and temperatures in the low 70sF/low 20sC, there were many people on the beach, walking, riding bicycles, sitting, building sandcastles, throwing footballs, even a few children in the water.

        Tomorrow GANNET is scheduled to be hauled for antifouling.

        I am writing in our hotel room with the door open to the balcony and susurration of the ocean.  

        It is good to be on a coast.