{"id":3740,"date":"2026-07-22T04:58:06","date_gmt":"2026-07-22T04:58:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/racecoast.net\/omstest\/?p=3740"},"modified":"2026-07-22T08:00:19","modified_gmt":"2026-07-22T08:00:19","slug":"whats-going-on","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/racecoast.net\/omstest\/whats-going-on\/","title":{"rendered":"What’s going on?"},"content":{"rendered":"

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I had better do some explaining.<\/p>\n

This blog has always been free \u2013 and I have been proud of that. I write it because that\u2019s what I do. Even if nobody took the trouble to read it, I would write it. I have written stuff for more than 70 years. I feel more comfortable writing than talking. Since this blog began in 2017, there must be hundreds of thousands of words here.<\/p>\n

You get my point?<\/p>\n

But now I have started to write on another site where people can \u201cbuy me a coffee\u201d if they feel like it \u2013 although there is no obligation.<\/p>\n

For a subscription of \u00a36 a month, they can become a \u201cmember\u201d and receive exclusive content. As soon as I announced this, I was called a \u201cmoney-grubbing influencer\u201d.<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t see it that way. But maybe an explanation will do no harm.<\/p>\n

It all started back in Conwy in 2017 with the original \u201cbig-refit\u201d. I had begun to realise just what I was taking on in buying Samsara <\/em>https:\/\/racecoast.net\/omstest\/2017\/08\/<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Soon after that, my children introduced me to Instagram, and I started posting pictures. One day, Lottie told me I had 11,000 followers. Where did they come from?<\/p>\n

The years passed. The blog posts piled up. COVID came. I went sailing. I ended up on the Jeremy Vine Show<\/em> on Radio2, talking to seven million listeners.<\/p>\n

That led to the original Old Man Sailing book. This has now sold 13,000 copies (I looked it up on Google AI, but I think it\u2019s more than that now). Interestingly, nobody called me a \u201cmoney-grubbing influencer\u201d because of that. In fact, if you go back to 1968 and my first job, I can\u2019t remember being called a \u201cmoney-grubbing farm labourer\u201d \u2013 but that was only for \u00a312.19s.6d a week.<\/p>\n

Then suddenly, everything changed. On May 18th<\/sup> this year on the voyage up from Sint Maarten in the Caribbean to New Ross in Ireland, I was becalmed somewhere south-east of Bermuda and, to amuse myself, I waved the camera around the horizon, filming the endless ocean swell, the slatting mainsail, the drooping ensign\u2026<\/p>\n

For some reason, it captured the global imagination. That 52-second video has now been played 3.2million times (on Instagram \u2013 more if you include YouTube, Facebook and the rest).<\/p>\n

Nothing was ever the same again.<\/p>\n

For one thing, I\u2019m not publishing The Voyage #5 \u2013 the book I wrote about sailing from Sint Maarten to New Ross. There just wasn\u2019t enough of it because, instead of sitting down with the laptop three times a day as I usually do to produce the raw copy for this series, I was busy fielding comments about ocean calms (and everything else, including \u201cWhat kind of beer did I drink?\u201d \u2013 and, of course, the interminable \u201cWhy didn\u2019t I wear a harness?\u201d)<\/p>\n

Of course, the secret was that the video was so short, people watched it to the end (you have to have a catastrophically short attention span if you can\u2019t manage 52 seconds). But the Instagram algorithm didn\u2019t seem to appreciate that. It just said: \u201cGood heavens, this guy has virtually 100% retention! He must be amazing!\u201d<\/p>\n

And pumped it out to everyone.<\/p>\n

So, I did it again about the beer (and the blasted harness), until I was uploading a 1-2 minute video every day. I started signing off with \u201cUntil tomorrow. Goodbye.\u201d<\/p>\n

People loved that.<\/p>\n

And, since most days on the ocean are fairly bright, I wore sunglasses. People asked me what kind of sunglasses I wore, in the same way they asked what kind of beer I drank.<\/p>\n

This didn\u2019t seem important until I arrived to anchor off Dunmore East at the entrance to the Barrow River and became rather nervous about the number of people who seemed to want to claim me as their own. As a solitary sailor, I was not used to this.<\/p>\n

I must say, I have rather come to embrace it in the weeks of Irish hospitality that ensued. But it did mean that one of the first people who came to welcome me was Michael McLoughlin of the McLoughlin Boat Company.<\/p>\n

Now I won\u2019t hear a word said against Michael. Indeed, I will give a plug to his boat company https:\/\/www.mcloughlinboatcompany.com\/<\/a> . There it is.<\/p>\n

The thing about Michael is that he can see potential.<\/p>\n

Like: \u201cYou could get a new water tank in that space behind the engine.\u201d And: \u201cBest to take the engine out anyway. We could blast off all that rust \u2013 spray paint it like new\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n

