Aleria's Adventures

Ultra Anchors So we made it through days 1 and 2. After 1 we were dazed. After 2 we were enthused. What would day 3 bring? For me to begin with, a broken toenail. No hiking boots today. Fortunately, I'd brought along my most comfortable sneakers. It was Monday and much slower at the show. We had a meeting with Bert and Marlene Frisch of the TransOcean club organized by Alan Tyson-Carter, an OCC member who lives outside of Dusseldorf. The meeting went very well and I think there are ways that OCC and TransOcean can align to the benefit of our members. TransOcean has exhibited at boot for years. OCC may give it a try in 2021. Alex wanted to visit the Ultra anchors booth. We've been so happy with our Ultra; we wanted to see Jan and hear about what's new. So we boogied over to Hall 10 and found the Ultra exhibit right away. It was vast. Things are obviously going well. We'd noticed that many of the top yachts exhibiting at boot were displaying Ultras on t

Aleria in her cradle in 2008 Clew Bay to Inishbofin - spectacular! We'd done little sailing since returning from Scotland in August. 'Things' like weather and birthdays and business matters and novels -- the writing of one -- kept getting in the way.  When it came time to put Aleria away for the winter, we were once again confronted with a dilemma. She's a big lady for this part of the world to handle. Our options were to bring her up on shore like we did in the past or haul her out like we did in the spring. Neither option had proven entirely reliable. She just doesn't like to sit on the hard. Alex actually thought she'd be best off on her mooring, which would have given me palpitations all winter long.

Parting Company Vicki and Paul aboard Nokomis Daria studying the coast pilot We agonized over the decision. Should we continue on with the OCC fleet which was heading around the bottom of Jura and back up Jura Sound where we had just been, or should we part company and head north while we had a good window to do so.  The forecast was for westerly wind of about 15 knots today, dying out to less than 5 knots and variable the next day as another high settled over Scotland and all of Europe. That high was to remain in place for at least a week.  If we went south and then around Jura, we’d be motoring all the way north after that.  We’d had enough motoring, but we really wanted to stay with the group.