Aleria's Adventures

This article was originally written and published by me on the Ocean Cruising Club website. I am posting here as well just to keep from losing it.  Main Photo (c) Caroline Dobbs. The vessels departing from Antigua (left to right)   Nebula, Fathom   and   Balou , all UK registered and heading home. Pandemic in Paradise  Daria Blackwell  |    27/05/2020 As reports of Covid-19 outbreaks began to circulate, the OCC was monitoring the situation in the Atlantic, Caribbean, and IndoPacific regions. What could we do to assist stranded cruisers? Reports from China of a highly contagious novel coronavirus began circulating in January. But China was far away from most places in paradise. At first, tourism remained active and cruisers went about their business blissfully unaware of the mounting threat of a pandemic. As tourists flying in from severely affected European nations began to show signs of infection and coronavirus began to spread...

It's a question we are asked often. How many boats are circumnavigating or sailing the oceans at any given time? It's not an easy one to answer, because some go for a year and do an Atlantic circuit, others continue around Cape Horn or through the Panama Canal. They pass through various ports and are counted multiple times, but no one that we are aware of provides a count at a given point in time like a census. As the seasons are different north and south, you'd have to count a date in the summer in the Northern hemisphere and another in the Southern hemisphere.

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.