Aleria's Adventures

If you are following the Golden Globe Race, then you are aware of the carnage out there. Several yachts have retired and it was announced overnight that Norwegian skipper Are Wiig's Olleanna was rolled and dismasted overnight .

This time last year, the Atlantic was chock a block with tropical storm activity. This year, as we head into peak season, the silence is deafening. We got our first TS remnants yesterday as Ernesto came through, dumping lots of rain but otherwise fairly benign. Friends had thought about spending more time in Ireland, arriving around next week but I advised against it, as the west coast in the autumn can be very wet and windy as the TS barrel their way across the Atlantic towards our west coast. Was I alarmist? Possibly. So I looked up what the 'experts' were saying .

Our little sailing club in the west of Ireland has to deal with lots of weather. After all, everything that gets cooked up over in the states, crosses the Atlantic and picks up more punch along the way to dump it over here. So last year, when our anemometer was blown away in a storm, literally, we decided to partner with WindGuru to create a weather station that would deliver a community service as well. The result was a new weather station at Mayo Sailing Club with weather cam that now provides a feed to WindGuru for more accurate results on Clew Bay.

Yesterday, Alex and I put on our Ocean Cruising Club Port Officer hats to welcome two OCC members visiting our home town Westport by land. Duncan and Ria Briggs, circumnavigators, have sold their boat which they lived on for 12 years and bought a cottage in England. While waiting for their planning permission to come through for modifications to the tiny cottage by the sea they snapped up, they decided to tour Ireland. We don't get many OCC visitors to our neck of the seas, only 6 to date counting the Briggs - 4 by sea.

Alex and I decided that it would be much saner to charter in the places we want to sail in the Med rather than keep our boat there for the short times off season we'd be using her. The Med has been so hot in the summer, crowded and expensive. The fact that Italy is now turning away migrant vessels and grounding rescue vessels is a complication we don't want to have to deal with either. Lo and behold, we come home and our friend Grant Headifen sends us notice of a new service he has launched. A global database of comparative yacht charter pricing. We trust Grant because we wrote the anchoring course that's part of his accredited sailing certification curriculum on NauticEd. 

While in Portugal, I downloaded and read Ellen Jacobson's debut novel.  I 'met' Ellen online on the Facebook group Women Who Sail Who Write. It's a wonderfully informative and supportive group for writers who mostly live aboard their boats. I have been very impressed with Ellen's contributions to the group and was very excited for her when she announced completion of her first novel. I posted a review on Goodreads . I tried to share that review directly to my blog but couldn't get it to work. So here it is, with 5 stars. I loved it!  Well done, Ellen. And thanks for the entertaining read. My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Alex and Tatiana  Vodka at RCNP Well they got us into our berth first thing this morning and we've been tidying up ever since. Alex has the lines tied and chafe protectors secured. The fridge is cleaned out, the bicycles are stowed. All the prep work that goes with putting a boat to bed for a bit has been done. Last night, we decided to have dinner at the RCNP yacht club which has a beautiful club house. Shortly after we were seated, Alex and Tatiana stopped by and joined us for drinks as we ate tapas. We had a delightful conversation about crossing oceans and everything else in Russian and Ukrainian, which unfortunately Alex couldn't take part in. I periodically stopped to translate something funny or important, and every once in a while, Alex added some bit of information in English having semi followed the flow. It was an enjoyable dinner.