SEPTEMBER 2018
Hi Sisu blog readers! Terry and I are preparing for our third sailing season. Over the summer months in the Isle of Man we put away and buy new bits and pieces to make sailing life easier. This summer I’ve got a new laptop, smaller and lighter than my old one. Our hand luggage consists of a veritable plethora of IT gadgets. Just consider how much “stuff” you have at home, probably an ipad, laptop, kindle, mobile, camera, possibly a Go pro etc, and what about charging cables? External hard drive? Power pack? It all racks up doesn’t it? All this type of gear makes up the bulk, and I mean bulk of our hand luggage! This year on the way home the strap broke on our bag with the weight and I felt like a packhorse carrying it all! At least time time, my new laptop takes up less room and is lighter, I shall virtually skip light heartedly through the long queues of security checks, smug that my left shoulder will not end up inches lower than the right. I should add here that Terry does his share of carrying too, half the techie crap we carry is his after all. Once on the boat there was always the risk my heavy, bulky old laptop would go overboard during transition from boat to rib depending on the sea conditions! We use our ipads for general day to day stuff, but for the blog and photos we use the laptop, and we’re always trying to make life simple, this should make a big improvement!
I love new gadgets, I don’t like the learning and bonding bit. So, the new laptop has sat on a chair for three days, shiny and unmucked about with, so now I’m going to trial the new software by posting this quick blog. Do let me know if you get it!
This summer at home has flown by, now we’re counting down, ordering the courtesy flags of the countries we’ll be visiting, getting necessary jabs etc. The job list swaps around now, jobs at home not done can wait till next year, we’re now working on the going away job list! Throughout the summer things we’ve bought and put aside for packing now come out, it’s a bit of a surprise at times, I now have three identical fleece jackets, different colours, bought at different times but put away, I only need one! The travel scrabble we bought at a car show in the early part of the summer whilst we were away is nowhere to be found, ditto an external hard drive. We probably wouldn’t won’t have time to spend evenings playing scrabble, but the option would be nice, I remind myself that we’re not sailing round Scotland and Ireland where a game of scrabble would have stopped us getting cabin fever as the rain lashed down on the cabin roof, for days and days and days…….. It’s a sod though, unless it went onto the boat last season?!
Twice a day, morning and evening great numbers of Canada Geese fly over our cottage, honking loudly to each other as they pass by in their large V formations, I love seeing them as they fly to nearby fields to eat, preparing for migration. This year in particular, there seem to be even more than before, it’s a wondrous spectacle and it’s a sign for us too, marking our time to get ready to fly out. We enjoy being home on the Island, picking up our social lives, and everything is familiar, apart from tackling anything that requires you to sign on or log in to set up anything new, which causes much swearing and chewing of fingers in sheer frustration, our cat literally barrels through the catflap in fright from the shouts of despair and anquish as we are yet again told by our laptop/ipad that our login passwords or security ID numbers aren’t accepted! On board life is very different, in some respects much simpler, we still have things that go wrong or break, the weather gods play games with us at times, and we shake our fists at the skies or give thanks depending on the situation, we live very much “in the moment”! At the end of October we’ll step through the wardrobe and enter our other world for a few months, we’ll do our best to keep you posted, warts and all!
sisu journey 