Losing My Religion.

It Starts With Me Selling The Skerry.

It seems as though a lot happened today : firstly I did my first fast in several years, then I spent all morning (and most of yesterday) cleaning and reorganizing the working space outside the workshop, after that I suddenly had a brainwave about framing up and boarding in the last of the 4 walls and finally I got a bid on the little Skerry which should see it sold. That’s been a long time not happening and iv’e had to revise the listing each time it didn’t sell plus I reduced it’s reserve price. Anyway ; that’s the last boat finally gone and all I have left is several boat anchors, a few warps and a box of odd boat parts and cordage.

Later today i’ll get the oars and the rig down from where they’re stored up against the boatbuilding space roof and have a go at bolting on the plywood ‘ears’ at the stern to take the buyers lighting board. Unlike some of my other boats I never developed any great affection for the Skerry as I never used it as intended – i’m not going to have a sad on when it goes.

The things that happened in a bit more detail.

Fasting : ridiculous as it may sound, I have fasted before, in fact iv’e done close to 100 hour fasts in the past. For sure it had some good results but as soon as I went back to my half man – half biscuit diet the weight just came back on. In retrospect it was always a losing game as I never took into account the huge insulin spikes I was causing myself with my high sugar/high carb diet. It was never going to work until I had my natural insulin under control and that was never going to happen when I could go through a pack of dark chocolate digestives in a few days. I’m pretty sure that I still have small insulin spikes as I still eat quite a lot of bread, pasta and rice although I am reducing those things over time.

One of the big changes though is that I blunt the insulin spikes by going for short but regular walks throughout the day and always finish the day’s eating window with a post meal walk around the lanes ; it’s only a couple of thousand steps but combined with the fact that I don’t eat at all until the next day means that I spend most of the night in a low insulin state – which in turn means that my body can be metabolizing rather than storing fat. The physiology of this is quite simple : our bodies use insulin to protect us from the effects of too much circulating sugar and instead store it as visceral fat. The only way that the fat storage signal turns off is when we go into a low insulin state.

Today won’t have changed my metabolic state very much although I did note that I dumped more water (peed a lot although i’m not sure that was because the weather has gone from warm/hot and dry to cool and wet. I may only have been retaining a lot of water as I drank a lot and didn’t pee much for several days. The only way of telling is for me to take another weight in the morning ; any large drop can only be due to fluid balance.

Reorganizing, throwing out rubbish and sweeping out the exterior work space. Most of the accumulated stuff from the workshop is now stored under or on top of the long bench cum strongback that I built the Pathfinder on. I had intended being able to use the bench and that space to carry on with practical projects but it never worked out. Out of a bench space that is 18 feet long and 2′ 6″ wide I was reduced to a tiny space at one end and even that slowly accumulated more and junk until it was unusable. The other problem is that most of the stuff that I actually need – fixings,fastenings and many of my tools are in boxes or crates buried under even more junk underneath the bench.

It took me most of one day to pull out each box, decide what to keep and bag the rest plus a lot of time sweeping out the dust and dead leaves, That’s another 8 full bin bags to go and only this morning did I dare face the end where all of my scrap timber, plywood is heaped up against the end wall of the garden. Most of the wood is now in a smaller pile at the side of the drive : i’m only keeping what I can use of the 2″ x 4″ for framing the workshop walls and iv’e told my good neighbor to have at it with the rest – he’ll have a load to use as kindling.

This afternoon I can actually move around in the space and even wheel my new plywood dolly (Dolly Parton) in and out of the workshop : that was one of the big aims of the day as I intend to use it for the next plywood order which arrives this week. It also means that my recumbent trike is in a much better spot although it too is covered by the concrete dust that was blowing about the place during the warm and windy weather : that also caused my second visit to the minor injuries unit when I got a facefull and eyefull of the same dust resulting in corneal abrasions.

Today’s brainwave : Having been struggling with the job for days and not finding the obvious solution, I went into the workshop later on with the realization that I new how to deal with the difficult final wall. I won’t bore you with the details of what the problem is but suffice to say that my earlier solutions relied on making complex patterns first – it was a bit like dealing with the inside of a boat.

Losing my Religion.

The thing i’m talking about comes to mind as “What we’re talking about when we’re talking about football – it’s not about football”. Based on a 90’s hit tune from American band R.E.M. ; Losing My Religion isn’t necessasarily about religion. Some music critics say that it can mean whatever you want it to ; unrequited love or the loss of a loved one perhaps. I hear it as the loss of something that was once important and had meaning in my life : not just sailing as that can be read as a mere trivial pursuit for middle class twats at the weekend in Cowes. For me it’s more like the loss of identity following my strokes when I had to give up most of my life as an outdoorsman – sailing was simply one facet of that.

Another way of expressing the same thing is that it’s a loss of enthusiasm or in fact enthusiasms ; iv’e had many and whatever iv’e been into at various times in my life iv’e really been into. Whether that be motorcycles, mountaineering & rock climbing, canoeing & sea kayaking, long distance ultralight hiking and ultimately, sailing – although sailing and the sea has been a consistent background buzz in my life since my twenty’s. Out of all the things that I remember and those that iv’e forgotten it’s the many small details and large events in my sailing life that still stick ; I distinctly remember the first time I was taken out in a little Hilbre Island One Design in the Menai straits and I definitely remember my last trip with my Hunter Liberty WABI ”’ as that was when we were dismasted off Berry head.

In another way I think of it as like the name of a rock climbing route ‘Released From Treatment’ as often it seems more like the fading of an unhealthy obsession. Goodbye to all that !