Aleria's Adventures

These are things we learned, often the hard way, on three Atlantic crossings and many more offshore passages. What things have you learned that can help others sail long distances safely? 1. The No.1 rule of sailing: STAY ON THE BOAT! Having a healthy dose of fear of falling overboard can save your life. Remember: 'One hand for the boat, One for yourself.'

Double-Handed Sailing  is after all like  Single-Handing Half the Time  - Daria Blackwell  After crossing oceans a few times, I was often asked if I didn't get tired of my husband during three weeks together at sea. I always answered no, because I hardly ever saw him. "What?" they said, "But you're together on a boat 24/7?" Yes, but you're rarely together and awake at the same time. So basically, sailing double-handed is like sailing solo half the time.

Every time I think I've got my apps all figured out and organized just the way I want them, new apps emerge from the depths of the oceans or sky or wherever. There seem to be apps for everything now. Apps for navigation, AIS, anchor alarms, marinas, anchorages, weather, tides, fishing, night sky, birding, whaling, cooking, reading and so much more. Tell me, how did we ever get along without apps. And what's app with this anyway?  They used to be called programs. Then they were web links accessed through browsers. Now they are apps. My laptop no longer has program files, it has apps. This has become the planet of the apps.

  Take the quiz.  What kind of sailor are you? “We were positioning ourselves for the start sequence, with 110 other boats vying for the pole position. My heart was racing, the adrenaline rush was astronomical. The countdown was on. There’s the start gun, go go go go go.” The club racer

Lack of unsupervised play is hurting our children An article in Psychology Today caught my attention. Dr. Peter Gray, commenting on a study which showed that anxiety and depression have been steadily increasing among our youth, suggested that the absence of play in childhood is at the root. This thought resonated with me. It took me back to an article I wrote a few months ago about the sailing programs driving kids out of sailing. 

Recipes to keep your crew from jumping ship Birthday cake I baked for myself while on an Atlantic crossing. Alex catches a small tuna mid-Atlantic.   Anyone who has done any extensive cruising will have had to deal with provisioning and stowing food, cooking while underway in rough conditions, keeping a diversity of crew happy, dealing with unfamiliar ingredients, having either too much (fish) or too little (fresh veg) food available, substituting ingredients, the art of the pot luck dinner, and disposing of packaging. There are plenty of other elements to deal with, like cramped quarters and availability of gas, so voyaging by boat can be a tricky thing, and getting ideas from other people doing the same thing is always helpful.   I decided to compile a list of cookbooks for boaters and was surprised to find there were so many new ones on the market. Most are available in both print and electronic formats, so you can have your preferred edition and access an elect

We did it!  Elation, exhaustion, amazement. To hold a book you have written in your own hands, to flip through the pages and see your treasured photos, and to read words that sound too good to be yours, but they can't be anyone else's, is just short of miraculous. I am very pleased with the outcome.

It's been a very busy month. Spring has sprung and we've been doing boat chores as quickly as we can. Fortunately, the weather has been relatively amazing here, with the Azores High reaching its tendrils up into our latitudes, and we are not complaining.  Perhaps climate change is favourable, for Ireland at least. 

Lessons in Optis start on dry land.  What's wrong with how sailing is taught?  For some reason, the teaching of sailing skills in many countries where sailing is an active pursuit has over the years changed from learning the ropes on a local body of water from an experienced friend to a rigorously structured multi-year racing-based certification process. How did it evolve this way, and who says racing is the only way to acquire the necessary fundamentals?  I say bring back the fun and watch the numbers grow.

Finding good children's books to inspire a love of the sea can be a challenge.  I've been keeping track of good selections for some time.  There is a listing of children's books on our website CoastalBoating . Recently, a graphic novel caught my attention.  Here is my review. Granuaile: Queen of Storms   Dave Hendrick and Luca Pizzari, Publication date: 16th February 2015,  ISBN 978-1-84717-671-4 PRICE €12.99/£9.99 PB, Format 259 x 168mm EXTENT 64pp, The O’Brien Press Ltd Tel: +353 1 4923333; Web: www.obrien.ie , Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TheOBrienPress , Twitter: https://twitter.com/OBrienPress/ The first graphic novel presenting the story of Granuaile, the Pirate Queen, is set in s ixteenth century Ireland, a turbulent time when clans lived and competed under Brehon Law, the British were expanding ever farther from the East, and the Spanish plundered along the west coast.

Fix it, replace it, or do without it.  When we were setting off to cross oceans, we wanted to have access to a library of books that would allow us to fix anything that was essential on board including ourselves, that would help us figure out what we didn't know that we didn't know, and then help us communicate it to someone else if all else failed. My mantra became "If it breaks at sea you have three choices: fix it, replace it or do without it." So we brought along spares for anything we couldn't do without, like an alternator and water pump. We brought spare parts for things we didn't want to do without, like the head. And the rest we figured we could fix, jury rig or learn to live without -- as long as we had someplace to look up what we needed to know. This is a listing of some of the most valuable books we brought along. It doesn't include cruising guides, only reference or instructional books. I'm certain there are some really great books mi

