Aleria's Adventures

One of the questions we often hear from people who would never contemplate crossing oceans or moving to another country is, "Weren't you afraid out there?" Yes there were times when we experienced fear, but we didn't panic. We spent years learning everything we could, practicing what we would do if something went wrong, and beefing up our spare parts department. We knew if we didn't panic and worked together, we could work our way through almost anything.

Superstitious  by Stevie Wonder Very superstitious, writing on the wall Very superstitious, ladders bout' to fall Thirteen month old baby, broke the lookin' glass  Seven years of bad luck, the good things in your past When you believe in things that you don't understand Then you suffer Superstition ain't the way superstition ˌsuːpəˈstɪʃ(ə)n,ˌsjuː-/ noun excessively credulous belief in and reverence for the supernatural. A widely held but irrational belief in supernatural influences, especially as leading to good or bad luck, or a practice based on such a belief. I am not a particularly superstitious person, but I don't like to tempt the fates either. It is well known that sailors as a lot have been highly superstitious since taking to the seas over the centuries. Let's look at some of the beliefs and what their roots may have been. 

At some point in time, degrees, minutes and seconds that had been used to designate coordinates on a chart were changed into degrees and decimal minutes. In another step, the morphed into decimal degrees. Google maps uses decimal degrees. Charts use degrees, minutes and seconds, and some chart plotters and other mapping tools use degrees with decimal minutes. It drives me crazy to try to figure out one from the other.

We have been invited on several occasions to deliver lectures based on our books. Our anchoring book was actually born from a lecture. When people wanted to buy our book after the talk, we said, "What book?" That's when we set out to write Happy Hooking .

We were invited by Manchester Cruising Association to deliver our talk on Cruising the Wild Atlantic Way of Ireland.  We were met at the airport by Roy Conchie, Commodore, and dropped off at the Brittania Ashley Hotel in Hale, Cheshire.  He and his delightful wife Susie took us to dinner later and made sure we were settled with our plans for the day.  Roy was a very accomplished photographer in another life. Susie an accomplished accountant. They were just back from Barbados.

We've been invited to present our talk on Cruising the Wild Atlantic Way of Ireland in Manchester on Thursday of this week.  More information is on the Manchester Cruising Association web page. We look forward to seeing you there.

Benbulben in Sligo On Tuesday of this week, November 1, Alex and I drove to Killybegs to offload Aleria 's sails, cushions and other stuff. We brought a trailer along this time and loaded the car and trailer full. It only took 2.5 hours to drive up ... into blistering sunshine the whole way.  We were very efficient this year and got almost everything done in 2.5 hours.  A quick lunch break on deck, and we were on our way home ... into blistering sunshine the whole way.