On occasion I find myself in the enviable position of being able to give something back to the sport I love, the ocean I am a steward for and provide inspiration to the next generation. In November, I had the opportunity to tick all three boxes.
I was invited by Atlantic College West to be the keynote at their first student run two day conference of the year, OceanCon. The aim was to help educate on the importance of our ocean and the role it plays for all of us. As the next generation, it falls to these students and their cohorts to deal with the legacy my generation and the ones that came before have left them. Over the two day workshop sessions I held, the direction of inspiration was certainly not just one way. It was so great to hear the wealth of ideas they had on how we can better address the issues, facilitate change and make a difference.
The following weekend I indulged in some nostalgia as I reunited with skippers for a dinner to celebrate 20 years since our (and my first!) round the world race, The Global Challenge. There were a couple of absentees who were most definitely missed but the evening gave us the opportunity to reminisce about that edition of the race. The retelling of stories and reliving of certain events had us all wondering how we managed to get around the world unscathed ourselves, let alone with the respective crews onboard the 12 boats in the fleet for whom we were responsible.
The next day, we joined over 300 people who had worked on The Global Challenge in various capacities during the 2004/5 race. Sir Chay Blyth addressed the audience comprising members of the technical team, crew volunteers, skippers and guests with a message from HRH The Princess Royal, who was our race patron. Little did Sir Chay know back then that his race would be responsible for several weddings and an even greater number of children. We also took time to remember those who are sadly no longer with us. By the end of the evening we had convinced ourselves that, if we didn’t look too closely at the hairlines or hair colour we were now sporting in comparison to the photos taken at the start of the race, none of us had changed a bit!
That same weekend the RYA British Keelboat academy met the selection candidates for the 2025 season. The role of the academy is to enable competent dinghy sailors to become reliable and safe keelboat racers. The programmes and initiatives they run expose candidates to the offshore racing arena and allow them to gain valuable experience. It was refreshing to see such a wide array of talent arrive with bags of enthusiasm, which I really hope won’t be dampened by sailing in the cold British Weather.
As if the month wasn’t busy enough, I then headed down to Les Sables D’Olonne to gain some experience in a new arena myself. I was hosting a 30 minute daily show that follows the Vendee Globe Race and the fortunes of the skippers taking part as we broadcast live to an international audience. There was so much more involved to creating a show than I imagined. From viewing content, interviewing skippers, translating videos and inviting guests through to presenting live while the producer calmly advises you through your earpiece that there has been a last minute change in the schedule. As I well know, live links to skippers busy racing in the depths of the Southern Ocean are not always compatible with a strictly timed show. The experience was all encompassing and I loved it. By gaining this behind the scenes perspective, I am much more aware of what the communications team require from a skipper and why. Hopefully this will rub off and help me generate better and more relevant content for viewers when I am next sailing. You can hold me to that and we shall see if it works.