The Azores

The Azores are made up of nine islands spread over 200 miles. We had really wanted to explore our landfall island of Flores, which is one of the most remote and hence relatively unspoilt. However, we had just time for a leisurely lunch ashore on the first day before discovering the weather was about to change.
A big low pressure system was bearing down on us and would make the anchorage very uncomfortable if not untenable, so sadly we decided to head for shelter on the neighbouring island of Faial.



This turned out to be a good move as the next four days brought strong winds and heavy rain. Every day brought new arrivals from sea, including one yacht that got towed in by the lifeboat.
A long-lost friend of ours from the Exe rafted next to us after a rough delivery trip from the Caribbean. He and his two crew-mates had spend 26 days at sea, survived two fires on board from a faulty starter motor and several days of gale force winds. They were delighted to tie up ashore, especially as the owner of the boat treated them to a few nights in a hotel to recover.

Katie was delighted to be on solid ground again and was itching to walk, even in the rain! We squelched around the town in search of internet and fresh bread, admiring the mosaic pavements and fancy Portuguese architecture. The cafes were refreshingly cheap – a toasted sandwich, a beer or a freshly squeezed orange juice all cost around 1 euro.



We hired a car to explore the island during the worst of the weather. Volcanic explosions in 1957/58 created a half-mile of new land at one end of the island and a museum there was meant to have fantastic photos. Unfortunately we couldn’t find the entrance as workmen were digging up the carpark and it had become a mudfield.
The spectacular view from the top of the caldeira was also completely lost in fast-moving clouds, but it was a spectacular drive, mostly for the fact that Dave could barely see the road in front of us! However, we did have a tasty meal in a local snack-bar and got a taste of the island – fields of grazing cows, old red windmills and hundreds of hedges of the famous Azores blue hydrangeas.










The harbour walls of Horta are a sight in themselves. Their entire length is covered with paintings from boats that have visited the island, some dating back to the 1980’s. It has become a mark of good luck to leave your mark and we had fun searching for boats we recognized. Finally, the rain cleared up and I was able to find a clear spot on the wall and carry on the tradition of painting our boat on for posterity.



Jackie’s sister, Mag, joined us in Faial and the three of us took Katie to a natural seawater swimming pool. We had seen it from the hire car and watched waves crashing over the rocks and swamping the pools. This time, it was calm and tranquil and one pool was completely empty. A few stray jellyfish got scooped out by a brave local before anybody ventured in. Jackie stayed with Katie, who didn’t want to get her feet wet, while Mag & I braved the chilly water. One end of the pool had a barred ‘window’ overlooking a rocky channel. You could hold onto the bars and watch the sea surge towards you until an extra-big wave come right in over your head. All very invigorating!

We then left Faial and had a sailing tour around the central group of islands. Jackie did the navigation and did a great job of plotting courses and transferring them into the GPS. She also managed to finish her hat! Mag survived her first experience of sailing without getting seasick and even seemed to enjoy it!



First stop was Sao Jorge, with its fantastic views of the mountain on Pico opposite. All night we listened to the bizarre noises of the local Cory’s shearwaters which roost in the cliffs surrounding the harbour. They sound almost like wailing children, or cats.



Our next stop was the lovely island of Graciosa, very green and lush with minimal development. Red windmills overlook the harbour.
We all went for a long hike in search of an old stone tower leading down inside the caldeira. It took us a while to work out that we had been walking round in circles for an hour at the top, and the road we wanted entered via a tunnel below us! By this stage, the tower was closed but the caretaker passed us on his way home and took pity on us. He not only opened the tower up especially for us but also gave three of us a lift the last km. What a hero!
The inside of the caldeira was a green oasis and a path in the corner led to the tower. This went down 103 steps into a huge cave. One side had a pool of cold water (15 degrees) and the other side had rocks which were hot to the touch and a bubbling sulphurous ‘siltpool’. Very weird and wonderful.



From there, we sailed to Terceira, a much more built-up island. We arrived late, had a meal in a very touristy restaurant and left the next day after a brief wander around the town.

Then an overnight sail to our final island, Sao Miguel, where we were shocked to find ourselves in a big town, complete with busy traffic, a buzzing whale-watching business
and construction work galore.
However, there is a lovely open air swimming pool right next to the marina. With such a great venue we expected the price to be steep. It is in fact free for under 16’s and over 60’s and costs everyone else 40 euro cents!

