When our noble editor first suggested that I wrote a blog I must admit that I declined, partly from a Ludditic stance of not knowing what a blog actually was, and partly because I doubted that I would ever succeed in producing enough copy for a weekly offering. I must admit that in truth such a demand was never made of me, and I was eventually persuaded to participate by the notion of ‘The Visitor’s Berth’ – an envisaged blog area where several like-minded contributors could insert their pieces as and when the inspiration took them. I hope that the seeds of ‘The Berth’ will flower in due course with fellow scribblers joining me to ease the burden of the re-institution of the Yachting Monthly Blog, though I doubt any of us could reach the heady standards set by the likes of Dick Durham.

Thus, craftily tricked by that arch cad Kieran Flatt into putting my head above the parapet, I became ‘The Reluctant Blogger’ and have endured a crash course in what blogging entails. My approach often seems to concentrate less on writing a diary of my activities and experiences in favour of more emphasis on the thoughts and observations that catch my imagination. As a result, I wonder if my style falls short of the content expected by habitual blog readers, and whether I should rebrand these offerings as pieces of whimsy.

I admit to relishing the anonymity that a lack of participation in the realms of Twitter and Tweeting rewards, and steadfastly ignore the offers of being ‘Linkedin’ and suchlike that appear in my email inbox. I am not so backward to refuse the joys of email and texting, though I am touchingly mystified by the proliferation of people who I have never met who are so concerned about my need for sexual augmentation products. While I appreciate their thoughtfulness, their insistence does get just a little tiring when they continually succeed in bypassing my spam blockers.

But I digress into the provinces of whimsy, and that is the point. I gather that many dedicated bloggers record their online diaries with a near religious fervour. I am not sure that I would care to read their daily experiences unless they were recording fascinating and unusual activities far from those that fill my own humdrum life. Indeed, as a practising GP, although I am told of many diverse and sometimes unbelievable experiences, I am bound by the confidentiality of the ‘Hypocritical’ Oath into remaining silent about them. This could may explain why I find it so easy to expound theories and ideas that actually bear so little in the way of truth – with a brain packed full of unrepeatable data the pressure has to be released in a safe and controlled way, which am sure factored my entry into the sphere of yachting journalism. Please do not conclude that much of which I write automatically comes from the area of ground immediately under the back end of a bull, though I have, like all writers, been known to make mistakes – one recent such a typo involved accidentally raising the peak syzygy tide at Avonmouth to 16.65m when the source indicated 14.65m – and the keys for numbers 4 and 6 are not even adjacent! Apologies to those who noticed, and admonishments to those who did not.

So, while my style seems to emulate a moth fluttering round the Tilley Lamp of Whimsy, we will all just have to pray for the emergence of other proper factual bloggers to fill up the pontoon of The Visitors Berth.

– Jonty Pearce