Long time...

Time is just not on my side currently, it's trickling away from me faster than the tide...

So, quick re-cap before Monday morning grabs me and the melody-go-round fires off again!

Midland areas at Staunton Harold, 20 boats, kinda dissapointing I think? wind was fairly light, sun was out for a bit then it rained solid for the night and next day! We had a good first race, first round the windward mark, but then lost a fair bit and ended up 6th... after that it went bad...stabalised and basically although it was a good weekend, close racing, great beer (including the Captain G&T that me and Steve invented), broken sleep with the rain thudding on the roof and then more average sailing in the rain...sigh, we ended up 10th.... not happy really with that...again... getting boring this me not being happy with my results!

Then last Sunday I took the kids out in my dads Solo for the first time in a while... Youngest is a bit of a nutter / ninja-crew in the boat... no fear and really loves it, eldest is a little more controlled but once I got him helming he got really into it...so much so that I managed to get 5 mins sat on the foredeck, legs round the mast being a kid again! BVloody fantastic hour and a half sailing!

Then this weekend there was 2 days of "fun" at the club.... Saturday evening there was a BBQ and disco.... the sun was very warm, no breeze the BBQ was great...especially the toasted marshmallows, I had a good few mints of "Hooky", we watched the sun set with the kids playing on the shore and the music drifting out of the clubhouse... I find that kinda think amazingly chilling...

Then today was the inter-fleet champs... 6 teams of 10 or more sailors form the different fleets - Managerie, Fireball, Youth&Juniors, Miracle, Flying 15's and Solo's... very short races (10-15 mins) infront of the club house in either Laser 2's, Laser Vago's or Pico's... I had the pleasure of sailing with Lance (crewing once, we came 4th) and helming twice...first in both :-) the rest of the team had some good races and some bad... my dad capsized in 3rd place on the finish-line in the Pico...not happy! In the end after a stilt-walker, magicion, bouncy-castle, sumo-suit wrestling, sailing demo's, windsurfing have-a-go's and stacks of races.... Youth&Juniors won... well done... we came 4th or 5th but it was a fun day, I think and the wind held up and the sun shone so most people were smiling as they went home.....

Anyway lastly, best give you the recipe for Captain G&T:

Any Good landlord will tell you to stop drinking if you order this becuase in order to drink it you must have drunk way too much already....

The woman at Staunton Harold that served us obviosuly hadnt though it through... so:

Captain G&T
1 measure of Gin
1 measure of Captains Rum
Some Tonic
Shaken and Slurred

...it turns a lovely golden colour and tastes like crap... still and midnight-ish who actually cares...?
sailing boat soulsailor

Bloody Technology!

OK, my work laptop has been handed in, I spent the weekend re-arraning the conservatory so it had a little more space all the crap was chucked and it emt our needs better...

The upshot being my PC was moved to a different location and now it doesnt like it and is refusing to boot; think theirs a major issue with the power etc etc...

Hopefully I'll be back up and running tomorrow.. this is just a brief post from a borrowed machine...night...

sailing boat soulsailor

Nearly...

I nearly sailed today, just a local race at Rugby & Daventry SC.... Enterprise Open, about 6 entrants, we weren't one of them...


The boat, sails and helm and crew got there.. covers off the boat...but that was as far as it went..


I stayed to chat to my buddies and watch the first race...



Cold and bloody breezy (Draycote 15 miles north was recording consistantly 30mph ++ winds all morning), got there nice bacon sarnie and a coffee, everyone else went out sailing (blasting, flapping, healing, capsizing), we didn't.




Race 1 - Gez (last years winner) and Dennis lead, Youngy and new crew were second (with storm sail up!) Steve and Chessie were third... everyone capsized, everyone was knackered...



Everyone was happy (ish) so I went home then...


Apparently:


Race 2 - Steve & Chessie had a good start (only ones on the line?) Gez chasing.... Steve gobbed-it-in, Gez overtook... Steve got it back-up again and went bloody well (got past Gez)... more breeze cam through and horizontal hail storm... Steve went in, Gez went passed race and event abandoned (thanks for the report Steve)...

Rest of the Pics I took are on Flickr. Real shame we didn't sail...

sailing boat soulsailor

Innovative Apps Evangelist 4 Hire

So it's all going a bit wrong at work, time for a new challenge, time to spread my wings, embrace change and go out their into the real world, smell the coffee etc etc...

So, it's 95% official, I'm now on the look out for a new organisation that I can add value to, that will challenge and stretch me, support me and add value to my life; anyone know of such an organisation in the UK?

My CV's opening paragraph says this...

"...A passionate, dedicated technical manager and Microsoft applications platform evangelist. Maintaining a successful track record in managing development teams, implementing application solutions, delivering application strategies and innovation within a wide range of sectors..."

[Email me if you want a copy of my CV.]

My profile and recommendations are up on LinkedIn here:

and adds:

"...Rapidly expanding interest and experience with regards to Web2.0, Social Media, Social Networking and consumer web applications and their pervasiveness and applicability in the enterprise..."

So, there we are, that's who I am "professionally", back on the market again for new challenges, come and find me...

soulsailor

Stumbling in Water

Ok, so a nice cryptic title!

This post continues with the current stream of posts about sailing (wind, water, waves) and Web-version-whatever.

Recent posts about this include:
Also, Adam whose spending time messing about in sailboats and geeking-out like me has a great post about side-bar gadgets...

So, I recently came across StumbleUpon and found Ti11erman there. What is StumbleUpon, well its a social network (but then what isn't) and its a discovery site for people with interests "like wot you got".

Anyway, what I really wanted to get down to saying was this... Sailors don't give RSS the love it deserves, the anmount of Stumbled-Upon web sites I have come across that don't have RSS feeds and thyen it gets difficult when you have lots of people you are following to be arsed with the ones without an RSS feed... lifes hard!

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Right, I now apologise for the brevity and lack of clarity of this post... some "stuff" is going down that has a major effect on my life... I'll tell you later and then maybe re-edit tthis post to make more sense....

BTW - I got this email today!
Congratulations - you're on the MillionDollarAvatar homepage today ( Feb 27, 2007 UTC)! Your avatar will appear on the homepage for 24 hours.Please visit www.milliondollaravatar.com to view your profile.- Kevin and The MDA Crew

sailing boat soulsailor