Aleria's Adventures

This past weekend, we finally had a chance to launch Aleria . The weather was calm and sunny on Saturday but we lost several hours when the keel kept getting caught on the straps and we couldn't leave the launch well. Finally, Alex and I lifted the straps and untied the ropes the yard had used to tie the two straps together. It was hard work but we were finally free.  Our first task was to liberate halyards that were stuck at the sheaves at the tops of each mast. We each had to climb a mast. He got the main this time and used the Topclimber. I got the mizzen and was winched up in the bosun's chair. Missions successful.  We shlepped lots of boxes of stuff from the car to the boat and laid out lots of ropes in preparation for raising the sails. The wind, contrary to forecast, was stronger than expected and out of the east. We were facing west at the dock. We tried to turn the boat around so we could hoist the sails into the wind, but the engine kept shutting down. The fuel filte...

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 count...