Aleria's Adventures

Offshore veteran Damian Foxall discusses sustainability in sailing  In the past few weeks, we've had the pleasure of attending the Irish Sailing Cruising Conference in Athlone and the Irish Cruising Club's Annual Dinner in Killarney. At the Conference, we won a night in a glamping pod at Kilrush Marina, so we made a side trip from Killarney to Kilrush to try it out. Turned out to be great fun.

Overwintering in Galway. Aleria, at 57 feet long, is often one of the larger yachts in a marina. For the last few years, she spent the winters in the water in Galway Harbour. Not a bad place to be as the marina is smack in the middle of the old city. It’s great to have an apartment right in the heart of town. Unfortunately Galway does not yet have the facilities to haul vessels of Aleria ’s size, but when the new marina comes in, hopefully it will. 

The marina at Kilrush Kilrush has so much potential The River Shannon divides Clare from Kerry; it is Ireland’s longest and largest river. The mouth of the Shannon River is wide and inviting, stretching between Kerry Head on the Southside and Loop Head on the Northside. You really need time to be able to explore her lower reaches as there is little opportunity to find shelter before the town of Kilrush some 30 km up in County Clare on the Northside of the River. The Shannon is a powerboat paradise and a very popular tourist attraction for river boating. Consequently, there is a lot of information available about the River, especially from Limerick and beyond. The lower Shannon has Ireland’s only pod of resident bottlenose dolphins. More than 100 dolphins have been identified using the Shannon estuary. The success rate of seeing dolphins here is reported to be better than 98%.