Aleria's Adventures

Me hobnobbing with friend and Artic explorer Jarlath Cunnane and CCA Commodore Chris Otorowski We attended our first major ICC event post-Covid, and I must say it felt rather normal. With about 250 people in attendance whom we hadn't seen in several years, there was a lot of hugging and kissing. I truly hope we don;t come down with anything, but no one was particularly reserved and there were no masks worn, even by the ancient contingent.  Commodore David Beattie and Aoife had things well organised and the Radisson Blu in Sligo did a great job accommodating all of us. It was nice that our drive was only about 2 hours this year. Next year, it will be in Cork, 5+ hours distant.  As always, it starts out with an informal New Members reception on the Friday night, when the whiskey barrel is brought out for members to imbibe free of charge (dangerous!). The Mayo contingent was out in force and we even inducted a new member from Westport we hadn't met before. The next day, we had bo...

I previously wrote about being a speaker at the IS Cruising Conference. As a participant, I was fortunate to hear talks on other subjects, most notably the recent interactions between Orcas and sailing vessels off the Iberian coast. I've written about that before, as I am fascinated by the behavior. Fortunately, we didn't have any encounters ourselves on our return from Galicia in 2019.  Mónica González, Marine Biologist with CEMMA - Coordinadora para el Estudio de los Mamíferos Marinos, gave a talk at the Royal Cork Yacht Club in Crosshaven on the 11th of March 2023. She presented a great deal of information now available on the Orcas that have been interacting with sailboats in the past few years.  CEMMA and Orca Iberica have identified 15 orcas, of the resident population of 35 remaining animals, that are taking part in the interactions. Monohull sailboats were involved in 80% of reported incidents. It appears that the interactions, particularly with spade and double-spade ...

Predict Wind fleet map for all the boats in the OCC Atlantic crossing group I was invited to speak at the IS Cruising Conference. The topic was to tell the tale of OCC's pandemic response effort. Gail had read about what we had done and thought it would be a good topic to cover as many of our IS members who come to this conference are offshore sailors. I had 20 minutes for the talk and 10 minutes for questions, so I didn't have a lot of space for something that consumed our lives for the best part of a year. I wish I could include the slides here, as it's a documentation of how we helped hundreds of people trying to survive a pandemic under very trying circumstances. When I finished, I asked Alex to add his thoughts about communications, which was valuable. Then I asked Vera to come up and talk about her perspective of having been in the Caribbean and being one of the families we assisted with their thinking. Walking them through options and giving them advance notice of br...

A flying fish, the symbol of the OCC The Ocean Cruising Club has been my life for more than a decade now. I have served in many capacities, including most recently as Vice Commodore. Although some suggested that I run for the Commodore's post, I myself felt that I'd done my best for long enough. It has been humbling to be in the presence of such accomplished and adventurous individuals, and I just don't feel in the same league sometimes.  Now it is time to move on to other pursuits, including our vineyard which is taking more time every year and it's bloody well time I learned what I actually should be doing. The displaced Ukrainian community in Ireland is also demanding my attention.  As a result of my announcement to step down, I became the recipient of the OCC Award. Along with Jeremy Firth, I will be receiving the award at the dinner in Poole in the spring. It was a little strange writing my own press release , but at least that means I should have gotten it right. ...

Temperatures are "exceptionally mild" for the time of year, with Scotland, Northern Ireland and Ireland all having the warmest November night on record. The temperature in Furnace near Newport never dropped below 15C on Friday and reached 18C during the day. Meteorologists say the mild weather is the result of a powerful jet stream bringing warm air up from the south as far as Cape Verdes. Average night-time temperatures in the British Isles at this time of year range between 4-6C. It's certainly a bonus for millions of people who are concerned about heating bills, but is it a sign of a permanent shift in weather patterns, and how much is climate change playing a part? Sea Temperatures off the coast of Ireland are almost at levels recorded during summertime, the head of forecasting at Met Éireann, Evelyn Cusack, has said . The unseasonably warm temperatures this month come after one of the wettest Octobers on record and the hottest summer in over 135 years. It's going...

Cargo sailboats. Courtesy of Grain de Sail. It seems that sailors are working toward decarbonising the delivery of wine by shipping it via sailboat . In fact, our friend Jaime Young is converting his boat into a cargo ship for similar reasons. Perhaps we shouldn't be selling Aleria . Given that we have Daria's Vineyard and Alex's Apiary, our wine label will be called Aleria , and we are using all-natural no-till sustainable techniques to grow and harvest the grapes, it's all fitting together.   Hmmmm! Now all we have to do is figure out how to make decent wine. 

After several years of limited Arctic passage-making due to Covid restrictions, the Northwest Passage was once more hotly contested this year. It was a difficult year for ice as described by Victor Wejer who assists yachts transiting with ice and weather forecasts. Victor counted eight yachts amongst those successfully completing the passage in 2022.  Maiwenn Beadle, who is the captain of the “pleasure craft” Noorderzon , was apparently the skipper of the first pleasure craft to transit Bellot Strait this year. She has done so remarkably early and may be the first female professional captain to transit the NWP. Noorderzon  is a motor vessel (ex. tug) with some 300-ton displacement and with many paid tourists served by cooks.  The Great White Con blog covers all the known attempts including a small catamaran, a guy on a SUP, a group of kayakers from Texas, and a bunch of rowers, all of whom attempted and withdrew when they realised what they were up against. T he rowers...