Its been a while

Way back when I first started this blog, I said it was to keep in touch with friends and family while we prepared for, then cruised, the Great Loop. When we had to stop looping, I continued to blog because a number of friends and other readers asked me to.

I am not a fan of social media, and I refuse to have anything to do with the likes of Facebook and Twitter - I have heard too many horror stories and seen too many people screwed up by the kind of nasty idiocy that those types of communications can engender. While I appreciate that blogging is a form of social media, I have always tried to keep what I write as general as possible and for public information and (I hope) not for the purposes of denigrating my fellow human beings, or attempting to get pecuniary benefits as a result. I am a great believer in the internet as a provider of information and a place for the sharing of knowledge and it saddens and angers me when the mean and dishonest amongst us use it for bullying, misinformation, and lining their own pockets at the expense of others.

Last year we had an incident with our boat at anchor that involved a third party and I wrote about it in the blog at the time. I later updated things as they transpired, but was determined to keep anything personal towards the participants from being posted, and I believe I managed to do this. Unfortunately, things did not work out well between ourselves, the other party and their insurance company, and we ended up having to take action in the Disputes Tribunal (AKA Small claims court) to get a just settlement. At the hearing, which the opposing insurance company did not have the courtesy to attend but sent their Loss adjuster instead, I was appalled that he had taken selective excerpts from my blog as "evidence" against me. When this selectivity was criticised by the adjudicator and the loss adjuster was duly reprimanded, he then resorted to personal attacks on my seamanship and honesty by further manipulating some of my blog content. Fortunately I had hard evidence in the form of my ships log books (and yes...they are a legal document and admissible in a court of law) that counteracted his misinformation, and which the judge accepted. Accordingly, the ruling was made in our favour.

I am tempted to name and shame this Loss Adjuster who perpetrated such unprofessional and distasteful behaviour, but that would make me a hypocrite. If he ever happens to read this (and I hope he will), he will know who he is, and I hope he will feel thoroughly embarrassed by his actions (but I expect he won't).

Suffice to say, the whole sordid episode put me even further off participating in social media, hence the lack of blog postings since. However, we have been on a couple of trips since then and are planning on more that are very pertinent to the blog, and having it continued would make it easier to communicate, rather than individually emailing people, as I have been doing. So I have decided to resurrect it and will start by retrospectively posting about our Great Land Loop Trip we did last year in the USA!!!! (never say never)

Presuming I still have any readers left!