Sitting down and worrying about the small stuff whilst preparing Skylax for sea, I remember how it used to be.

I first stepped onto Seven Tenths more than a quarter of a century ago – literally clueless about offshore sailing and happily embarking on a trip from the Azores to Gibraltar. Sure, I knew the rudiments of sailing.

I didn’t get seasick, and I had assurances that the skipper was of the more reliable kind. Not that I really knew that at the time – it was a punt. A chance opportunity that my younger self felt she should take. Turned out ok, as it happened.

I loved it. Not much responsibility – the helm was tied off as a rudimentary autopilot, but an understanding that I should re-fix or steer when needed, reef the jib when necessary, call the skipper to help reef the main when it got too boisterous, or vice versa.

Take your turn at drinks and cooking, keep things clean. And for that you got a night watch of stars, bioluminescence, and time. Time to dream, but not so much that you miss any traffic, not that there was much. The odd whale perhaps.

Seven Tenths didn’t have much in the way of comms. We set off with a decent forecast for a ten day-ish passage. We hoped to pick up the long wave BBC Shipping bulletin closer to mainland Europe, but it wasn’t a given.

I reckon I tend to overthink stuff now. Old Bob McDavitt, the weather router guru down in NZ, used to call it ‘analysis paralysis’ when referring to yachties who pored over forecasts before their jump-offs from Fiji or Tonga on the trip out of the tropics to escape hurricane season and spend the summer in Godzone.

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Sure, this particular trip is often not straightforward, with a high pressure windless zone likely followed by the next low out of the Tasman. How low the low is, and how fast it arrives, will govern your trip. The trick is to prepare to weather the power of the system, or to get into NZ before it arrives.

The point being, have we got too much information? Have we put too much faith in our devices to give us reasons that actually deter us from doing what we want to do – go sailing.

Just because we have constant access to weather information, it really doesn’t mean that it will be spot on, and yet forum requests for ‘the best/most accurate forecast’ are constant. Well here’s the thing: no forecast can be totally accurate.

Sure, it’s a heck of a lot better than it was, but no model can make total sense of our beautiful blue planet’s swirling weather systems, particularly given the monstrous upheaval of man-made climate change. Add in the localised geography of enclosed sea areas like the Med, say, and the models are, frankly, on a hiding to nothing.

We sailors should remember that a well-prepared boat and crew can cope with most of the vagaries sent from the skies, rather than bemoan the inaccuracies of technology.

Certainly, I know a lot more about what needs to be right on a boat before we even think about casting off, and really that hasn’t changed so much. But all the extraneous stuff? We don’t need it. Just a recent forecast, a fettled boat and the desire for the elemental stuff.

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