I must apologise for the past months of not posting much.
The fact is the blog has taken a big back seat to life, good and bad.
Way back when I began the thing the reason was connecting to a family in LA after seeing a memorial to their son, a lad lost while on an Indonesian surf trip, and my acute sense of what they must have been feeling given I had a couple of my own.
It evolved quickly into both a diary of sorts, and an ongoing letter to my Dear Old Dad . After he left us the fire went out a bit, and the other stories, about kids and what they get up to, started to get a bit too personal to share, as one, in particular, started to get up to more than I expected, more than I could bear, and more than I could fairly let the big wide world become privy to.
Is that improving? Perhaps, but I will be trying to be here more often. There are some good things happening.
As I have written earlier, the Reef, our collaboration of film and orchestra, is on a trail to becoming a feature of sports.
That it is taking longer than one would expect is no surprise if you know anything about the machinations of the film world. It is not easy.
My other project, and hopefully my later life career, is as Creative Director of Great Ocean Quarterly.
This was an idea I've been ruminating on for about three years now. I'd wanted to do something about "living Near The Sea" for quite a awhile, but as a businessman I really do fall short and decided, for this particular bright idea, to find partners.
Happily I found them, in Mark Willett and Jock Serong. We incorporated a couple of weeks back and have begun the build for a launch in November.
Mark is a great business head, a former round the world yacht racer, manic surfer and an old friend. Jock, as editor, brings some heavy writing skills, a planet brain, and again, his connection to the sea is strong.
His first book, Quota, is being released later this year.
The whole idea is a Sea Informed Life. Arts, ideas, very good writing, all connected by proximity, be it emotional or physical, to the sea. We have some great contributors on board with more to come, including a few friends from blogland who have the writing chops to help me fill a brief to myself of having "other coasts' as companions to the area we will feature most, this glorious Great Ocean Coast of Victoria, way down here in Oz.
As we progress I'll keep you posted with enough to make everyone want to subscribe because we are very serious about this, and fully intend to make it fly.
On top of it all the surf has been pumping, though for the past few days the Big Wet has set in, and the Devil Winds too.
The pics following range from last Sunday to yesterday afternoon, with the bad winds in the middle. Enjoy your fill of chill.
