Finally, we have seen Aleria

-

 


After a year and a half of not being allowed to travel out of Mayo, most of which was no more than 5 km from home, we were allowed to go to Aleria in Kilrush on the Shannon River. We expected the worst. What was there was not nearly as bad in some ways, but awful in others. 

Yes, she is dirty and we need to clean her up, but there was no mould below. Yahoo! The dehumidifier worked. The brightwork took a beating so I will be stripping it down, which it needed anyway. The first day we managed to get half the bottom sanded and painted. On day 2, we sanded and painted the other half except for the top along the boot stripe. That we plan to do tomorrow. 

I think we got lucky in that we had taken everything off so there was excellent air circulation below and nothing to rot. People we know had to discard so many things after leaving a boat for that long. They need TLC.

So back to Kilrush tomorrow. Let's see if we can get her home. It's been way too long. 

Our nephew, Cormac, departed the Abacos today on his first Atlantic crossing. I'll be keeping fingers crossed for a safe and exhilarating passage. 




Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Top 30+ Sailing Movies

-
Image
Wow, what a cool collection! Great ideas for a sailing movie club.  When I started to compile this list, I thought I'd come up with maybe ten movies. But as I got deeper into it, not only did I realize there were more than I consciously remembered over time, but also that the independent film production movement and digital technologies are causing an explosion of very interesting new entries. The work being done by young people is particularly inspiring and impressive and perhaps signifies that sailing isn't dying after all. No, it's actually becoming the saving grace of a generation pressured as none before it. Because it is just too difficult to rate these movies as each one ticks a different box, I've just listed them in chronological order. Enjoy, and please let me know about any I missed.
Read more

Top Ten Books about Sailing (non-fiction)

-
Image
Ocean adventures inspire the spinning of tall tales Sailing is one of those things in life that so many dream of and few pursue. Those of us who have sailed off across an ocean most often started out in our warm beds absorbed in a book of someone else's adventures on the other side of the world. Their yarns spun our own ambitions and fueled our thirst for the sea. So many authors have been inspired by the sea that there are hundreds of books to choose from. So why are these ten on my list? Because they were the ones that told the stories that I wanted to live or taught me lessons that may one day save a life - my own or a loved one's. And now that I have, I can honestly say that their yarns were well spun. There are few things better in life than reading a good sailing book while sailing! To go off watch, curl up in a secure spot and read about your favourite sailing adventure inspires the next adventure of your own. I always ask, where to next? And there's always s
Read more

Top Ten+ Novels Based on Sailing (fiction)

-
Image
Sailing makes a romantic setting There are few novels with sailing as a background theme, which is surprising given how romantic sailing is considered to be. Images of sailboats appear everywhere and dreams of sailing off to an uncharted island abound, yet stories tend to be real, not fictional.  That's curious to me. I've scoured the pages of Amazon and Goodreads to find what I could as the question often comes up, "Are there any good novels with sailing themes."  The answer is, yes, but not many.  As I have not read these all yet, I am simply providing the publisher's descriptions here, mostly as they appear on amazon.com.  From Homer's Odyssey to Christine Kling's Circle of Bones, one thing for certain is that this is an eclectic collection, much like the collection of characters one is likely to encounter at sea. I'm also working on a listing of sailing movies, which of course might have been based on either novels or true stories, so perhaps w
Read more