Hi, and welcome to this month’s blog!

I hope the news we received a couple of weeks ago has lifted the spirits as I know a lot of you have had it tough with being locked down since last March. I hope by now most of you have had the first vaccine and will be back doing the things you love this summer.

This topic is close to my heart – Nutrition.

So, one morning we received a phone call off Katie Bell who is the great manager at Little Oaks Nursery and she asked if we could get fresh fish into the nursery for the kids. We immediately jumped at the task and it’s one of the highlights of the week; when we go to drop it round and we hear the kids shouting “it’s the fisherman at the window!!” This got Richie and me thinking… Why don’t we ring all the nurseries up in the local area and explain how rewarding it has been for Little Oaks? Maybe you have seen the video of Katie talking about it. We thought we could help lots of other children and this is not a monetary call, believe me.

We rang up a few nurseries and the response was a little strange; most said ‘we buy it all in frozen and prepacked’. This is sacrilegious in Grimsby with all of our fishing heritage and great companies who can supply fresh fish all day! I think the problem lies with not only fish but, nutrition in general. For instance, if the first try of anything ‘different’ as a four-year-old is a piece of frozen fish or frozen meat that’s been packaged 200 miles away and shipped here, maybe that’s going to have a lasting effect on what they like in the future? Fish is certainly a bit different taste-wise for children so it’s important to make sure it’s right for their young taste buds!

On our last family holiday to Miami, the waitress was amazed as my 8-year-old boy in the land of burger and fries ordered salmon! By no means do we force this on him; it’s just that he started from an early age of eating great fresh fish. A lot of establishments have procedures they have to follow and I get that, but if we try just a little bit harder we can change the future for tomorrow and start the journey to a healthier lifestyle one small piece at a time.

It helped me in my professional sailing career – whether it be racing across the Atlantic (faster on a plane though, trust me), completing marathons, going to Everest, winning Jiu-Jitsu competitions and as I reach 45 this month, I feel like I’m only just starting.

As always, this is just my point of view and we all think a little different.

I’ll leave you with this quote:

‘Our food should be our medicine and our medicine should be our food’ – Hippocrates

Carpe Diem,

Garry