Ocean adventures inspire the spinning of tall tales Sailing is one of those things in life that so many dream of and few pursue. Those of us who have sailed off across an ocean most often started out in our warm beds absorbed in a book of someone else's adventures on the other side of the world. Their yarns spun our own ambitions and fueled our thirst for the sea. So many authors have been inspired by the sea that there are hundreds of books to choose from. So why are these ten on my list? Because they were the ones that told the stories that I wanted to live or taught me lessons that may one day save a life - my own or a loved one's. And now that I have, I can honestly say that their yarns were well spun. There are few things better in life than reading a good sailing book while sailing! To go off watch, curl up in a secure spot and read about your favourite sailing adventure inspires the next adventure of your own. I always ask, where to next? And there's always s

Fabulous restaurants on the mountain, just a slight difference from distance sailing. Skiers and Sailors - a lot in common? Have you ever noticed that many sailors are also skiers?  I suppose it's the allure of water - whether liquid or solid phase - that takes us off into the wild blue/white yonder. Or is it the natural beauty of the earth around us? Or the wild fury of nature that we need to respect and negotiate? Or is it about the adventure? The need to survive either a pitching boat on a wild ocean or a pitched slope on a wild mountain, and thrive out there against the elements and the unknown, could be the impetus.

Sailing around the cliffs of Achill Remote and Wild  by Daria Blackwell s/v  Aleria Co-author of  Happy Hooking The Art of Anchoring . We emerged from the shelter of the inner islands only to find a furious chop in the bay. It was supposed to be fairly benign conditions today, but the wind was howling in from the West whipping up the seas against the outgoing tide.  There was a huge swell coming in from the Atlantic, which we had expected behind the retreating gale from the day before, but we had not expected this maelstrom given the  Met Eireann  forecast early this morning. But that's the west coast of Ireland. Unpredictable. Majestic. And many days formidable.

To Clare Island and into the Wild Atlantic Waters The race action around Clare Island on the Sunday of the June bank holiday weekend had all the intrigue of a world class sailing race. Wind out of the SE holding steady at 20 knots at the start but gusting over 40 knots on the North side of the island. Fog, mist, rain.  An MOB (man overboard) successfully recovered in textbook style within about 3 minutes attesting to the fine seamanship of the skipper and crew. Gear failure. Seasickness. The makings of many stories.  Two boats retired.  Six over the finish line with the faces of experience on board. Awards won by sailors sporting broad smiles knowing they had lived up to the challenges.  Characters from every walk of life, both young and old, had set their sails against one another for the prestige of winning the Kay O’Grady Memorial Trophy.

In a  two-part series on why it's important for women to take the helm of sailboats just published on Women & Cruising, I talk about my journey towards taking that wheel in critical situations. I wrote the article because I struggled with the process, oddly when I could run companies but couldn't take the helm. I had given it a lot of thought and talked to so many women who were "in the same boat".   Here's the result. I hope you enjoy it. Please let me know if it speaks to you. Click here to read the article  Why it is better for women to take the helm Part 1 on Women & Cruising.  http://www.womenandcruising.com/blog/2014/02/why-it-is-better-for-women-to-take-the-helm-part-1/

Black Friday, traditionally the biggest shopping day in the US which marks the beginning of the Christmas "shopping season", has now crossed over the Atlantic  wreaking havoc across Northern Ireland.  Shoppers queued from 5 am at stores in anticipation of the bargains announced for the day. The stampedes caused at least one shopper injury and spread fear among the workers in the shoppes.

Impulse Research Corporation, Los Angeles, USA conducted a survey of nearly 1,100 Americans on-line. The survey queried 542 boat owners and 536 non-boat owners. The survey commissioned by the National Marine Manufacturers Association (NMMA) finds boat owners report higher levels of satisfaction in marriage and romance than non-boaters. In addition, many key areas of life, including overall well being, friendship, spirituality, health, work, leisure, sleep and finances, are more likely to be rated "excellent" or "very good" by boat owners than by their non-boat-owning counterparts.

Me at Dublin Airport How very different air travel is from sailing to a destination on a cruising sailboat. Here I sit in the airport having struggled with baggage from car to train to bus to airport. My flight is 4 hours from now. At least the airport has wifi to entertain me. And I have everything in reverse to look forward to at the other end after traveling in three dimentions across thousands  of miles in few hours. Groups of children are huddled in corners with their iPads waging their next intergallactic war. I am surrounded by tourists of various shapes, sizes, colours and tongues. There is the rather large German Zha Zha Gabor wanna be who never was. The aging American flower children stuck in the California of the 70s. The vast Canadian ordering multiple triple decker sandwiches. The African immigrants making a pilgrimmage home. And on it goes. The world is vastly multicultural and airline travel accentuates every aspect.

Amazing sunrise  on Inishbofin 10 Oct 2013 Inishbofin to Galway - the best sail of the year! When dawn broke, it was even colder. But the sunrise was glorious, even though 'red sky at morning, sailors warning' usually means bad stuff coming. We pulled anchor at first light and headed out just ahead of Brian. As we set sails, the wind was a steady 15 knots -just out of the NE instead of the forecast NW. It stayed on the beam most of the way. It was a slightly fluky day with the wind dropping down to less than 10 knots then charging up to 20+, but that made it interesting and exhilarating. Fascinating light over the Twelve Bens of Connemara in County Galway