Fast forward to now

Where last I left the blog, I promised that the blog would continue....

Clearly, it's taken awhile for me to come around. I must admit, once I left Team Delta Lloyd, I ran out of ideas for blog posts. I had a fully diagnosed and incurable case of writers block. While I anticipated continuing to write blog posts about the VOR from the sidelines, I discovered that I had a lot more to say as a race participant than as a race pundit.

On my way home from Singapore, I swung through Boracay, a 1x7km island in the Philippines. I lived there for a month. I was the perfect way to unwind from the VOR. The very humble room that I rented was located above a cafe on a long white sand beach. I spent most all of my time in Boracay kite boarding, running, swimming and eating copious amounts of fresh seafood. When I returned home to San Francisco, I moved into a new apartment - conveniently located about 3 blocks away from the St Francis Yacht Club. The sailing season was close around the corner so I spent the remaining weeks of winter and the early spring enjoying some fabulous skiing conditions in Tahoe, while also working on some business development oriented consulting projects.

As the sailing season started to kick into gear several sailing projects headed my way, including the opportunity to sail in the TransPac as the navigator for Holua, a very successful Santa Cruz 70 program. I immediately jumped at the chance. We've had one event leading up to the TransPac, the Cal Cup, which we won, and have done some offshore testing as part of our preparations. Most of the crew have spent a lot of time with the boat and sailing with each other over the past several years, so I am the 'new guy' on the team.

It's great to be back at it; immersing myself into racing, polar optimizations, sail cross over development, and weather analysis. It also feels good to be writing again. Maybe my writers blog has been cured. I have plenty of blog topics on my mind, so hopefully the Volvo Hotseat blog can pick up where it left off.

-Matt out.

on Thursday I'll post a weather briefing for the Divisions that are starting at 1 pm PDT, later that day.