This column offers readers a chance to tune in on various aspects of our fleet. Email excerpts, selected articles, particularly choice photos, and whatever else catches the Editor's eye will appear here at the Editor's discretion.

Technical tips, information regrding sails, rigging, engines, purchasing, trailering, regattas, racing rules, results, etc. may be posted on the Members Bulletin Board.

New Photos from Alerion Fest 2009.

With thanks to Carol Allen for the many nice photos.

(See the new boat page photos for Spirit and Alegria.)

With the spring season only weeks away, we are happy to feel that warmer breeze approaching here at Alerion Express. We have spent the winter both riding the waves of these tumultuous times and making sure we are ahead of the pack when the storm subsides. With the completion of multiple highly customized AE38's and AE33's as well as the continued growth of the AE28's we can thankfully say that this has been a productive winter.

We have set up some unique sailing events for late spring and summer that we hope will pique your interest. There are a few different regattas that we believe will be a great platform to not only enjoy the beautiful sailing conditions but also to experience some low-key racing. All of the events are located in some of the most beautiful harbors in New England so we hope to see you there.

The Vineyard Cup will be the site for our Northeast Alerion Rendezvous. This was a huge success last year and lots of fun with fellow Alerion Sailors. Go to www.vineyardcup.com for more information. Checkout our site( www.alerionexp.com ) for more great upcoming events and the all new "Alerion Gear" link.

Unfortunately, we have had to postpone our factory rendezvous that was scheduled for this month. We will keep you posted on a future date that will hopefully work better for everyone. If you have never been to our facility we would invite you to come for a visit at anytime. Give us a call and we would be happy to accomodate you.

Alerion Express 28 Owner Pat Nowak was recently published in Sailing
Magazine's March issue. An article entitled "The Summer of 94 Day Sails"
will be sure to evoke the feelings you have had for sailing that may have
fallen into hibernation over these cold months. He speaks of his love for
day sailing and lures even the most obscure watersports enthusiast to
consider daysailing over all other activities. You can find this article on
our website in the "Press" section along with other recent articles. For
the full two page spread version with photos please pick up a copy of
Sailing Magazine at the newsstand.

All the best and Happy Sailing,
The Alerion Express Team

Maltese Falcon & Arabella

Fine Model of Alerion Express 28

Scale Model of H. Gutman's Cassiopeia — Built by Seacraft Classics and Abordage SA.

See the Photos>Boats section of this site for more photos of this recently completed, outstanding Alerion Express 28 model.

Arabella Sails the 2008 Lightship Race

Hi Everyone.

Arabella went on the Double handed lightship last Saturday and took my friend Henry Culp and me along for the ride. What follows, with some modifications, is an email I sent to Michael Land about our adventure. Chris Vaughan asked that I send it too everybody. Usually I like to tell these sea stories in the bar after the race, but this will have to do.

Mr. Toad's wild ride is what it was.

We had a good start at the GGYC and were first in our division to reach the bridge. Blowing about 15 on the way out but with big rollers. Our GPS malfunctioned briefly with regard to the lightship waypoint and we got set south of the ship channel further than intended in the big ebb and got to the SF entrance buoy in about two hours, which was a little late, but as things turned out, it may have been a lucky break as we avoided a wind hole that others ahead of us fell into.

Blowing up to about 25 on the way back with 12-15 foot rollers. Hit a lot of 10's thru 14's and one amazing 15.0 on the speedo. I can't even imagine how fast some of the Express 27's and other light boats must have been going on the way back. We were way ahead of some of them rounding the lightship, but they got to the bridge before we did. Lighter winds inside the bay and moved more slowly against the fading ebb to the finish at GGYC. Ended up 3rd out of 9 finishers in our phrf spinnaker division even though we had no spinnaker (missed 2nd by two seconds to a Merit 25), 7th out of 38 overall corrected, and 6th fastest elapsed time, actually finishing boat for boat ahead of a bunch of much faster boats which started before us. Benefitted greatly from a big wind hole which was at the bridge in a 4 knot ebb when lots of other boats ahead of us got there from the north side and stalled out trying to cross over, but when we arrived along the south shore in a reverse eddy we brought a little breeze with us, never stalled out, and a whole bunch of us finished about the same time. Had the pole wing and wing for the latter part of the trip and the boat was smokin'. I didn't see any spinnakers flying until we got to the dead air zone by the bridge and then there were many. The boats ahead of us, ultralights and low phrf's must have been going really fast, even without spinnakers, at least until they hit that wind hole. Some boats were reefed. We never reefed or even tried to, and in those conditions might not have been able to without motoring.

