Sailing the year out and the itchy feet feeling

Donned my fabulous Musto goretex sailing shorts yesterday on og all things a walk in the woods on a warm, showery day. Very comfortable and dry, while also standing up to twigs sitting on a rock.

Got me thinking how much more useful they are on a sunny day, top of force 4 with spray coming over the decks. Then of course there popped up the Fastnet from 'seilas' magazine on the electric facebook contraption. A fleet tracker no doubt.

So within a couple of minutes my lacklustre attitude to the whole sailing thang turned to a renewed bout of youthful enthusiasm. Not just for the glorious days with sunshine and the best ever start, but the plateau of training and the often slow learning curve. Even the frustrations of losing badly, and the humble pie of the resulting post-race-analysis and debrief ( as if they really happen so often!). Yeah, even bad days are seen through rose tinted spectacles once more!

If I have issues with sailing this year, then they are the self same issues I had after my first year or so: finding the right boat to crew on or getting my own boat again. So many teams are static even stagnant, good potential helms want someone who blindly agrees and they can nurture up ( with cleavage prefered) and basically I am left waiting for a new Harold Hood to come back into the fray with a new boat and need for good crew. Even with Odyssey I was plateauing to be honest, but the long slow plains are a place to be relished as you trek along the learning curve waiting for the next eldorado of opportunity, challenge and experience to whisk you up by the ankles to a higher plain.


It is also about ambition and new opportunity: do I really have ambition to varnish all winter a boat I am not sure is actually up to scratch in the local OD fleet of gentlemans 4 knoters?


Well yeah ambition, before you snuff it, what races to do? What to acheive with sailing?

Well I have pretty limitied ambitions but at least one is rekindled here again: The fastnet in a seriously fast mono like a TP52 or perhaps totally cheating on a multihull? Hiking out on a Mumm 36 may have seemed like earning my spurs 12 years ago when I did ISORA, but now the whole prospect of sailing the waterlegnth speed plus 1 knot for such craft is unappealing.

What else then? Well probably to put together a Norwegian challenge for ...the IRC trophy in West Highland Week. ALso later on to enter my own boat: maybe starting at a Benetub 21.7 and ending up with an X332 or the like.

To own an SB3 and compete in the big fleets in the UK.

Also then the big one, the big challenge that is: to win a national championship in a one design and attend the worlds in the Platu 25 design.