What is it all for?

10 November 2026

Session on the Sea · Friday 6 November 2026 · on land · Port Melbourne Yacht Club

For once, not an on-water day. Not because the weather wasn’t right, but because it looked like it would become another solo day, and with that, an opportunity to use the time for some preparations.

But at some point I also started to wonder what all of this is for. I spend way too much time, time I don’t really have, on sailing. And not even sailing myself, but trying to create an adventurous and challenging environment for young people. I think it is one of the most important things I can currently spend my time on. I do it for free. In fact, in reality, we as a family even pay for a fair amount of it. We use our boat and some of our gear, and we pay for everything of ours that breaks. We don’t do it in isolation; the whole yacht club and the Sea Scouts we do it with are volunteer-run, running on an insane amount of unpaid volunteer time that never makes it into any report or balance sheet. It’s obviously not entirely without self-interest. That would be concerning. But all of our youth work started not with a grand vision of purpose and a mission “to ignite potential and build the future leaders of tomorrow”. Entirely selfishly, it started with a “problem”: Sailing with your parents can be, well, limited in fun by design. And so history took its course. In parallel came my observations on education in general. That’s the short version of how we ended up with everything around “Aurora Sailing”. And then, finally, and frankly a bit surprisingly, it turned out to be a lot of fun for us too.

But there are limits to the fun. And this week was a week where you start to wonder whether all of this makes sense, for us, for me, in general. This year’s uni students have handed in their final assignments; in terms of productivity, 2026 feels nearly over. With that, my review cycle, which covers all projects, is coming up, so the question isn’t only emotional; it’s part of the OS.

So, while I was at the petrol station filling up three powerboat tanks for sailing school tomorrow, and fixing up one of the boats, hours of time that once again are mainly for the benefit of others (instead of either going sailing myself or doing something slightly more productive), I was wondering whether any or all of these sailing activities made sense.

After all of the work was finished, I got a bit distracted from those thoughts, as I saw Matthew sail back in from a short afternoon out. As he packed up, we started chatting, and it all began, as so often in this series, with: what are you up to?

“Just refuelling the boats for tomorrow,” I said. “Ah, Gregor, you are a good man. It is so important what you are doing.”

Hmm… interesting.

Matthew, who is also part of the sailing school (the adult one, which is also all volunteer-run), wanted to know what we were going to do tomorrow.

The forecast is horrid.

I said we would get the kids out on the water if in any way possible; not sure yet how, but that’s the plan. It will be wet, very windy and very cold. If the forecast delivers, quite possibly just “bad”. But, I said, that’s part of it, and it’s important to get out.

“It’s so important, what you are doing, because they learn for life. You will see: they make it through this, and the amount of confidence it builds is impressive. That they get a chance to learn, to experience, and to show they can overcome those situations builds confidence for life. It’s great.”

Well, yes. As if we had not seen it just a few days ago. Three 10–12-year-olds on a really big boat (for them), a 16-year-old on the tiller of the safety boat, ready to jump in if needed. Strong, cold wind, big waves, the only boat on the water, and they handled it with confidence: teaching each other, taking turns, going through interesting manoeuvres. And then, just before sunset, in a now-really-impressive wind, they tipped the boat over: capsized. No panic, no screams, just a yell of “Are you OK?”, and the crew checking in on each other: “Yeah,” and even, “Yeah! I did a backflip!” Over five minutes, which felt much longer even just watching, they worked together to bring it all up again and sail home, with smiles on their faces, breaking our speed record surfing a wave while doing it.

Few adults would have been out and able to do it. I was not needed. In fact, I am needed less and less, if at all. They probably sail better than me, and they do their briefings better. Last Saturday, an 8-year-old was telling everyone in a crew of 12 teenagers plus adults: “We have a 15–20 knot wind from the west; a squall is expected later, and a wind shift to the south, with a maximum of 15 °C, so it’s going to be cold and wet.”

I had to tell his dad later that that was very impressive, and he said, “You know, it must have been last year, when you made everyone do the briefings and weather forecasts for the sessions. He likes technology; he checked two different apps this morning before we came!”

I told Matthew. And I had my answer. That’s what it’s for.

“But you know, Gregor, you also take your family to Ethiopia…” And, yes, what a trip that was, for all of us, a story for another time. But our conversation turned to Ethiopia, a beautiful country with so much to offer, now falling back into civil war and, remarkably for me, nearly to the month the people we met had predicted.

From the sadness of the Horn of Africa, Matthew changed tack to a more positive trajectory: hope. Hope that maybe not the whole world is going crazier by the day, with recent elections in Serbia, the US and other countries potentially signalling that democracy can work when things threaten to get a little too out of hand. That raised a question about what the AfD in Germany is doing (as if I would really know from here). But I could offer that probably everyone has forgotten about them, amid the fun and games that the elections in Berlin have become!

Oh, and then, with that, to the big question facing all of us here in Victoria: who to vote for.

Which is a really good question. And a really good one to end with.

Session on the Sea runs Fridays from Port Melbourne Yacht Club through to mid-December. How it started: Your last meeting of the week.