Personal Preparation...

Part of the preparation is not only the boat, journey planning and fundraising, it’s also about personal and mental preparation which is equally if not most important. For this journey to be successful I’ve had to look at how my mind and body works and what are my competences, strengths and weaknesses.

Motivation and Attitude

Perhaps at my age I should accept the person I am, warts and all, and just go for it.  After all isn’t retirement about doing all the things you have dreamed about during you working life- a bucket list to tick off?  If that is the case I’ll need a small fortune and another lifetime to complete them. Anyway, I tend to see that way of thinking as a kind of cabin fever approach to aging which doesn’t fit my personality. I’m a worker and need to be working I don’t want to give that up just because I’ve reached a certain age.

I get great enjoyment from seeing tasks achieved and fulfil an overall aim. I can get very engrossed in a project and need lots of thinking time to ensure I know all the tasks involved and in what order they need to be completed. This can be the selfish side of my personality. Sometimes I find I’ve been just staring for what seems like hours without actually seeing or absorbing what I’m looking at. My mind is turning over all options for a particular task and placing them in order trying to identify snags. The things I detest most and try to avoid is wasted effort and unnecessary double handling because of mistakes or lack of thinking. I’m happiest when I can see a clear, ordered and logical route forward. Also I like projects to achieve a multiple purpose.  When all the ducks are in a row, enthusiasm kicks in and I’m ready to roll my sleeves up and get going. There are many projects in my head that never reach this point and are cast to the back burner. This is where the sailing around the British coast had been quietly bubbling way for some time. Perhaps these are my of bucket list?

   

Sometimes when talking to someone about an idea, I reflect on how it could fit in with one of my backburner projects if there is a synergy it reignites my interest. So it was with the idea to sail around Britain.

Talking with Rika one evening about the effects of cancer, on our outlook on life; we both agreed it made us grateful for the opportunities left to enjoy in life and the importance of not to let opportunities and dreams  slip away or make excuses for not doing things. Rika and I have never lived in each other’s pockets and are quite happy to let each other follow our interests. Rika is not a sailing fan but does like driving and camping; we do however, both enjoy visiting new places together.  We both feel we haven’t really seen all this wonderful country has to offer, and the conversation moved on to replacing my old VW transporter with a motor home. My problem with the sailing cruise project had been that it had no other purpose than to satisfy a personal desire to do it.  It occurred to me that this offered the chance to kill two birds with one stone. Unfortunately Rika is a WASPI and has been done very badly by changes in the pension age. It was always the intention that we would both retire at the same time and enjoy retirement together. Although we could probably manage OK without her state pension Rika feels it’s prudent to continue working part time.  This shouldn’t prevent her from coming and joining me at various coastal locations and we can then explore lots of local/regional beauty spots and places of interest in between her work commitments.

I have recently stood down as a trustee for a charity and have been looking for something else worthwhile to help with. It wasn’t much of a leap of imagination to think Macmillan Cancer Support as a worthy organisation that could benefit if I also used this as a fundraising event to maximise the outcome of the effort involved.

It’s been sometime since I first envisaged this voyage and at the time my competence was sharp and my physical fitness and mental faculties were in a reasonable state.  Now, having reignited the plan and it is becoming a reality I have thought I’d better conduct a personal health and competence audit and action plan. The following is hopefully an honest appraisal:

Physical and Health
Topic	Condition	Action Required	Time Scale	Achieved/Progress
Body Mass Index	Bordering Obese	Lose two stone	Half Stone before June  Remainder reduced during the cruise	½ Stone achieved and still reducing
Muscle Strength	Reasonable for age	Physical work preparing boat and during sailing adequate to maintain strength. Room for improvement. Will follow Air Force 5BX	Ongoing	To reach 5BX target
Joints and flexibility	Legs and feet OK Back OK but a bit stiff on waking Neck and Shoulders OK but	Will follow Air Force 5BX plan see appendix 1	Ongoing	To reach 5BX target
Internal Bits and pieces	All well as far as I’m aware, liver may be in need of assistance	Diet to be reviewed and intake of alcohol to be reduced	Keep under review
Eye sight	Not bad with glasses	Make sure glasses are on a neck cord. Take long sight lens out of spare pair for use when rain and spray cause a problem.
Hearing	WHAT?	Check-up might be a good idea
Mental Health
Unhealthy level of stress	Hold ups in boat preparation work starting to become stressful	Keep focus but accept not all tasks will or need to be completed before departure. Keep reminding myself this is supposed to be enjoyable.	Time scale has over run this weekend. Needs to be reset
Competence
Paper and observation method of navigation	A bit rusty	Revision at bedtime and in the loo reading	All main topics by departure	Position fixing OK Course plotting OK Tides, secondary port calculation needs more study.
Electronic Navigation	Technology moving a bit fast for me.	Read manuals and get up to date with basics,  as journey progresses	Competent  to operate basic  functions  by departure
Radio Communications	VHF licence needs to be updated	Enrol on VHF/DCS Course	Before departure	Completed

Having done the audit, it’s clear how my personality can be my biggest problem, I can become stressed when my planning gets disrupted by outside influences and conditions. Maybe my years as a chef have had a bigger effect on my thought processes than I ever believed they could. I certainly retain the short temper when things don’t go smoothly, although these days I mostly keep this within myself, not hollering at people Gordon Ramsey style as I did in the restaurant days. I’ll leave this for others to judge as the voyage progresses.