Round Britain for the RNLI Blog

OK… what have I been up to over the past week since returning from the trip? Well, it certainly isn’t blogging is it?

I have been relaxing mainly. I haven’t even cleaned up the boat yet. I have removed all the urgent stuff like food, toiletries, clothes etc but that is about it. Everything else is still on the boat eactly as it was when I arrived back in Plymouth last week. In a way I have been putting off doing anything that suggests that it is all at an end. Yes I was glad to be home but over all the trip was a fantastic experience and now it is over I feel somewhat deflated and a little down and at a time when I should be ecstatic at my acheivements! Funny how things are isn’t it…

I have started looking at my life now in a slightly different way. I want to make more out of the skills I have and I feel that I have a renewed enthusiasm to work in a boating business in some way. I suppose it doesn’t mean that I will acheive that aim but I can try. At the moment I am not at all sure in what capacity but I am sure that there is a place for me somewhere.

I had a quick look round the boat when I unloaded last week. It is almost completely unscathed from the trip. There is some rubber marks on the hull near the bow where the yacht hit me in Lowestoft but there doesn’t appear to be any gel damage. I will have a closer look later this week.

The boat is now on its rack at Yacht Haven Quay, Plymouth where it lives. I have an engine service booked for the end of next week and then that will kind of signify the end of the event in my mind. I still have the MBM article to write and I want to review whether I will have the bones of a book bt apart from that I need to get my life back to normality asap I believe.

Now that the trip is over I can’t help feeling that the media, in general, missed an opportunity. With more media coverage this trip could have generated so much more for the RNLI but with a few notable exceptions of Plymouth, Isle of Man, Inverness and Peterhead and Lowestoft, there was very little local coverage of the event in spite of Sally’s huge efforts to get them interested and keeping them informed of my schedule so they could catch up with me when in port.

I had no TV coverage and only 2 radio interviews. I was expecting so much more and I have to accept that I misread the media in this respect. 

Still, they are a fickle bunch and I suppose that they have limited resources and have to respond on a day by day basis to the events that are happening locally and it is very possible that at almost every port they had more news-worthy items to report upon. However, I can’t help being disappointed at the very limited coverage I received for the sake of the RNLI.

On a very positive note though… where I did receive coverage I saw, visibly the benefit. I had people coming to my collection point just to talk to me and to donate to the RNLI! That was very hmbling to think that people would put themselves out so much to give to the RNLI. MOB Guardian was well covered and I feel that I did raise the profile of this superb livesaving equipment. I gave out over 2000 business cards on my travels and on the back of most are the 5 basic sea safety points so hopefully, if just one person takes notice, then I feel it was worthwhile.

Another miscalculation of mine was sending a poster to every sailing club. It cost over £800 but I thought it would generate a huge amount of interest but as far as I can tell it probably generated almost none. A lesson for others doing a similar thing perhaps.

Finally, I misjudged the amount of enthusiasm I would generate for sponsors to come on board. I got some great sponsors but I spent a huge effort before the trip trying to persuade businesses to donate just £200 towards the costs of the trip. I couldn’t imagine that I would have trouble finding 22 businesses to give £200 each given what I was offering them in return. I didn’t manage it and only received about half of the sponsorship I was expecting and I have made up the difference out of my own pocket. In a way I am happy with that. I have had a great time and a great experience and gone round Britain in my own boat but it is sad that so few wanted to be a part of the event and to contribute towards such a good cause.

So, although the trip was a huge success from a boating point of view I feel disappointed in many of the non-boating aspects and I have to accept that I was carried away a little with my enthusasm for the event and just assumed that others would be similarly excited. Some were… but nowhere near as many as I hoped or expected and yet general public interest in the event has been excellent. From the messages I have received it is clear that I have inspired many, boaters and non-boaters alike, and the web site hit stats show that hundreds of people followed me round. Yet somehow that has not yet converted into hundreds of donations through the web site…

So I urge you… please, if you followed me round, or even if you didn’t, please make a donation by clicking on the button at the top right of this page. You can do so by credit or debit card and it goes directly to the RNLI. Even £1 will make a difference.

I just wanted to give a big and public THANK YOU to all my various sponsors and helpers that helped me get back to Plymouth safely and in doing so helped me to do good work for the RNLI.

I will list you all in due course and you will be listed in any publications in magazines or books but before I sit down and list you properly I want to thank you personally now. In your own individual ways, you have made this trip possible, bearable, safe and profitable for the RNLI and it would not have been all those things without your help, enthusiasm and support both before and during the trip. You should all feel very proud indeed to have assisted in whatever ways you did, small or large, as I am proud to have worked with you and met you all.

I know that some have benefitted significantly from being associated with the event and others just wanted to be a part of it and just contributing was enough but whatever your hopes for your association with me and this event I hope you thought it worthwhile and I hope too that your experience with this event would encourage you to make similar efforts for good causes in the future.

Many, many thanks to you all.