Aaaargh, curse this intagable network of digital angst. Today I spent a good ten minutes looking for a way to stop e-mail alerts to everything everyone says. I found it about 14 seconds before my rage reaches critical throw-screen-out-window level.

In other news, I had my first day back at the dive shop today. BASTARDS! There was I hoping for a gentle day in the sun with a dive or two, or maybe a day drinking tea with the od break to dive in the swimming pool next door, but oh no, no way. Bastards. I was the only person there to dive three times, in hard-core current, dragging the bastard SMB everywhere. We didn't even get near the reef on any of my dives, and on the last (thus when I was most tired) I had to take out the CESA line (half an air cylinder acting as a weight, on a 10m rope that never stays tied up so always entangles you atatched to a bouy. The buoy is fine.). Goddammit. I havent dived in 9 months and am the least fit as I have ever been in my life! On the up side, not for long. Despite my rabit mutterings, I actually had a pretty good day. Tiring, but it's nice to be back in the water. Back tommorow, but probably only one dive.

I need a sort of watery outdoors icon, this is a very on-land sort of icon.

CRASH!

Seriously.

So, I was out on Delphin, on my first race of the year, and we were on the first stretch heading up wind. Nearing number two buoy, we were far over on the port side near the shore, getting very shallow, but trying to hold off to the last minute before tacking (because taking slows you down so you try to tack as little as possible). The depth guage was reading about 1.3m (from the bottom of the keel) when Ka-Fuck! The keel rammed into a big fucking rock formation and we stopped dead. I was on the fordeck and, along with everyone else, I was flung forward. Fortunately my short trip towards quick swim was arrested by smackinbg the fuck into the port stay (big thick wire holding the mast upright). It hurt, by I was relatively well off compared so some of the others, Tink savaged her elbow and drew blood. But knowone was seriously hurt. Tommorow, if I get the opertunity, I shall dive down and inspect the keel.

Day two of Exe regatta. Out on the RIB again. Let’s be fair, I volunteered for this, I knew what it would entail. It was entirely optional, and 100% my choice. Getting up at a god-awful time in the morning, to go spend my day driving a RIB, hoisting flags, and timing people is a price I voluntarily pay, because I am lucky enough to be able to drive a RIB, and go sailing and shit. I take stuff like that for granted more than I’d like, so I do my best to make up for it. I could say no, I could refrain from the boring sitting around in the hot sun, and only come out sailing on the fun days, I could be picky, and only drive the RIB when I felt like it. It wouldn’t change anything, I’d still be able to drive the RIB and sail and shit, but I do the boring days too, the sitting around for several hours waiting for every last boat to finish a five an a half hour race because I can. Does that make sense? It’s like eating up everything on your plate because people in Africa are starving. The racing around in a RIB with friends, the Tuesday night yacht races and the Fulfords challenge and the click race and shit are the tasty meat, and the committee boat, and rescue boat and general ferrying people around are the nasty boring vegetables. But I eat them up too because people from the land of “Parents don’t own a quarter share in a RIB” are starving.

AAAAAAAAAARGH! Why do I always agree to these things? Got up at some god-awful time in the morning to go drive the RIB as the committee boat for the Exe Regatta (Committee Boat is the boat that, in this case, starts the race and records peoples finishing time and stuff). I am now hidieously tired. I though 7:30 AM was just a myth!

It was quite cloudy with a bit of a sea breeze, so I didn’t notice how much sun I was getting. As I was wearing my motorbike sunglasses, (very good for driving a fast RIB because they don’t curl the air into your eyes like normal ones) I have serious white panda eyes. Bollocks.

A lesson on waves:

So children, tell me what contributed to the size of waves?
No? Well the obvious things are how windy it is, and how strong the tide it. But let’s put those aside for a minute. It’s when stuff all lines up that it’s a bugger. When the tide is flowing out, and the wind is blowing in, and you’re travelling up an estuary, you get big bastard waves, because of the sort of twisty effect that I can’t be arsed to describe properly (just think about it yourself, if it still doesn’t make sense, just accept that I know what I’m talking about). So, what’s the most uncomfortable direction to cross big waves? Heading into them? No, that’s quite fun as you bounce from peak to peak. Going across them is relatively gentle if you don’t mind rocking from side to side like a crazy bugger. Not so good if you get seasick. The real bugger is travelling in the same direction as the waves. You may be going at 20 knots, but relative to the waves you’re not going much faster than them, so you climb up the waves and then smack the fuck down into the valley, then climb up the next one. It’s climbclimbclimbclimbBANG climbclimbclimbclimbBANG climbclimbclimbclimbBANG all the way home. Bearing all this in mind, a small metaphorical prize to anyone who can guess the wind direction, tide direction and my direction of travel to any waves created by the aforementioned weather patterns today.