Aleria's Adventures

  As Alex is now ICC Rear Commodore for the West, we are closely involved with events and activities organised by ICC throughout the year. He recruited Maeve and Louis Keating to help organise the Christmas lunch. For years it had been held in Kinvarra, Co Galway, but the last time they ran out of space and several people had to be split from the group and seated downstairs. That didn't go down well. Besides we like to mix it up a bit and experience new venues around Ireland. Maeve and Louis Keating were enlisted to help out, as we wanted to move the event further south to capture some of the folks who might have not come north in a while. They booked Gallagher’s Restaurant in Bunratty, Co Clare. It turned out to be a brilliant venue. It's just down the road from Bunratty Castle and the Folk Village, which had a magical holiday vibe. It was packed with Christmas celebration groups and children visiting Santa (there were six of them in the Village).  We had a nook all to oursel...

Approaching Bofin over Connemara This week, the forecast was for a full week of settled weather. There would be little wind so we knew we'd have to motor a lot. We've had strong southerlies, making it almost impossible to head south along the coast to County Clare. We'd have some swell but the temps would be in the 50s (10-13C)  We elected to leave Tuesday. I'd provision on Monday and we'd go aboard in the morning, settle in and leave around noon when we'd be close to half tide rising. Clew Bay was fine. We saw seals in the mussel field. I was able to make lunch in the lee of Clare Island. We'd be able to make it to Inishbofin before dark. We had a 2.5 metre swell but it wasn't that bad in Middle Ground. Sort of washing machine-like motion. Alex took a Bonine in time. About 4.5 hours later we had arrived. Day 1 went according to plan.  Our night in Bofin was uneventful, except it took us two attempts to anchor. We did not go ashore. It was misting and ve...

  We've been trying to get Aleria back to Kilrush for about a month now. Each time we think we've got a weather window, it shuts down. Today we took fuel out to Aleria in preparation, ran the generator for a bit, and surveyed what we have on board. Again, we were going to have a weather window but when you see what's just offshore, you don't dare venture out.  It's hard to imagine what's out there when our weather is stunningly beautiful today. But the system just off the coast is what remains of Hurricane Kirk. It's supposed to miss us and break down but it would not be wise to take any chances that it might still make a wobbly and pick up strength. They've become so unpredictable.  Thinking about all our friends and family living in the west of Florida. Hurricane Helene wreaked havoc last week when it made landfall in the Big Bend and now Hurricane Milton is heading straight for Tampa Bay. The storm surge in the Bay area is expected to be twice what ...

The maritime “SOS” distress signal has become shorthand over the past one hundred years for any type of emergency.  Some think it stands for “save our ship”. Britain’s Attorney General Rufus Isaacs was under the impression that “SOS” stood for “save our souls” during the Titanic inquiry. But that is not the case. After Samuel Morse created the Morse code to transmit messages over large distances using light or electrical impulses, Marconi adopted it to transmit messages via his wireless radio transmitter. It allowed ships to communicate with other ships and land-based stations. British operators had started using CQ as a means to hail all stations “seeking you” and Marconi suggested adopting CQD to hail all stations during distress. But the Americans had started using NC, the Italians used SSSDDD, and the Germans preferred SOS.  At the first International Radiotelegraph Conference in 1906 in Berlin, delegates suggested international standards for ship-to-shore communications, ...

  Alex repainted my little  Alia  which has been serving as the tender that the villagers use to get to their boats on moorings. She's looking quite snazzy with her neon green paint. Alex found her years ago abandoned on one of our islands and in sorry shape. He brought her home and fixed her up. I used to use her to get out to Aleria . She's small enough for me to row comfortably and she had a nice little engine on her that I could start until someone stole it. She's almost ready to go back on duty. 

  Alex was bummed. Our new exhaust arrived from Mooney's beautifully rebuilt. When they started the work, they realised that mild steel had been used for the welds in Spain and the whole thing was about to fall apart. They replaced each weld with marine-grade steel. That's the kind of work they do at Mooney's in Killybegs. You can always trust their work. When he tried to install it, however, the part that screws onto the boat was misaligned and didn't match the bolts. The part had rotated slightly. He had to cut the part off, realign it and mark it, then send it back for welding. Oh well. No sailing this week.  He sent the part back to Killybegs overnight and it returned the day after realigned as marked. This time it fit. Hooray! But the weather has been shite since, so there is no desire to head out.   

Photo credit: NOAA Yesterday, a sighting of a North Atlantic Right Whale in Donegal Bay near Killybegs was confirmed. It's the first confirmed sighting of a Right Whale in Irish waters. Alex drove to Killybegs yesterday to meet with the metallurgic folks at Moody's who will rebuild our exhaust. He missed seeing the whale.  Years ago, when we departed from the US on our first transatlantic crossing, we had a magical experience with scores of Right Whales on Stellwagon Bank. It's one we will never forget. Let's hope this sighting will be the first of many more to come.

21 March 2024 Michael Joseph (Penguin Random House) 224 pages 14.4 x 2.4 x 22.2 cm Hardcover ISBN-10 0241553164 ISBN-13 978-0241553169 The Half Bird is a story about Susan Smillie’s transformation from an editor at the Guardian newspaper to an alternative lifestyle that would give her the freedom she craved and the strength she knew was lurking inside. Part ocean-sailing travelogue, part journey of self-discovery, Susan takes us from Land’s End to Greece and from sorrow to joy.  Beautifully written, it is a tale of love and grief in a memoir that reads more like a novel. After the death of her close cousin from cancer, the sudden loss of her brother in a car crash, and the death of her mother as well as a failed relationship and a brush with a brain haemorrhage, Susan realised she would not find solace or fulfilment in a ‘normal’ career living day-to-day in a city. She’d lost her connection with nature, which left her empty. She’d worked hard to progress to editor by her 40s, but...

Loop Head We were to bring Aleria home and we had a weather window which wasn't ideal for a sailboat (very little wind) but was ideal for a motorboat. We have an engine. What could go wrong? Unfortunately, I have memories of engine failures over the many years of our sailing. The time the fuel injection system failed in the Caribbean, the time the engine cut out in Donegal Bay, the time the exhaust failed in Spain, the time the flexible coupling failed in Biscay. It's just a matter of time before you have to deal with an engine issue, especially with today's 'yacht engines'. Meant to be used in civilized places where mechanics are aplenty and kept busy, yacht engines are fickle in my experience. When they work, they are a joy to employ when necessary. When they fail, they always do so in precarious circumstances. And in the west of Ireland finding a diesel engine mechanic is a pipe dream.  Alex wanted to bring her home on his own, motoring straight through in two d...