And I didn\u2019t help with: \u201cThen you could take out the fuel tank and clean it. I\u2019ve never been able to do that.\u201d<\/p>\n

We removed the redundant calorifier as well, and replaced the motor in the anchor windlass, fixed the leak in the watermaker, the one in the centre hatch, devised a way of securing the locker over the foot of the starboard berth, replaced the rusty hinges on the galley locker, the one under the port forward berth (and the starboard, if there\u2019s time).<\/p>\n

The trouble was that back home in Tramore, Michael\u2019s wife Eleni, who does the boat company accounts, was keeping track of everything and I ended up in the situation of the British Admiralty in 1803 when an upstart new Admiral called Horatio Somebody was demanding a refit to his 35-year-old flagship which was going to cost more than The Victory had cost to build in the first place.<\/p>\n

Maybe Their Lordships thought: \u201cIt doesn\u2019t matter. In a couple of years he\u2019ll win a naval battle somewhere like Trafalgar that will put an end to all the Napoleonic Wars. Then we can name a square after him and put up a column. It\u2019ll be worth it in the end.\u201d<\/p>\n

I found myself thinking along the same lines: \u201cIf I have enough water capacity to sail round the world, recreating the voyage of Sir Francis Chichester 60 years ago (see https:\/\/oldmansailing.com\/the-big-trip<\/a>) then anything I spend on a refit can be considered an investment.\u201d<\/p>\n

Admittedly, that was before I discovered all the engine repairs were a waste of money because I had cracked the block overheating it and needed a new one.<\/p>\n

So, is it \u201cmoney-grubbing\u201d to admit that AR Peachment<\/a> and Colfer Engineering<\/a> got together to provide a new one at a fraction of the normal price \u2013 all delivered and fitted free.<\/p>\n

Without the help of people like this, I would now be considering putting off \u201cThe Big Trip\u201d to another year (when it would no longer be Chichester\u2019s significant 60th<\/sup> anniversary?)<\/p>\n

Of course, I hope I get round without running out of water, without stuff falling out of lockers and hitting me in the face so that I have to put into Cape Town to get my teeth fixed -without a thousand other things going wrong because I couldn\u2019t afford to renew them or build in redundancy – like the spare StarLink or a second Laptop so I can keep writing this stuff no matter what. I\u2019ve even got a plastic sextant tucked away somewhere in case Vladimir Putin shoots down Elon Musk.<\/p>\n

And now that I\u2019ve got used to the attention, I won\u2019t be side-tracked by all the comments. I will sit down regularly, morning, afternoon and evening, to write Samsara Circles the World <\/em>(with Chichester\u2019s Gipsy Moth Circles the World<\/em> on the Kindle).<\/p>\n

It will be a book in two volumes \u2013 Book One: Plymouth to Sydney <\/em>and Book Two: Sydney to Plymouth<\/em>.<\/p>\n

I reckon people will buy it \u2013 especially if I include my trademark weird dreams.<\/p>\n

But then I thought: \u201cHow much more exciting would it be for people to read it in daily episodes as it happens?\u201d After all, I will be writing an episode every day (three, actually). In previous books, a lot of this was edited out once I arrived (too embarrassing\u2026 too weird\u2026)<\/p>\n

Wouldn\u2019t it be great to read it not knowing what\u2019s going to happen tomorrow (do I get to fix the broken boom? Will the Jordan Series Drogue save me when the storm hits?)<\/p>\n

And if people are prepared to pay for books, is it really so terrible to ask them to pay for instalments? (Dickens did.)<\/p>\n

So, there it is. The oldmansailing blog will keep going. Everything that was free will still be free \u2013 and there will be new content from time to time (I really must write something about my solar panel arrangement and put the drogue question to bed \u2013 dare I explain my views on harnesses?)<\/p>\n

But as an extra (and to help with the bills) there is also the paid site: \u00a0https:\/\/buymeacoffee.com\/oldmansailing<\/a><\/p>\n

There\u2019s a new instalment out today (it’s free, just to tempt you over there). I should get back to daily posts for members once I set off for Falmouth on Thursday night.<\/p>\n

And please get your questions in early for the live stream on Friday\u2026<\/p>\n

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 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I had better do some explaining. This blog has always been free \u2013 and I have been proud of that. I write it because that\u2019s what I do. Even if nobody took the trouble to read it, I would write it. I have written stuff for more than 70 years. I feel more comfortable writing … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3740","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-singlehanded"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/racecoast.net\/omstest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3740","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/racecoast.net\/omstest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/racecoast.net\/omstest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racecoast.net\/omstest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racecoast.net\/omstest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3740"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/racecoast.net\/omstest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3740\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3744,"href":"https:\/\/racecoast.net\/omstest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3740\/revisions\/3744"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/racecoast.net\/omstest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3740"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racecoast.net\/omstest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3740"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racecoast.net\/omstest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3740"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}