The wind has changed

There is a new direction and the sails must be trimmed to the new wind.

I am not particularly impressed with arbitary transitions in time but this time the transistion of one one year to another heralds some interesting changes and opportunities in my life. I start a new job next week - only an 8 month contract but a welcome job never the less. I also commit myself to a series of interviews that could result in a long term prospect with the Methodist Diaconal order.
One thing is for certain - the focus of my sailing will change over the next 8 months as a significant aspect of my work will be on Sundays. Wednesday afternoon and evenings will become my new 'weekend' as there is some racing at Ripon SC at that time. This should see my wife sailing with me as crew and so a new chapter will begin where we learn to sail together. It shouild be interesting! All we have to do is shed about 7 stone (45kg) between us and we should be somewhere in the right area to be competative! A good reason to lose weight but I think we will need to do more than lose weight to be competative. However I imagine that in the process learning to sail together we might just make some progresson that front too.

I hope that I shall do a few regattas this year. One that is on the books is Filey - it looks such a fantastic bay to sail on. The North West Norfolk Sailing Association regatta is another one that we shall do. I am hopeful that I can add to that a few other events as well but we shall have to wait and see just how things work out.
I know that Jo my daughter will want to do some sailing too but she has a few things on her plate this year as it is her last year of university and afterwards she is off to Africa with her boyfriend for several weeks in the summer so maybe there won't be too much of a conflict of interests or crews!
Before then I have a few months of boat work ahead of me - welcome relief from other pressures. One thing I need to do is straiten out a slight kink in the bows - the result of a colision with a Topper in the penultimate race of the last days sailing this year. The Toppper only had a small bit of damage but being plastic it was enough to be a write-off - can you believe it? A Carbon fibre hull - the most expensive material to make a boat with - could be repaired but plastic being perhaps the cheapest cannot be repaired (actually I suspect wood is the cheapest). Yet another example of stupid design - the inappropriate use of materials. Never mind - that is why we have insurance - because accidents happen. Hey ho. Here's to a new year - God bless all who sail in her.