Aleria's Adventures

Our beautiful Trinka dinghy The stained hull. No boat cleaner made a dent.  There once was a beautiful, shiny new dinghy. We sailed her and rowed her and motored her happily. Then, we towed her behind our bigger boat while on a week-long cruise. On the way back, we stowed her hull side up on deck for a longer passage. It was a beautiful sunny day. The next day, the shiny white dinghy had turned brown and yucky. We tried washing and scrubbing and all kinds of boat cleaners with no success. The poor little dinghy was now dingy and dull, and an embarrassment on the deck of our shiny big boat. We had the dingy dinghy blues. We gave up trying to clean her and stowed her away in the garage for the next few seasons. But this year, we decided it wasn’t her fault and we should bring her out for some local fun. We took her out for a spin now and again. She did double duty as a ferry to our mooring. In fact she served us so well we decided to find a way to restore her to her tru...

GIVE A  MAN A FISH   AND   FEED   HIM FOR A DAY Give him a fishing lesson and  HE’LL SIT IN A  BOAT DRINKING BEER   EVERY WEEKEND © Copyright by Alex Blackwell, www.coastalboating.net,  All rights reserved. 

The marina at Kilrush Kilrush has so much potential The River Shannon divides Clare from Kerry; it is Ireland’s longest and largest river. The mouth of the Shannon River is wide and inviting, stretching between Kerry Head on the Southside and Loop Head on the Northside. You really need time to be able to explore her lower reaches as there is little opportunity to find shelter before the town of Kilrush some 30 km up in County Clare on the Northside of the River. The Shannon is a powerboat paradise and a very popular tourist attraction for river boating. Consequently, there is a lot of information available about the River, especially from Limerick and beyond. The lower Shannon has Ireland’s only pod of resident bottlenose dolphins. More than 100 dolphins have been identified using the Shannon estuary. The success rate of seeing dolphins here is reported to be better than 98%.

Onyx went to sleep and passed to the other side. Her pain is now gone, her frivolity magnified, I expect. Thank you, Killian, for your gentle kindness and generosity. We buried her on one of her favourite beds - a nautical one that I had made specially for her, with all her favourite toys (squeaky mouse, bitty mouse, crunchy crab, and feather dusters) and favourite treats including shrimp, choicest grass, and fish jerky for the long road.  We covered her with a fleece blanket and one of Alex's dark T-shirts which she always loved to hide in. We laid a rose at her nose as she loved to sniff them and climbed on top of tables to get the best whiff.

Onyx was a brave adventurous seafaring cat, crossing oceans to visit new lands, make new friends, and try new things - except when it came to food, as only seafood would do.  Onyx was a great friend and companion and the ruler of the house and the clan. She loved her humans and they loved her. She will be sorely missed.  Rest in Peace, Onyx.    8 August 2000-29 September 2014 Love and hugs forever, Your People, Daria and Alex

Onyx is a very special cat. For one thing, she is all black except for one white hair, which Alex likes to pull out (mean Alex!). That makes her rather difficult to photograph. Of course I have photographed her more than any thing else in my life. You see, Onyx originally came to me in a dream. I sat up in bed one night and shook Alex awake, "Alex, I dreamt we had a cat and she was all black and her name was Onyx."  "Yeah, yeah, go back to sleep," was Alex's response.

Meeting up with like-minded people There is an interesting thing that happens when sailors meet while cruising. Because they start out with so much in common, they tend to form instant bonds. Not always. Sometimes you run across people you want to have nothing to do with - but that's a matter of personality. More often you meet like-minded individuals who have lots of stories to tell and lots of advice to share because they haven't been sitting in their armchairs, noooooo, they've been out there doing things. Ordinary people doing extraordinary things out on the world's oceans and their shores. If you are sailing a circuit, chances are you will meet up with the same people over and over as generally everyone is heading in the same direction