Follow us please!
The sun was just a faint glow behind Hog Island when I awoke this morning, an experience which is fairly common for me. After checking our boat’s battery status on my way up to ZTC’s salon, the first thing I did after settling in to my seat was to fire up my laptop and check in on Facebook.
Email and Facebook, and (currently) to a lesser extent, Twitter and the new Google+ have become fairly important to us. These social media outlets allow us to keep in touch with our friends, family and acquaintances around the world, all without cost I should add, save for the price of a Wi-Fi signal, if one is paying for it. This blog, which we started on the day our cruising plan was born, has become very important to us and I feel that Facebook, etc. now works hand in hand with it, allowing us to share our experiences more easily.
Our friend Carl, who himself is a social media convert, recently wrote an article on a similar subject. Titled Is Social Media Compatible with The Island Lifestyle, his post debates the value of these things. Given that we met Carl through such avenues, and his internet presence helped him to become a finalist in the contest we have been nagging about for the past few weeks, I think you can guess how he feels about it in the end.
PS: The voting in the Rumologist contest ended last night. A huge Thank You to all of our friends and readers who supported our buddy in this endeavor. We really do appreciate it. Tommy Bahama says that the name of the winner will be released at some point this week. Fingers and toes are now crossed!
So, is all this really worth the time and effort that we put into it? I guess that depends on how you value worth. The ability to keep friends and family abreast of our status has a big value for us. I can only imagine how distraught family members could become in the days prior to such easy communication. But if one only values worth in terms of dollars and cents, then no, I probably have the one of the lowest wages in the world when I put the income our blog generates side by side with the hours I put into it. All that said, I enjoy it. I enjoy the photography, I enjoy the writing and I enjoy the positive comments that we receive after sharing our thoughts and experiences. I look forward to continuing with this and seeing where it leads us. I can only imagine it will be someplace positive.
Want to ride along? Follow Us or Like Us or whatever. 🙂
Facebook – Zero To Cruising – http://www.facebook.com/zerotocruising
Twitter – Zero To Cruising – http://twitter.com/#!/zerotocruising
Twitter – StrengthPLUS – http://twitter.com/#!/strengthplus/
Google+ – Mike – https://plus.google.com/111991041164926887932/posts
Google+ – Rebecca – https://plus.google.com/108235002030603656465/posts
Now for a bunch of misc. pics and a cool video.
An older post-hashing pic with some friends.
On our way back from Carriacou we passed by the schooner Diamant which our friend Scott is working on.
Red at night, sailor’s delight.
So why did we get this squally weather while sailing back to Grenada?
Rebecca playing on our friends’ kayak.
Getting ready for the swim portion of the upcoming triathlon.
Party Time with Cheryl from Happy Times.
In other words, what happens here, stays here.
We had a great turkey and potluck dinner to celebrate Thanksgiving yesterday.
What follows dinner? Karaoke of course.
I am thankful for my beautiful wife.
And finally, here is a cool video shot by our friend James detailing Sunday’s climb up Diamond Rock.
You two do seem to put a lot of time into these posts, M. & R. Not that I’m complaining! We’re getting plenty of ideas for things to do if/when we have the time, finances and boat to get out there.
I don’t trust Facebook one bit, but I use it anyway (with a few ABP filters to stop it from monitoring everything else I do on the Web). Without it, you’re too easily left out of the loop these days.
I don’t trust Google either, but I still use their services; they’re convenient, after all, and I’m careful to ensure that anything important or sensitive goes through other, secure channels. Google probably has a very warped idea of what I do online, given that almost nothing of value goes through my account there. Maybe G+ will replace FB, maybe not; for now, a presence on both is called for.
Good blogs (i.e. this site) end up in the RSS/Atom feeds. Anything that doesn’t provide RSS is unlikely to be read regularly by us busy technical types; sorting the wheat from the Facebook chaff can be a real time waster. (Of course, now that you two are showing up in my RSS, FB and G+, I can’t get away from ya!)
For those who have watched the Terminator movies, I think Google will become like Skynet. 🙂
You keep it going Mike I love your blogs, we are going to going from zero to cruising in the next 3 years Kind regards Chris
Looking forward to hearing about your experiences doing so, Chris.
When there is info. & pictures around as good as you give us readers, then they will also get lots of followers, you have & still are supplying real good info & i regularly “take notes” on/from it for when we are able to do what we wish to do.
Keep up the gr8t work
thanks
Thanks. 🙂
I love reading our blogs! I have a similar desire to set sail to lands unknown and am in the process and working towards that goal in the distant future. Reading these blogs keeps the wind in my sails! Hope we can share a drink on a far off coastline one day. Cheers guys.
Looking forward to that drink, Shawn.
Mike, I’m sure glad you and Rebecca enjoy doing what you are doing, and I’m glad you like writing this blog and taking awesome pictures, because I sure enjoy reading it!
Thanks for following along, Helen.