Aleria's Adventures

We hadn't planned on spending a week in Cork, but when the opportunity presents itself, we usually do pretty well to capture it and make it memorable. Our first day was spent recuperating. The walls were moving, the earth was shaking, my brain was addled, and we hadn't had any libations in 6 days. So, one drink and I was giddy. Cheap date. A shower, some clean clothes and dinner at Cronin's. It's a short walk from the Crosshaven Marina to the centre of life in Crosshaven. I couldn't have done much more. Morning came, and Alex needed to do some work on dismantling the shaft. We put the sail covers on and got the bikes out, but just could not muster the energy to do much else. But it was Saturday and there were two OCC boats at the RCYC, so we made plans to meet up at Cronin's for drinks. The weather was awesome. What a great evening with David and Trudie s/v Persephone  (from CT) and Robert and Caroline s/v Aragorn (from London) at the iconic Cronin'

The outer marina at A Coruña Where to even begin... We departed A Coruña in light Northwesterly winds, finding that we could easily hold a course not far off our mark of hitting Crookhaven. We figured if we couldn't make landfall there, we could easily make Dingle. We had six days of GRIBs and the forecast was for NW-ly winds in the range of 10-15 knots for the first day, a hole in the middle of Biscay with no wind through which we'd have to motor, and then SW-ly winds of 15-20 kts off the coast of Ireland to bring us home. We had filled the tanks with diesel before departing so we could motor just about all the way if needed. Our last passage was a sleigh ride across the Bay of Biscay with the wind on the beam and Aleria screaming along shredding the 500+ miles in exactly 3 days from Crookhaven to Portosin. That set up expectations, but we knew this one would be a little different. The first night was a nightmare with ship traffic. I crossed the outbound lane counti

Solution seen on the YB tracker in Horta. Pico seen from Horta, spinning off lenticular clouds. Our friend, Carter Bacon, had been planning this trip across the Atlantic for years. His classic yacht, Solution , is a wooden 50 footer built by Nielsen in Maine in 1963. He entered the Transatlantic Race of 2015 as a means by which to get her across the pond to sail the other side for a while. His wife, Peggy, would join him in Ireland where her parents had a home; they intended to cruise for a few weeks before bringing her up to Scotland for the winter and next year's cruising.

It's been a very busy month. Spring has sprung and we've been doing boat chores as quickly as we can. Fortunately, the weather has been relatively amazing here, with the Azores High reaching its tendrils up into our latitudes, and we are not complaining.  Perhaps climate change is favourable, for Ireland at least.