A New Year’s Blog
posted by John Web Site
I gave up smoking 30 years ago. Sure, I could lose a few pounds, but that’s no fun. And I’m not giving up wine. So the only New Years’ resolution I can think of is to write more.
In the past Phyllis and I have vented our writing urges through various sailing magazines, but since my last couple of technical articles were edited into drivel to match the general state of much of the sailing press, that won’t satisfy. So here goes my first blog with some more reasons that we are taking this on—other than New Years’ self improvement—and where we want to go with it:
First, a blog is interactive. Unlike our web site, http://www.morganscloud.com/, you can contribute. Agree or disagree, it doesn’t matter; we want to hear what you think about what we write and we want to learn from you too. All we ask is that you keep it civil. If we find a commenter’s answers particularly helpful, we will invite them to write for the blog and thereby expand the opinion and experience pool.
Second, we are both concerned about some trends we are seeing in offshore sailboat design, gear and techniques. (Of course this could just be early onset—well fairly early—curmudgeondom.) So we will be writing about boats, gear and techniques that work offshore without having to worry about the pressure placed on our editors—it’s not their fault, they have to eat too—by the need to sell advertising to the very companies that make the gear we are concerned about. We will also be challenging some old and dearly held “wisdom” about how to go voyaging. Hint: it is not as hard or scary as many would have you believe, although there is some basic stuff you need to do right.
Third, we are currently answering several in depth technical questions a week. To do these answers right takes time and the process often makes us really think about the subject. It would be great to share that effort with a wider audience. As always, generally applicable questions and answers will be added to our web site.
Fourth, because we can add to the blog by e-mail, it will be much easier to share our experiences when out sailing.
We are going to try and make the blog interesting and useful and, when we are particularly cranky about something, it may even be outrageous. It will certainly be opinionated; something that I, as Phyllis points out, am supremely qualified for.
Let us know how we are doing, either with a comment on the blog or an e-mail to info@morganscloud.com.
Labels: Rants and Musings
1 Comments:
Very interesting! I share your fears on some designs and equipment that you see today, no matter how exciting it is to read about or view on TV, it does raise some concerns. Ocean voyaging has never been very simple and hardly ever totaly safe, accidents happne and much of it is ofcourse down to pure bad "sea man ship" but a pretty large amount can be blamed on poor equipment. it is not alwyas the skipper has bought the wrong equipment, it is equaly often that the supplied equipment fails to do its work, and this can ofcourse create lift threathing situations at sea.
I will keep a look on this blog with great interest!
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