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The meaning of home

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Where the mountains come down to the sea along the Wild Atlantic Way Home is a question I've been contemplating my entire life. So on this day, my birthday, I will begin to try to answer that question. I published a post recently about having found home along the wild Atlantic way in Ireland. Today, I want to explore the meaning of home and ask a new question: how did I know it when I found it? Is home the landscape that burns itself into your psyche? When you ask people what 'home' means to them, you'll get a variety of different answers. Some of them are dependant on culture, others on circumstance. Home to many is the place you live. For some it's where you came from. For others it's where they are heading to. For some it is the house they grew up in. For others it is the house they built. For me a house never equates with the concept of home. A house can be an empty place. Home is warm and inviting. The place you feel safe and content. The

Taking care of business

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To write or not to write is never the question Almost a month ago now, we released Cruising the Wild Atlantic Way . It's been an interesting few weeks and we are now awaiting a shipment of books to take to book stores around the country to see if we might sell a few in the local shops in towns mentioned in the book.  We know we won't be getting wealthy from this effort, but it is quite rewarding to get a positive review and know that today, you made someone smile.

Finding Paradise along the Wild Atlantic Way

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Having sailed the entire west coast of Ireland and calling Clew Bay home, we've been blogging about this most impressive sailing territory for years. We have an amazing collection of photos that captures the remarkable and stunning beauty. Some time ago, I started to organize my blog posts and photos and work on a book long before it actually began to take on a life of its own. So when Failte Ireland decided to focus on the Wild Atlantic Way, it was a natural to collect what we already had into a resource that could tie in to that effort. Cruising the Wild Atlantic Way was born to help those following in our wake.

Cruising the Wild Atlantic Way was released this week

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We did it!  Elation, exhaustion, amazement. To hold a book you have written in your own hands, to flip through the pages and see your treasured photos, and to read words that sound too good to be yours, but they can't be anyone else's, is just short of miraculous. I am very pleased with the outcome.

The creative process of self-publishing

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Writing aboard Aleria stimulates creativity. Books are fun to write, for me at least. I love to get wrapped up in a subject and look at it from the perspective of my prospective audience. What are they looking to learn from me?  What will entice them to spend their precious time with me?  How can I share my knowledge and entertain a little, too. These are the kinds of questions I ask myself throughout the process. I don't want to let them down, and yet I know I cannot satisfy them all.

Getting more women to sail

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It's an interesting thing that there are more men than women who take up sailing. To get women to try sailing, the regional sailing authorities make a sailing outing a fund raising event for breast cancer. I don't know about you, but I have my favourite charities and somehow I just don't get how sailing mixes with cancer. Sailing fun. Cancer not fun. My sister died of peritoneal cancer. My mother died of breast cancer. When I go sailing, I don't really want to think about cancer. Nor do I want to be saddled with fundraising for a charity with which I am not familiar. If want to go sailing, then sailing is what I want to do. Period. When was the last time you heard about men being introduced to sailing by promoting and raising money for prostate cancer?  Never?  Oh right. Men go sailing for sailing's sake. I get it.

Cruising the Wild Atlantic Way in Ireland

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It's been a very busy month. Spring has sprung and we've been doing boat chores as quickly as we can. Fortunately, the weather has been relatively amazing here, with the Azores High reaching its tendrils up into our latitudes, and we are not complaining.  Perhaps climate change is favourable, for Ireland at least. 

Saving sailing - by keeping the fun in sailing fundamentals

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Lessons in Optis start on dry land.  What's wrong with how sailing is taught?  For some reason, the teaching of sailing skills in many countries where sailing is an active pursuit has over the years changed from learning the ropes on a local body of water from an experienced friend to a rigorously structured multi-year racing-based certification process. How did it evolve this way, and who says racing is the only way to acquire the necessary fundamentals?  I say bring back the fun and watch the numbers grow.

