The blog is back!

It is with great relief that I can confirm the Oldmansailing blog is back. It has been an anxious week waiting for it to reappear.

I left Jost Van Dyke in the British Virgin Islands on June 11th. On June 13th, 318 miles in the vague direction of a waypoint somewhere 100 miles east of Bermuda, I received an email (I would have received an email if I had some way of doing so) telling me that my domain name oldmansailing.com was about to auto-renew.

Five days later, there was another saying it had not been possible to take payment because the card on file had expired. There followed several more until, on the 28th: “Important – suspension notification.”

Of course, I was unaware of all this – blissfully unaware, as it happened, since the wind had filled in and on the 28th, I see that I recorded a day’s run of 131 miles.

The first inkling that anything was wrong came on July 23rd off the Scillies when a rather tentative mobile signal wandered south from St Marys and informed me that gmail had received no emails for me since June 10th.

That couldn’t be right, surely? That was six weeks. Six weeks without anyone offering to fix my bad posture or set me up with a new wife from south-east Asia?

Complaining to Google seemed about as useful as shouting at the weather so, instead, I called my domain-hosting company – the one connects to the other. I gave them my new card details. They withdrew what seemed to be rather a lot of money and said they hoped to recover the name (providing nobody else had grabbed it) and then restore all the content (no guarantees there, either).

This was slightly alarming. “The Content” dates back to 2017 – how many hundreds of posts is that? Everything from playing kissy-kissy with a racing pigeon off the Casquets Traffic Separation Scheme to “Death on the Foredeck” halfway up the Deben. Was it possible that all this could just have gone pop into the ether, never to be seen again?

I started playing the “What’s best about this situation” game. All I could come up with was “Well, if I do have to start again, next time I’ll keep control myself – instead of being held over a barrel by the web designer who refused to release the password and wanted me to carry on paying him forever. As it is, whenever I want to change something fundamental, I have to get someone in India to hack into it.

So now it’s all back up there, and I can relax.

Relaxing is what you do in Falmouth – it seems to consist entirely of pubs and restaurants.

And yes, the return from the West Indies was very straightforward, thank you: 3,437 miles, 44 days, nothing important broke or fell over the side.

But I did run out of Pringles 100 miles short of The Lizard.

16 Responses to The blog is back!

  • I was beginning to wonder….

  • Welcome back! Glad nothing important broke or fell over the side. I’m in my van on the coast near Dover. I still have Pringles.

  • Glad you’re back! When folks get to be our age and then go radio silent, it makes friends worry.

  • John, you left us after having dinner on our charter catamaran on June 10th. It was a true pleasure to meet you. Our whole crew has been checking in your progress daily. So glad you made it. You should find some young person to help you backup your content!

  • Would love to “sea” some recent photos, especially of the waterfront in Falmouth if you had any!

  • Welcome back, I was chatting to a fellow sailer about your antics only three weeks ago and said you were homeward bound from the BVI, but when I searched you on AiS it had you still enjoying the Caribbean sun off the BVI. I told him perhaps you had a change of heart, not ready for the British weather perhaps? Good to hear your home safe, just hope you don’t need too much reliance on the AIS…!
    P.s I should say it was through an app on my phone that I found you, hopefully the rescue services have a slightly better means of detection.

  • Welcome back John.

  • What a nightmare with that technology! Lovely to have you back though, enjoy your blogs.

  • Oh no. Out of Pringles. NOW that is a disaster.

  • Nice to see you’re back

  • Hello John
    Good to hear from you en to know that you are still alive and kicking!
    We missed your blog and were abouth to send you an email abouth it.
    Very nice too your blog is back!!

    Rob & Anke
    Holland

  • Can’t seem to add a pic here John but saw your “artwork” in Horta the other day and it needs patching up. 🙂

  • Thank God, I can get my sanity back on track again!
    From an armchair sailor!

  • So glad you are back! Your followers may be few, but you are a huge inspiration, especially to this 70 year old sailor. Keep on keepin’ on John.

  • Pringles… Terrible.

    Never touch then, artificial rubbish.

  • No! Not the Pringles!
    Glad to see you’re still onboard and online.

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