First Blogaversary

Today is the first birthday of "Messing About In Sailboats". I started this blog a year ago on a whim, on a day when my son was at camp, my wife was working, and none of my mates were around. I wanted to start a blog well ...because I wanted to start a blog. I wanted know what blogging was really about. I do online marketing and web stuff for a living but the fact was that while I could talk a good game about web 2.0 and social media I didn't really understand it.  I also started it because I love everything about sailing including talking about it. For one reason or another I don't get to do that much so this seemed like a good way to satisfy that need. The experience has been surprising and a great one. At first I drove myself to post worthy but in retrospect very boring posts about places I had sailed. I started to wonder why I was doing this but the early encouragement and links from Zephyr, Tillerman and Joe (Pigs on a Beach) Rouse kept me going. After a  month or so, I ran out of steam. I really wondered what I was doing. I was about to quit but I had one post in me that really wanted to get out. I felt passionately then, as I still do now that the mainstream sailing media have really done a bad job online. They just don't seem to get it.  To me the most interesting and imaginative stuff was happening on the sailing blogs. So I did a post called "Why do sailing sites sucks much (blogs excepted)". It created quite a bit of discussion and Tillerman picked it up and the comments really took off. It was then that I finally got it. One of the best comments on Tillerman's blog from Zen summed it up:

"Pros write for a check. Bloggers write to share, not reward. Most times they do not even get comments."

After that I got it, stopped worrying about why I was doing it and just got on with enjoying it, doing what seemed worth sharing, posting stuff that interested me and connecting with the all of you.