Electric bilge pump stopped working when we needed it as a lot of water was coming aboard from various directions, but fixed it today. It has two filters and the second one, back and up under the port seat, was plugged. I didn't even know it was there before. Manual one has different piping and worked ok except the boat was heeled a lot so sometimes there was no suction because the water was over on the starboard side, not over the keel.

During one puff during a close reach coming back the braided cover on the jib outhaul line parted with a bang! It was made up by Easom, a 3/16 amsteel core with a double braid cover over the part that goes through the rope clutch and around the winch. I think what happened is that the jib sheet released suddenly under load when I sat on the tail hanging down from the trigger cleat (at the moment I was trying to replace the hatchboard after coming up from below,) which caused the boom to go out suddenly and when it reached the point where it couldn't go any further because the outhaul was maxed out, everything was really loaded due to the wind and the cover parted due to the impact load, possibly at the rope clutch but maybe elsewhere, as we didn't exactly figure out what happened at the time. No damage other than to that line. The amsteel didn't part but slipped a little on the winch and it was a little tough to get it wound back in as the 3/16 core doesn't work to well on the winch.

I didn't know the sailors who were lost on Daisy and didn't see them out there although we must have been in the vicinity of buoy #3 a short time before they were last seen by others. With the big rollers and spray all over the glasses it was hard to see the shore let alone 35 other sailboats spread out over the course.

This was a fun race in pretty extreme conditions and the boat performed very well. A double-handed boat for a double-handed race. If going, I recommend putting in a wooden hatchboard for ocean races, lashed to the boat, and the upgrades to the jib outhaul, including using a rope clutch instead of a cam cleat, upgrading the foredeck block and using hi-tech line would be essential. Jacklines are required by the rules, harnesses and tethers should be. Be sure and double check all your rigging first, and clean out the bilge pump filters before the race rather than afterwards.

One more thing, you might consider bringing an extra set of underwear.

-Harry

From Pete Lyons at Lyons Imaging

It was a real pleasure photographing the Alerion Express 28 fleet on
Sunday afternoon. The photos are uploading to an online gallery as I
write this. You'll find them near the top of the events page at
lyonsimaging.com, or via this direct link:

http://lyonsimaging.smugmug.com/gallery/3582501

Thanks again for inviting me out! I hope you'll like the photos.
I'll do my part to get them out to potential publishers! Hopefully you'll get the cover you'd like to see--or maybe a 2-page
spread. :-) All of you looked GREAT out there!

Peter

San Francisco Bay/West Coast Alerion Distributor Since 09/07

Passage Yachts has been awarded the local dealership for the classic, beautiful, fast, and responsive Alerion Express Yachts. Alerions in sizes from 20 - 38ft add a new exciting element to their current line of Beneteau, Island Packet, and Wauquiez.

Passage Yachts

Passage Yachts, Inc.
1220 Brickyard Cove Road Suite 103
Point Richmond, CA 94801
510-236-2633

Alameda Office
1070 Marina Village Parkway
Suite 101
Alameda, California 94501
510-864-3000

http://marina42.net/cgi-bin/p/m42p-home.cgi?d=passage-yachts-inc

sales@passageyachts.com

About the Alerion Express 28 Fleet One Bulletin Board

The Members Bulletin Board is intended as a resource for Alerion owners and crew everywhere. BBS membership is not limited to local Fleet One Alerion members and includes owners/members from Texas, New York, Los Angeles, etc. It is, however, not intended for the general public or sailing industry personnel.

If you would like to become a Alerion Express 28 Fleet One BBS member:

1.) Contact the fleet (Click the CONTACT link above in the website toolbar) and request an initial access ID and password.

2.) Once you have received your initial access ID and password, you will then need to click on the MEMBERS link above in the website toolbar for initial access to the BBS.

3.) Finally, you will need to register on the BBS itself with your own personal ID and password.

Ths site is for sharing info on technical issues regarding the boats, rigging, sails, engines, maintenance, purchasing, as well as racing issues and news, fleet events, and more.

Please contribute and make this resource a success for all Alerion owners and crew members.

Alerion Photos from Leslie Richter of http://www.rockskipper.com

We have several sweet, new racing photos of several of the boats up on the site. These were taken in the dusty conditions of SFYC's 2006 Elite Keel Ragatta.

Leslie Richter of www.rockskipper.com is a professional photographer and has more than very graciously agreed to let us use these (duly credited) photos gratis as a fleet-building resource.

The photos are available for purchase online via SmugMug for a very reasonable prices and I hope you all will considering buying 'em.

Here, for example, are Maeve II, Arabella and Mil Besos at a start.

To see/purchase: http://www.rockskipper.com
http://www.rockskipper.com/gallery/1517619#73717955