Vanuatu and the Solomons need our help

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Cyclone Pam left destruction and death behind in the Pacific. It's up to us now to help the gentle people of these remote and vulnerable islands. The Ocean Cruising Club is coordinating efforts among sailors to get things done on the ground. Please do what you can to support those is position to assist.             Information for Immediate Release Contact: Daria Blackwell OCC Press Officer                                                                                PR@oceancruisingclub.org ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ 17 th March  2015 Sailors band together to get relief to cyclone stricken Pacific islanders

Beware the tides of March!

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Alex with his pinhole camera contraption. It worked! Syzygy, aurora, eclipse, meteors and more! The Ides of March has a bad reputation but it passed unnoticed this year; and this month we also had a Friday the 13th, which some people are rather superstitious about. But that came and went without much ado as well. We got lucky with weather overall as St. Patrick's Day was dry and not too cold. The parades, especially in Newport, were great fun, and there were only two ankle injuries during the ritual sunrise climb of Croagh Patrick. No, I did not climb. Done it once. The highest tides in the spring are always around St. Patrick's, Day and this year they were a couple of days later. We live by the sea so we are used to tidal variation. I suppose that's an understatement in that we live on a one lane road by the sea which is under water during the big spring tides for an hour either side of the high tide mark.

Children's Books about Sailing

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Finding good children's books to inspire a love of the sea can be a challenge.  I've been keeping track of good selections for some time.  There is a listing of children's books on our website CoastalBoating . Recently, a graphic novel caught my attention.  Here is my review. Granuaile: Queen of Storms   Dave Hendrick and Luca Pizzari, Publication date: 16th February 2015,  ISBN 978-1-84717-671-4 PRICE €12.99/£9.99 PB, Format 259 x 168mm EXTENT 64pp, The O’Brien Press Ltd Tel: +353 1 4923333; Web: www.obrien.ie , Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TheOBrienPress , Twitter: https://twitter.com/OBrienPress/ The first graphic novel presenting the story of Granuaile, the Pirate Queen, is set in s ixteenth century Ireland, a turbulent time when clans lived and competed under Brehon Law, the British were expanding ever farther from the East, and the Spanish plundered along the west coast.

Top 30+ Sailing Movies

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Wow, what a cool collection! Great ideas for a sailing movie club.  When I started to compile this list, I thought I'd come up with maybe ten movies. But as I got deeper into it, not only did I realize there were more than I consciously remembered over time, but also that the independent film production movement and digital technologies are causing an explosion of very interesting new entries. The work being done by young people is particularly inspiring and impressive and perhaps signifies that sailing isn't dying after all. No, it's actually becoming the saving grace of a generation pressured as none before it. Because it is just too difficult to rate these movies as each one ticks a different box, I've just listed them in chronological order. Enjoy, and please let me know about any I missed.

Top Ten Instructional Books on Sailing

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Want to acquire an exciting new skill that will last a lifetime? Try sailing.  Sailing can look daunting to people who look up and see all those ropes and poles, and sails. Sailing also suffers from the perception of it being expensive, and it can be, but it doesn't have to be. There are plenty of people who have boats and need crew and plenty of boats in people's back yards just looking for a new friend to take to sea.  So if you yearn for your own boat to mess around in, take the plunge and learn what it will take to acquire a good one and learn how to sail it.  If you'd rather not deal with the hassle of owning a boat, go down to your local sailing club and ask about learn to sail programs or crewing opportunities.  Chances are, you won't even have to know much to get started. But of course if you can show enthusiasm, pleasant personality, eagerness and some attempt at acquiring the skills, you will be in high demand.   So here are a few basic instructional ma

Top Ten+ Novels Based on Sailing (fiction)

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Sailing makes a romantic setting There are few novels with sailing as a background theme, which is surprising given how romantic sailing is considered to be. Images of sailboats appear everywhere and dreams of sailing off to an uncharted island abound, yet stories tend to be real, not fictional.  That's curious to me. I've scoured the pages of Amazon and Goodreads to find what I could as the question often comes up, "Are there any good novels with sailing themes."  The answer is, yes, but not many.  As I have not read these all yet, I am simply providing the publisher's descriptions here, mostly as they appear on amazon.com.  From Homer's Odyssey to Christine Kling's Circle of Bones, one thing for certain is that this is an eclectic collection, much like the collection of characters one is likely to encounter at sea. I'm also working on a listing of sailing movies, which of course might have been based on either novels or true stories, so perhaps w

