Aleria's Adventures

Not for me, thanks. Nailbiting extreme. But I have to compliment the captain, the crew and especially the pilots with nerves of steel. A great promotional stunt.

We chose Kilrush this year for two reasons: 1) it is close to Shannon Airport and 2) the operation there has become first-class under owner Louis Keating and manager Simon McGibney. It's also reasonably accessible for us by sea in a three-stop hop from Clew Bay. Being close to the airport was important as we have offered Aleria for sale. It's only a 2.5-hour drive for us now with the motorway open and that means we can drive down to show her fairly easily. The OCC discount didn't hurt either. We had a raucous delivery down the coast which I wrote about in a separate entry. Then we kept rescheduling the haulout because the weather conditions were unpredictable and pretty awful -- gale-force winds day after day and changeable forecast hour by hour. Pouring rain and lashing storms. Finally, we had one day -- one day -- when the wind would be less than 20 knots, Simon's cut off for hauling Aleria . We arrived in Kilrush around 11 am and started the final offloading of

Truant on our mooring.  We were surprised at how little damage there was in the morning after former hurricane Lorenzo passed. It had howled all night. Flower pots overturned, a few branches down, but no major damage. The wind started to decrease and everything was fine on our friend's boat. The donkeys came down from the hidey-hole in the fields just to say, "What was that all about?" All was fine with the world. The strange thing is, it hasn't stopped being windy since then. Day after day, the winds have been howling with occasional bursts of water falling out of the sky. It's gotten quite annoying. We haven't been able to do much. The occasional foray outside and then back in again. But tomorrow is supposed to bring one day of calm winds and Aleria is scheduled to be hauled for the winter. So we get in the car and drive. There and back. Six hours in the car, but at least we have a shiny new car. Lilly, naturally, as all of Alex's cars have

Mezmerizing sea... Silvery Autumn sunshine Warms my soul with joy Dolphins jumping high from silver crested wavelets propelled by the sea (c) Daria Blackwell

Weather passing over Kilrush After we returned from Spain, we spent weeks emptying our personal possessions from Aleria , our Bowman 57, as we had decided to put her up for sale. Fifteen years of accumulated stuff had to come off, ferried by our launch, get washed/cleaned, and stowed somewhere in the house or garage. It was a huge undertaking. Art had to come off the walls, etcetera. Of course, when the art was removed, the walls were discoloured. So we had to paint. I taped and Alex painted. Then I removed the tape and cleaned. All this time, the weather was awful. Wet, windy and cold. We watch the Atlantic storms, especially late in the season, which October is in Ireland. We were watching hurricanes closely, and then noticed one form in the Atlantic off the coast of Africa and once again, like Ophelia two years ago, start spinning northwards instead of west across the Atlantic. It had never happened before Ophelia and now we had two named storms in two years heading straight