Aleria's Adventures

Billy Brannan being rescued by tanker The Atlantic crossing season has come to a close and our last vessel assisted spent 54 days at sea. It's a long story but I've written it up  elsewhere , so I won't repeat it here. But here's a tally of outcomes during the 2020 pandemic return to Europe.  We estimated about 900 vessels were in the Caribbean in 2020. About 300 returned to the US with the Salty Dawg flotilla. Another 200 signed up with the OCC Atlantic Crossing group on Facebook, and about 190 ended up crossing. There were more that crossed on their own and the rest remained in the Caribbean in Antigua, Grenada and the ABCs.  In our group, we followed 103 on a PredictWind tracker. One solo sailor with only one arm sailed all the way home from St. Maarten to Ireland nonstop because his crew could not get to him. We were with him by email every step of the way. Numerous urgent and distress situations were assisted, and disaster averted. These included two steering failu...

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...