Aleria's Adventures

Yannick Lemmonier, sailmaker from Galway, aboard his Mini.  The MiniTransat fleet pulled into Baiona, Spain to avoid heavy weather and orca attacks. The Minis were being thrown around like dinghies by the whales and apparently, the aluminium mini 650 support boat was attacked. They had a nasty go at his rudder.  Several other yachts have been towed to Baiona, a UK vessel to Vigo and a Swiss boat to Cangas. The activity of the whales is very high off Galicia, Spain right now. The current advice is not to transit these waters until later in October.  Many thanks to Rhys Walters for the report and photos. Severe weather warning for fleet Map of latest Orca interactions

The Canadian government closed its borders to Americans in May to contain the spread of the coronavirus. The US has a much higher rate of infection than Canada. They also restricted recreational boating in Canadian Arctic coastal waters as of June 1 and until October 31. They are protecting their indigenous communities against the influx of Covid-19.  Yet some Americans chose to ignore the restrictions. Two vessels, one from the east and one from the west, decided to test the resolve of the authorities. Both were denied access. The first having sailed to the south of Greenland, the second having sailed from Utqiagvik (formerly Barrow), Alaska. Each hoping to transit the Northwest Passage.  I cannot comprehend how people think they can get away with bending the rules on frivolous ventures. Yes, adventuring in the Arctic is a frivolous venture. It's not something that has to be done to survive. Lots of people have done it. Sure it's beautiful and intriguing and challenging, bu...

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...

A crowded USVI anchorage during the Covid-19 pandemic Bob of s/v Pandora wrote an excellent blog entry about whether cruisers should be planning to cruise the Caribbean next season.  His description of getting stuck in the Caribbean with his wife without being able to go ashore was typical of stories we'd heard all along. His plight of being with a relative non-sailor and making the decision to return home to the states without crew was also a familiar theme. These issues and others are making me wonder what the future of cruising will bring before the advent of an effective vaccine. There are already fears of a new H1N1 flu being able to jump from swine to humans and creating a new pandemic wave soon.  Methinks there will always be two schools of thought: people who believe the risks are high and those who deny any increase in risk. Those who deny any increase in risk will continue to take risks by sailing across oceans to see what's over the horizon. Those who believe the ...

Alex and I decided that it would be much saner to charter in the places we want to sail in the Med rather than keep our boat there for the short times off season we'd be using her. The Med has been so hot in the summer, crowded and expensive. The fact that Italy is now turning away migrant vessels and grounding rescue vessels is a complication we don't want to have to deal with either. Lo and behold, we come home and our friend Grant Headifen sends us notice of a new service he has launched. A global database of comparative yacht charter pricing. We trust Grant because we wrote the anchoring course that's part of his accredited sailing certification curriculum on NauticEd.