25550 days to live

09 Mar. 10


According to the Bible we have only 25 550 days to live, that is if we survive to be seventy years old. So when I get to work on a Monday and I start to wish it’s Friday then I am wasting these precious few days at my disposal. This has been an ongoing cycle for me for the past few years, so this needs to change because you only have one chance to make one day special at a time. If you waste today you cannot make up tomorrow for today, because today is gone forever and can never be replayed. I am not sure how exactly to achieve the most of each day yet, but will try different methods each day to find out how to do this. I am not saying that I need every day to be absolutely perfect but perhaps if I can achieve one or two perfect moments in each day as a starting point, then I may get closer to the goal.

My mother and stepfather came to visit me the day before yesterday uninvited, so I suppose a surprise visit. My real dad left when I was little and was never to be seen again, I heard he committed suicide a few years ago. My sense of humour is possibly a bit uncouth as I now tell people that my dad was a swinger, because he hung himself from the rafters. Hope I didn’t offend anybody. Anyway back to the visit, I say uninvited because I don’t like visitors at the best of times, and I need to be ready for visitors before they arrive thus I like some notice period. There are a few select people that can pop in at any time and I don’t mind but most of my family doesn’t fit into this category.

My stepfather and I have never really seen eye to eye, and although I try my best he seems to be able to bring out the worst in me. I always feel as if he is baiting me into an argument. I am not sure if this is my imagination or if it is real but thus I try to avoid him as much as possible. Anyway we all survived the visit and I said that we will see them again in Richards bay on Yrumoar in December, they thought this was a joke but I hope to avoid them until then…at least until then.

23 Mar. 10

The Long weekend came and went by in a flash, even though we didn’t do anything but just hung around at home, the time just flew by. I tried to teach my youngest son Kyle how to ride a bicycle this weekend but after many hours of no success I gave up and asked Lola’s dad to try, and guess what, five minutes later Kyle was riding up and down the road all by himself. I am obviously not a very good teacher for bicycles.

On Sunday this week we are flying down to Cape Town to do our practical part of our coastal skippers licence. We have arranged to rent a car in Cape Town and drive to Langebaan where the sailing school is situated. This is the only sailing school that offers the course on a catamaran so we would get our first taste of sailing on a cat. How do I feel? Exited, nervous and a whole mix of emotions that I can’t explain.

25 Mar. 10

Went surfing on the net onto Windfinder to see the forecast for the sailing course over the next few days and it seems the weather is going to play along for the first few days at least, with light winds of up to 10 Knots and wave heights of about 2 metres. The weather seems to get slightly worse here by the 30th with 20 knots and 4 metre waves. The forecast further than that is not yet available. In order to try and judge the wave heights I measured to the top of my house roof and this was about four metres, wow how high do these waves get out there? You know being on the ocean only once before on the day skippers course a few times with small waves off the coast of Durban, and then dam sailing at the Vaal Dam for the past year on weekends only, may not have prepared me for these waves. Fortunately we will have a competent skipper on board, or so I hope, as my experience is definitely not enough yet and I think this will help in gaining some much needed knowledge and hopefully some confidence.

We are packed and ready to go already but I am not sure if our Pep stores Dry-Macs are really the correct sailing gear for the Cape waters. We did ask the lady at Sail Due South training school and she advised that we should be fine as long as we have warm clothing, and that we should wait till after the course to decide to buy wet weather gear in order to see just exactly what we would require. Our plan of sailing up the east coast of Africa to more moderate climates may not require such heavy weather gear, but I don’t really know this with my limited knowledge and hope that my decision is the correct one. I do know that Lola will do lots of research before we leave so we should have a better idea. I also intend to ask advise from other sailors that have done a similar route closer to the time.