Aleria's Adventures

Our encounter with a fin whale bigger than our boat I don't know about you, but I get really excited every time I have an encounter with a wild animal and for some reason, whales, dolphins, porpoises, and seals make for the most magical encounters. I've been fortunate enough to have crossed the Atlantic several times and had ideal conditions for viewing cetaceans. I've written often about our encounters but I didn't have a good visual reference for identifying who I was meeting out there with any certainty. A stunning new user-enabling reference book is about to be released that will change all that for anyone sailing in European waters. My review of the book, Europe's Sea Mammals , follows. I can't wait to head back out to sea with this on board.

We took our time and had French toast before pulling up anchor. It was glass calm at first, but soon we had about 10 knots out of the NW. The barometer climbed to 1028 as a high settled over us and below an anticyclone tracking to the north. In Mayo, the weather was abysmal but not here on the Costa del Cork.