My brother and me are pretty good friends, we didn’t grow up together but we still managed to get to know each other quite well. I guess having a united front against a childhood nightmare helped to bring us together as well.

Anyway, my bro found a new love in his life a few years ago; sailing. He stumbled upon it and fell all the way, right away. Since then, bringing sailing into the conversation has been the best way to not have to say anything again for a good while! I’m exactly the same about diving…

My view on boats is that they bring me to a divesite, and supply comfort on the way back to shore. You’re not supposed to have to really do much with the boat during the journey. Of course, there has to be someone driving it, or whatever it is you do with a boat with an engine in it… I don’t get seasick on a diveboats, not anymore anyway, when I first started getting into diving I was a bit wary of them, as much as anyone.

My view on sailboats was confirmed and set in stone yesterday; I don’t particularly like them. My bro’s got a rather small sailing vessel, about 7 meters long, 21 feet for you imperialists. Not very big. But it’s his first one, something to learn on. He’s had it for three years and finally managed to coax me out on it earlier this week. The outwards journey was a rather calm and only mildly nauseaous affair, but the return was a completely different story alltogether.

We had pretty much full on headwind and had to sail towards a completely different target to get into calmer seas to then put the small motor into play, that doesn’t sound like much at the moment but just believe me; those few hours during the first part of the return qualifies as somewhere on the top five of my least liked moments in my life. It wasn’t a scared of death situation at all, I was 100% sure that we were going to be just fine, I just didn’t want to be there! I was just sitting there waiting for it to be over.

That’s when my bro announced ‘hmm, this is just taking us even further from home, this trip will take a looooong while’. Great. Thanks. Just what I wanted to hear.

Well, we finally reached calmer seas and started the engine, and instantly it became a diveboat again, engine powered, going against the waves, no problems at all. I ‘drove’ pretty much the whole way home and everything was fine. We even put the sails up again on the last stretch, mainly to dry them a bit but also because we were going the right direction with regards to the wind again, and with perfectly calm sea. That was all fine, no problems there.

So we’ve figured out that I’m an in-shore kind of sailor, the sissy kind, the ones that stay in confined waters, I would probably enjoy sailing on a lake. Pah. I think I’d rather be no sailor at all than a sissy one.

Sorry bro, you get to keep the sailing for yourself, I’ll stick to my diving and surfing instead.

So today is my last day at IG. It feels weird to even write it like that, imagine how weird it feels to actually be able to walk out later today and not have to come back again! I’ve been here just shy of five years now so I guess it’s a normal feeling… but still.

I’ve handed over as well as I can, which isn’t really that well, I don’t write things down, everything is kept in my head as I go along. Well, I’ve had a few sessions with the people that are left behind and they know they’re very welcome to email me any questions along the way.

Everything is getting very real now, I’ve got a grand total of seven days left in the UK! I’m not sleeping very well, mulling things over in my head every night… I just really want to get going. Still got some fairly scary things to get sorted, like finalizing the re-mortgage, pray that the bathroom work goes well, pray that the rental of the flat goes well. And so on.

But hey, from the end of today I no longer have job!

I’ve bought my flight now, I managed to get business flying out and economy coming back. Well, I’m not sure I’ll be using the return flight! The very nice lady in the smiled at me and asked ‘Are you sure you’re going to do this? You’ll never be able to fly economy again!’ Well, what can I say? I’ll take my chances! So I’m flying out on Tuesday 28th of October and will arrive in Cebu Wednesday evening.

I’ve been in contact with the freediving school there and they’ll help me book a room on the beach for a month beforehand and then probably try to get a place with a kitchen and whatnot if I decide to stay there longer.

And then, on the flipside of the karma-account some mother-effer stole my bicycle last weekend. Obviously I was going to sell the bike before I leave, and it got me thinking that I might be able to get the insurance money for it instead! No chance, getting the bike replaced instead, so now I still have to sell it. Damn it.