Top 25 or so Reference Books for Offshore Sailing

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Fix it, replace it, or do without it.  When we were setting off to cross oceans, we wanted to have access to a library of books that would allow us to fix anything that was essential on board including ourselves, that would help us figure out what we didn't know that we didn't know, and then help us communicate it to someone else if all else failed. My mantra became "If it breaks at sea you have three choices: fix it, replace it or do without it." So we brought along spares for anything we couldn't do without, like an alternator and water pump. We brought spare parts for things we didn't want to do without, like the head. And the rest we figured we could fix, jury rig or learn to live without -- as long as we had someplace to look up what we needed to know. This is a listing of some of the most valuable books we brought along. It doesn't include cruising guides, only reference or instructional books. I'm certain there are some really great books mi

Top Ten Books about Sailing (non-fiction)

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Ocean adventures inspire the spinning of tall tales Sailing is one of those things in life that so many dream of and few pursue. Those of us who have sailed off across an ocean most often started out in our warm beds absorbed in a book of someone else's adventures on the other side of the world. Their yarns spun our own ambitions and fueled our thirst for the sea. So many authors have been inspired by the sea that there are hundreds of books to choose from. So why are these ten on my list? Because they were the ones that told the stories that I wanted to live or taught me lessons that may one day save a life - my own or a loved one's. And now that I have, I can honestly say that their yarns were well spun. There are few things better in life than reading a good sailing book while sailing! To go off watch, curl up in a secure spot and read about your favourite sailing adventure inspires the next adventure of your own. I always ask, where to next? And there's always s

Paraskevidekatriaphobia ... one fear in the sea of superstitions

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Last week, we experienced a Friday the 13th.  How many of you experience friggatriskaidekaphobia or a morbid, irrational fear of Friday the 13th or more specifically paraskevidekatriaphobia, fear of traveling on Friday the 13th? The latter term was coined by therapist Dr. Donald Dossey, whose specialty is treating people with irrational fears.  Many sailors refuse to leave port for a long journey on a Friday, much less a Friday the 13th. Triskaidekaphobics, on the other hand, fear the number 13. For their benefit, hotels skip the 13th floor and some airports even skip gate 13.

When the weather is too awful to sail, go skiing!

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Fabulous restaurants on the mountain, just a slight difference from distance sailing. Skiers and Sailors - a lot in common? Have you ever noticed that many sailors are also skiers?  I suppose it's the allure of water - whether liquid or solid phase - that takes us off into the wild blue/white yonder. Or is it the natural beauty of the earth around us? Or the wild fury of nature that we need to respect and negotiate? Or is it about the adventure? The need to survive either a pitching boat on a wild ocean or a pitched slope on a wild mountain, and thrive out there against the elements and the unknown, could be the impetus.

Oceans on the brink of collapse...need the UN's help urgently.

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We could be on the verge of total collapse of ocean life or on the verge of a breakthrough to take the steps necessary to save our oceans before it's too late. From McCauley DJ et al. A front page story in the New York Times this week, " Ocean Life Faces Mass Extinction ," reported on a major study, a review paper for which scientists gathered data from an impressive range of sources. " Marine defaunation: Animal loss in the global ocean ,"1, published in the journal  Science,  presents evidence that our oceans are on the edge of a largely human-caused catastrophic extinction event. But there is also good news in the study...it may not be too late to fix it. These scientists believe the oceans still have the resilience to bounce back if we can provide the needed protection. But we have to act fast because the status quo is a path we now know is likely to lead to mass extinctions

A Boater's Christmas Wish List

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The hottest gear with which to ring in 2015 With technology changing at lightning speed, it's hard to keep up with the latest advances that make sense in an extreme environment like blue water sailing. But I managed to compile my wish list of