The Beginning Stages Of...

In the beginning, there was The Shipping Blues. And it was good. But now cometh Windward, a new blog that reflects a new chapter and is hopefully a little more thoughtfully maintained, both by me and the site administrators

The Shipping Blues (check it out at http://www.20six.co.uk/joemulvey) was my diary of the 2005-06 Clipper Round The World Yacht Race. It was originally intended just as a tool for keeping a small group of family and friends in touch with my oceanic blunderings. Somehow some other people got interested which was (and is) all to the good.

The race is now over, and life continues. For the small number of people around the world who are interested in my sailing and other adventures, I hope this diary will keep you informed about what I get up to in the next few months and years.

It's fair to say that I am not too sure what is in store myself. The immediate future holds a two month trip to South Africa to make use of all those sea miles and complete an Ocean Yachtmaster sailing course. Thereafter things are less certain. There are whispers of sailing in South East Asia and (less glamorously) in the English Channel. However before anything is set in stone I need to address myself to dealing with some basic questions. What am I going to do? Where am I going to do it? And so on.

None of which I intend to bore you with. In the the near term, I hope to supply the usual tragicomic litany of watery disasters that the readers of The Shipping Blues have come to expect. I promise to almost die in a stupid accident at least once every three weeks, and to sail in winds exceeding 40 knots at least once every 10 days. Should I fail to achieve these objectives I will, of course, make something up. I may occasionally throw in the odd nugget of genuine personal insight, but caring about it is strictly optional.

In the very near term, readers can expect a short update on Life after Clipper, and perhaps some choice photographs from the race and after.

Watch this cyberspace...