Live and Deadly

Hi all,

Sorry it’s been a little quiet on this radar recently, but I can assure you, it’s not as if nothing is going on. My life is one continuous washing machine, I sometimes think!

Excitingly, my book won an award. That’s right, an award! I was invited to the Maritime Media Awards a little over a week ago and I was really chuffed to be presented by Countess Mountbatten with ‘The Mountbatten Maritime Award for best literary contribution Certificate of Merit for the most inspirational book’. It was a really fun evening and it was great to chat with loads of other authors and other sea faring chaps. I even had a good chat with the First Sea Lord!

On Friday I was due to be getting my first flying solo in, but the weather was…. let’s just say, a little naff. I turned up to my lesson anyway in hope of the fog clearing but as we couldn’t even see the tops of the electrical pylons, we deemed it unsafe to fly. It was still good to rock up to the lesson though as I was able to sit down with Liam and go over the plan for the next couple of weeks and also start on revision for my meteorology exam. I have an advantage in that my weather knowledge is already pretty vast, but still it’s a lot different up at 10,000ft rather than at sea level that’s for sure.

I drove back down to Southampton on Friday night as I had an extremely early start on Saturday… 4am, ouch! This was because I was the guest on BBC2’s wildlife children’s show ‘Live and Deadly’ I had to arrive so early as we had two complete rehearsals to do before the actual live show. It was so much fun filming the show and the presenters were a great laugh to be with. Thank you to the whole crew for making me feel so welcome! ‘Live and Deadly’ is a roadshow and they have toured around the whole country doing wacky and crazy stuff.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/cbbc/episode/b00vz5bz/Live_n_Deadly_Episode_9/

Sunday brought a day out on the water which I was really chuffed about. I was out sailing with a writer who is looking to write a book about solitude so wanted to know about my experiences of sailing around the world and particularly focus on the mental side and so to give him a good insight into what it really is like on the water.  I took him out for a day which was great fun. My dad came along to help with the sailing side and it was great to sail with him also. Despite us both doing loads of stuff on the water, we haven’t actually sailed together for almost a year now. How crazy is that.

It’s back into the fun of university now for the time being, but I’ve got flying lessons booked for Thursday and Friday so hopefully I can get up solo then….fingers crossed!

Mike