Aleria's Adventures

The Camino Voyage , a full length feature film by Dónal Ó Céilleachair (pronounced O’Kelleher) of Dónal Ó Céilleachair, left us wishing it wouldn’t end.   We saw it in a special screening as part of the Celtic Camino Festival in Westport, County Mayo. The theatre was packed with Celtic Camino Society members from many countries, including visitors from as far away as Vancouver, Canada, the US, Holland, Spain, UK and all over Ireland.

Plastics floating on the ocean surface Ocean plastic can persist in sea surface waters almost indefinitely, eventually accumulating in remote areas of the world’s oceans. A scientific study has determined that the plastic patch between California and Hawaii is now three times the size of France and accumulating plastics at an astonishing rate. Researchers at The Ocean Cleanup, an NGO dedicated to cleaning up the earth’s seas, recently published ( Nature , 22 Mar 2018 ) the results of a three-year study to determine the size of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch (GPGP). The results are alarming.

It's a question we are asked often. How many boats are circumnavigating or sailing the oceans at any given time? It's not an easy one to answer, because some go for a year and do an Atlantic circuit, others continue around Cape Horn or through the Panama Canal. They pass through various ports and are counted multiple times, but no one that we are aware of provides a count at a given point in time like a census. As the seasons are different north and south, you'd have to count a date in the summer in the Northern hemisphere and another in the Southern hemisphere.

Robin Knox-Johnston on his return to Falmouth in 1969 on board Suhaili Last week, we saw The Mercy , a movie about Donald Crowhurst, the amateur sailor who lost his mind and his life in the first Golden Globe single-handed non-stop race around the world in 1968/69. The story of the nine men who took part was first told in an excellent book by Peter Nichols titled A Voyage for Madmen .

Ice receding in the Arctic regions Yesterday I wrote about sea levels rising faster than predicted. Today, I'm going to summarize the latest in climate change anomalies . Scientists have recorded a warm air intrusion through the central Arctic this winter. In the area north of 80 degrees latitude, average temperatures were 36 degrees above normal. Whereas there were only four such intrusions between 1980 and 2010, there have been four occurrences in the past five years.

A new study by NASA's Sea Level Change team published February 12 in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences has shown that sea levels are rising at accelerating rates rather than a steady increase as previously thought. That means that by 2100, the levels will be twice as high as previously predicted, causing serious problems for many coastal cities. If the rate of ice melt continues at this pace, sea levels will rise 26 inches (65 centimeters) by 2100. That's a lot more than shown in the graphic above.

With the advent of the resurrection of the  Golden Globe Race  in 2018 comes the release of the movie called The Mercy , telling the extraordinary tale of Donald Crowhurst's bid for fame and fortune in the first Golden Globe single-handed non-stop, around-the-world race. Starring Colin Firth and Rachelle Weisz, it's a disturbing journey through the deteriorating state of mind of a man who set out to win everything and realizes he is about to lose everything instead.