The Human
Where the thinking actually happens.
I live in Sotogrande, on the southern tip of Spain, because of the wind. Past fifty, Belgian, thirty years of building things, some of which worked.
Most of what I understand about building I learned on water. Sailing does not reward force. It rewards reading conditions you did not choose and trimming for them. You set a course, you hold the horizon, and you accept that the plan will bend long before the direction does.
It was never only sailing. Skiing, windsurfing, kitesurfing, kitefoiling, wing foiling, windsurf foiling with the straps off. I keep picking up new ones, and what I am actually addicted to is not the sport. It is the learning curve. That early stretch where you are visibly bad and getting better fast.
The wind decides which one. When it blows hard I windsurf or kitesurf. Foiling asks less of both the wind and the body, because innovation and skill do the work instead: less effort, more waves. And strength and skill together is still the pinnacle, which is why the purists stay with a windsurf rig and a boat sailed single-handed. None of it competes. It is a quiver, and every one of them is a different teacher.
It is also where I met the people worth knowing. Original thinkers, most of them, and almost none of them measuring a life in money or in fame. In a gale, or in three metres of swell, everybody is the same.
There is a circle around all of it. Friends, people I work with, people I learn from. Some live down the road. Some I see once in a blue moon and it changes nothing. They are where the references, the insights and most of the learning come from, and a good part of the love. New ones arrive. Others drift out. None of it was assembled on purpose, which is exactly why it holds.
I sail a Contessa 32. My mother sails with me when she comes down from Belgium. And my partner is in all of it, the water, the building, the long game.
Why this matters to the work
The water is not a hobby I fit around the building. It is where the thinking happens.
Every framework I use on land came off a boat first. Patience is not a virtue out there, it is a technique. You cannot force a passage. You can only be ready when the wind comes, and be honest with yourself about the state of the boat while you wait.
That is most of what I know about business too.