Aleria's Adventures

My winter is being spent investigating topics for new articles.  One that is often overlooked is what are the main medical emergencies that sailors face.  Being prepared means knowing what you might have to deal with. I had written before about the different medical emergencies faced by racers and cruisers. In that case I was concerned with coastal cruisers more than distance and blue water sailors. A new survey has documented the types of injuries faced by extreme sailors. Although it mostly covers distance racing, the results can be extrapolated to distance cruising. The excellent summary presentation by Dr. Andrew Nathanson of Brown University concludes that sailing is one of the safest sports with far fewer injuries than five major sports including baseball. And the number of deaths is less than the number in football. Shouldn't these statistics be propagated among the non-sailing critics? Contusions and lacerations are the most common injuries. (I would love to k...

Jenny in Lofoten (OCC Jan Isaksen) I spend the winter thinking about where to go and what to do the next summer. Living here in the west of Ireland makes it difficult because that's the best time at home as well. Do we really want to leave our flower gardens, berry patches, orchard, vineyard and vegetables to someone else to tend while we go off on adventures via sea?  That's always a hard question to answer.

After a two week plus hiatus, during which I ate too much, talked too much and probably imbibed too much, I'm back in the mode of writing about sailing. There are several things driving our activities through the winter.