Aleria's Adventures

Leaving Kilrush at 0530h.  We brought Aleria home from Kilrush over the past few days. We drove down Tuesday, hanked on the sails, provisioned, fill the tanks with water and fuel, cleaned up, then had a nice dinner aboard and early to sleep. Left at dawn to catch the tide, rounded Loop Head with the tide pushing us at about 8 knots, then motored in flat calm arriving in Inishbofin 12 hours later, bypassing Inishmore to take advantage of the calm weather as the forecast was dire for the next day.  We had gale force SE winds and torrential rain overnight but were well protected in Bofin Harbour. The next morning, with near gale and torrential rain forecast, we set out in flat calm and sunshine. There were rain showers all around us but we maintained a personal weather bubble. As it turned out, we were motoring along in the eye of the low-pressure system and arrived exactly at the right time to catch the incoming tide at the half. As we secured the boat on the mooring and got all our stu

Weather passing over Kilrush After we returned from Spain, we spent weeks emptying our personal possessions from Aleria , our Bowman 57, as we had decided to put her up for sale. Fifteen years of accumulated stuff had to come off, ferried by our launch, get washed/cleaned, and stowed somewhere in the house or garage. It was a huge undertaking. Art had to come off the walls, etcetera. Of course, when the art was removed, the walls were discoloured. So we had to paint. I taped and Alex painted. Then I removed the tape and cleaned. All this time, the weather was awful. Wet, windy and cold. We watch the Atlantic storms, especially late in the season, which October is in Ireland. We were watching hurricanes closely, and then noticed one form in the Atlantic off the coast of Africa and once again, like Ophelia two years ago, start spinning northwards instead of west across the Atlantic. It had never happened before Ophelia and now we had two named storms in two years heading straight