It’s been a while since I have spent some time with Dylan Winter and his outstanding “keep turning left” series, aka ktl. If you haven’t checked out out ktl you are missing somethings special. I have blogged about it before so if you know all about ktl skip a few paras.
Dylan Winter is a professional documentary maker and being a former BBC guy, he’s very good. He writes well, has a unique style and his films are totally absorbing.
Back in 2008 he set out to sail round in Britain in his 19 foot
“shitbox” (his words not mine) verrrrrry slowwwwwwwwly, basically in a
series of languid day sails mostly at about 2 kts. By doing this Dylan
observes and narrates as he goes. You can see a sample here.
Each time I watch one, I remember what a beautiful country Britain is,
how many people get on the water in so many different ways and most of
all how much I miss by not taking my time to enjoy what’s right in front
of my eyes. Less time fiddling with backstays and more time observing
the coastline.
I get lost in these videos. After some of the tougher days in the last year, there’s been nothing better than plopping down in front of the computer with a good bottle of wine and soaking in his voyage up the Stour or encounters with Old Gaffers.
After producing over 30 or so 10-20 minute long mini-documentaries and running them on Youtube, Dylan has moved the whole shooting match to his own site. Now rather than watch the videos in Youtube’s sub-optimal environment you can download HD quality videos to your desktop. Understandably, Dylan is charging for this but for a mere $5 you can watch at will for three months.
I didn’t do it for a while, mostly because it seemed like a bit of a headache. For the price of a sandwich and a bit of Paypallery to wade through, you get to enjoy, what is in my humble opinion, the best online sailing bloggy, youtubey thing on the whole damn interwebs.
One feature which you should not miss is the map feature. Dylan has used Google maps to show where each video was taken and you can navigate to the videos this way if you want to. It’s pretty neat.
What are you waiting for. Stop wasting your time on my blog. Go check out ktl.