When I first started this blog, back in 2015, I wanted to be honest.
I had the dream of taking my boat to Open events, then to the Nationals, and finally to the World Championships. Along the way, I anticipated Highs and Lows.
We have one of the Lows at the moment.
The background was the GP14 Masters Championship last weekend (16/17 July).
I had been looking forward to this for some time - it was a chance to race on home waters, against the best that there were. A week or so before, I had finally sorted out the Outhaul in the boom (a tricky task that took lots of fiddling before it was complete), and had the chance to sail with Joel, who made some helpful comments on my sailing approach.
I did not expect to win, but was hoping that myself and Gerry could get a mid-fleet position. We had raced a couple of times beforehand - our tacking had improved, and we were working as a great team.
But it was not to be.
The first race on Saturday we had a good start, and were pushing hard, somewhere in the mid-fleet position. We then had a mix-up with the spinnaker drop, and lost virtually every place we had gained in the rush to fix it. For some reason, Gerry & I seem to have bad luck with spinnakers. We pressed on, but were last in the fleet by the end. That was despite some good tacking and picking up strong pressure on the South shore. It wasn't Gerry's fault: I had to apologise to him for my bad language!
Worse was to come.
Prior to the second race, we were involved with a boat-on-boat incident with my friends Ricardo and Yasmin. It was just one of those misunderstandings. We agreed that no-one was to blame, and we would cover repair costs of our individual boats. I fully expect to have to spend several hundred pounds on dealing with a 3 inch gash in 13941, which has resulted in a foot long "crazing" of the glass fibre. This will be no trivial job to get repaired.
So the second race started with little enthusiasm on my part.
Then, as we were beating to the windward mark, I pulled in the mainsheet, and the "tails" disconnected with the sheet itself. The result was that I had no mainsheet to use, and we had to retire. A new split tail mainsheet on SpeedSails is near forty pounds.
The next day was worse.
I woke up with a strong headache, back-ache and sickness, having probably got de-hydrated the previous day. I was in no position to sail, so had to withdraw from the championships.
Those of you who have been following this blog will know the time, money and effort I have put into my sailing. I have got myself fit at the gym, consulted sports psychologist, tuned the boat, read books, watched videos, deliberately pushed myself into challenging conditions and tried to learn as much as possible on the water. I always have new objectives in my mind - be it keeping the boat flat, learning to identify wind on the water, or seeing where the pressure is. But I am still at the back of the fleet.
Have you ever felt like giving up entirely?
As I was thinking about this, I saw an article about Lewis Hamilton, the Formula One driver. He went through a difficult period during the last few months, and in this article he has has opened up on the mental affects it had on him.
"When I was younger, if I had a bad race I was so hard on myself," he said. "It was really negative. I remember some races I wouldn't leave my hotel room for three or four days, wouldn't speak to anyone, not being on my phone, I was just trying to get myself out of this dark place that I'd be in.
"Somehow I'd pop out of it and turn it into positive. I think that's what you've got to try and do. You've got to look at the situation, even if its really negative, you've got to try and find the positives from it and leave the negatives behind. Try and learn from it.
Look where I am now, I'm one point behind in the championship. I'm even surprised. I'm like, 'if I had given up at one point'… it just shows you to never ever ever give up no matter what."
I am not - and never will be - in the same league as a Lewis Hamilton. But what are professional sportsmen, if not people we can look to for inspiration?
Maybe, just maybe, I should press on, and look forward to Tollesbury Open next weekend, with the possibility of Poole in the first week of August.
