We are obsessed with the weather. This obsession has served us very well over thousands of years - ultimately for the purposes of survival - food - crops, grazing, water, safety etc.

The weather shapes our days, our moods, our plans - often without us noticing.

At sea and on the water, it’s a different story. Weather is our focal point. Every decision, whether cruising or racing, flows from the wind, cloud patterns, pressure, the waves and swell - however localised.

The weather is something you read, you feel, you live in and optimise for.

The weather can be predictability and uncertainty, and in many ways, us sailors and seafarers have front row seats to the magnitude and at times, the extremes, of the weathers that governs our planet.

In this episode we’re speaking with sailor and meteorologist Tom Harrison, to explore what the weather can teach us if we know what to look for and how to read it.

For most of us around the world, wetsuits are a necessity to getting out on and staying in or under the water. There’s an emotional element too - these slippery suits allow us to spend hundreds of hours doing what we love - our pleasures and past times - surfing, supping, diving, snorkelling, foiling, kiting, body-boarding and sailing.

But like many modern textiles, neoprene doesn’t come with an easy end-of-life solution.

Our old wetsuits are rarely recycled, often burned or ending up in landfill.

So what happens when someone decides that isn’t good enough?

Let’s speak with Emma and Peter from Circular Flow — a team working to crack one of the watersports industry’s toughest waste problems by collecting, recycling, and re-using old wetsuits with the aim of creating a genuinely circular material.

In this episode, we’ll dig into why neoprene has traditionally been so hard to deal with, what it takes to build a closed-loop system, and how we, us sailors, surfers, divers etc, can get involved.

Connecting young people to water, the sea, is a topic so close to our hearts. As the bodies of research around ‘Blue Health’ in particular have grown, we better understand that time spent on or near water has been shown to reduce stress, anxiety and depression, promoting emotional resilience and improved mental well-being.

For children and young people - it can be teamwork, confidence-building, inclusion and self-esteem and bigger still - dreams, hopes and ambitions.

Here’s Greg Bertish, Founder of The Little Optimist Trust & Sailing Therapy Academy in Cape Town, to help us understand more.