Aleria's Adventures

  Alex and Dmitriy have been making great progress, today completing the fiberglassing of the hull. I must say it's looking good. They work well together and Dima is very efficient. It's just too bad his English is so rudimentary, but he is working on it.  This part is definitely a two-person job. It's the first time Dmytro has done fiberglassing but he really enjoys it. I think he's enjoying learning a new skill as well. 

The Century Black Demon that has been sitting in the barn at Ross for decades is being resurrected this winter. Dmytro is helping Alex make it seaworthy again. I can't say it's being restored because they are replacing much with new hardware, wood and so on. They are also epoxying the hull to make it waterproof.  This week, Dima and Alex stripped, sanded and faired the hull. It's quite the winter project, but it's going much faster than anyone expected. It's so great to have the shed.

We've been waiting for the sail to dry since the 10th of November.  We've had so much rain and the air has been so damp that it took 5 days for the sail, hung in the shed, to dry.  The shed has been such a wonderful addition to our holdings. It makes everything so much easier to do. Like flaking the yankee. We've always struggled with it on deck or the docks or the lawn. This time we made a skinny little sausage on a relatively clean floor.  That's it for sail maintenance for the season.  

Yankee headsail The last sail we took off Aleria is her powerful and gigantic yankee headsail. We just rolled it up and put it in the trailer. When we got it home, we unrolled it to let it dry as we'd had showers as we were taking it down. But when we inspected it, we realised it really needed cleaning. It had green slimy patches and black sooty grime in places. So we left it there until I could get it outside to wash properly. It's been raining cats and dogs and blowing gales ever since, until today. So we got it outside and stretched it along the gravel area outside the shed. What a blessing that shed is. It has made everything so much easier.  I got a hose, a soft brush and the washing-up liquid and got to work. Green slimy water was washing off the edge where it was mainly deposited. But it took scrubbing with a harder brush to get it really clean. Showers threatened but stayed distant. I am very pleased with the result.  Alex has rigged a drying clothesline or sailline i...

Is this the tipping point? The problem with models used to predict future events lies in the fact that “probabilities” are simply the odds that extreme events of a certain size will occur in the future, mostly calculated based on past occurrences. But as climate changes, the models become less accurate and less useful in predicting future probabilities.  As I watched the explosive cyclogenesis that made Tropical Storm Otis intensify into a Category 5 hurricane in 12 hours as it crossed a warm blob of water off the coast of Acapulco, I came to understand that there is no way to get out of such a storm's path. Acapulco was destroyed -- it looks like it was bombed out of existence. Not one of the models came close to predicting this development.  I believe that climate change will have a negative impact on distance cruising, and sailing in general. Many of the yacht captains who were told to stay onboard vessels at anchor to guard them have not been heard from since. Autho...

Super warm water blobs off Mexico's coast A few days ago, I wrote a story for the OCC website based on a scientific study that concluded that with warmer oceans serving as fuel, Atlantic hurricanes are now more than twice as likely as before to rapidly intensify from minor hurricanes to powerful and catastrophic storms. Little did I know that just five days later, Hurricane Otis would destroy Acapulco.  The study published last week examined 830 Atlantic tropical cyclones since 1971. It found that in the last 20 years, 8.1% of the time storms powered from a Category 1 minor storm to a major hurricane in just 24 hours. That happened only 3.2% of the time from 1971 to 1990, according to a study in the journal Scientific Reports. When storms rapidly intensify, it makes it difficult for people in the storm’s path to decide what they should do — get out of the way or hunker down.  Hurricane Otis grew from a tropical storm yesterday morning in the eastern Pacific to a Categor...

Busy day today. Drove down to Kilrush at the crack of day, offloaded the rest of our stuff and the damned yankee sail. Lots of rainbows and interesting clouds on the way home. Some massive brief showers as well. But the wind and rain held off long enough for us to get all our stuff done. Yippee!

Slieve Donard coming down to the Irish Sea Victorian Hotel amidst dunes The ICC Committee hold their meetings in different regions of the country once a year. This year it was held in Northern Ireland. County Down is just across the border from the Republic. We hardly even noticed except that there were immediately signs for fireworks which you cannot buy in the south. We were heading for Newcastle in the Mourne Mountains on the sea.  The resort we stayed in wasn't anything extraordinary but the town of Newcastle was surprisingly beautiful. A waterfront promenade along the expansive beach. At one end lay Slieve Donard and at the other end dunes that stretch to the horizon. In between, the Irish Sea with beautiful sunshine glistening in the ripples.  The town itself was quite lovely and the people were very friendly. We had lunch in town and then drove out to visit the Annesley Garden tree trail at Castlewellen. The Castle itself is owned by some religious order and used as a r...