Jackie and Mag flew to France from here and John joined the crew two days later.
John is an avid bird-watcher and drove us 40 miles along the island to see one of Europe’s rarest birds - the Azores bullfinch. We were pleased to spot several of them, and took in some lakes and steaming fumaroles along the way.



Now we are heading out to sea once again, 1100 miles to Brest in France, where we hope to arrive around the 6th July.



From the crew:

I’m happy to say that since 2005 I did manage to remember three Portuguese words: caneca – 1) mug, 2) big beer; galao – white coffee; obrigado – thank you. You’d be amazed how important those can be after a night out in the Azores. Now, on to Brest. Bierre, café au lait, merci.

Jay

PS - Miss ya Jackie. Couldn’t ask for a better ex-wife. See you in Maine. I might even
cook dinner…or supper…or is it tea?

Newport to the Azores

We arrived on the island of Flores in the Azores after sixteen and a half days at sea. For a long Atlantic passage, it has been amazingly uneventful.



We set off from Newport with light winds and calm seas but after a winter of being tied up in a marina, it took a couple of days to find our sea legs.
Jackie took Stugeron tablets before we left and remained invincible. Dave and Jay were both fine but ate rather less than normal.
Katie became very clingy and wanted frequent bouts of feeding. Maybe as a result of this, I felt dreadful and, after fighting it all day, finally found myself hanging over the rail for the first time ever.
Thankfully, this state of affairs soon passed and we all got into the swing of things.


Thanks to Jackie’s husband, Robin, we used the services of a weather expert to give us a good start to the trip. We had expected the Gulf Stream to give us a bit of a rough ride, but with light winds from behind we found the complete opposite and were able to ‘ride’ the Gulf Stream for several days, consistently clocking speeds of 8-9 knots. Apart from one day where the swell picked up and the wind reached force 5, we had calm conditions and near-flat seas.

Despite all assurances that ‘you can’t fail to catch a fish’ in the Gulf Stream, we dragged a fishing line for over 700 miles and failed to catch a thing! Perhaps ‘Ros Ailither’ knows she’s not a fishing boat any more.



Along with the weather information, we were given the positions of the warm and cold eddies that spin off each side of the Gulf Stream. Each eddy can stretch up to 200-300 miles across, flowing either clockwise or anticlockwise at up to two knots. We were given a route taking us on a slightly zig-zag course to hit each eddy in the right place and take advantage of favorable currents as much as possible.

In theory you can double-check your position by testing the temperature of the seawater. The Gulf Stream should be in the 70’s, warm eddies in the 60’s and cold eddies in the 50’s. In practice, every time we threw our plastic thermometer over the back with a fishing weight attached to it, it came back reading 64 degrees!
However, we could confirm we had favourable current as the GPS showed we were moving along at faster speed than we knew we were sailing.

Katie did a lot of sleeping for the first two days then she wanted to explore her new floating world. I had made material ‘lee-cloth’ enclosures that Katie could use as a playpen while underway but in fact we didn’t use them much, except on the odd occasions when I climbed in with her.
She was quite happy to potter around the wheelhouse floor, boarded in by a stair-gate and removable wire mesh on the open doorway. This gave her a great space to practice walking on a lurching boat, and she was soon getting into all the nooks and crannies – her favourite game became emptying out the suncream cupboard.



We plotted our position on the chart each day at noon and all took a guess at the number of miles run. The winner got free pick from the goodie bag. Our best day’s run was 176 nautical miles (under sail in the Gulf Stream) and the worst was 73 (motor-sailing against head winds and counter-current).

We had planned a half-way celebration of ice cream on deck so were disappointed to find it came on the one and only day of heavy rain. We sat in the wheelhouse and shared a big bar of Cadbury’s chocolate instead...
We were within the maximum ice limit at this stage and heard over the VHF an ice patrol vessel asking passing ships (including the QE2) if they had seen any icebergs. We radioed the patrol vessel ourselves and were glad to learn we were at least 100 miles south of the southernmost iceberg.



As we headed east and away from the threat of ice, we came into the ‘Azores high’, a huge area of high pressure, which gives light winds and calm seas for hundreds of miles.
This was Dave’s opportunity to try out his newly-acquired spinnakers. Jackie and I had trying to talk him out of using them for days, as we were nervous about the sheer size of them. They turned out to be perfect light wind sails and not as unmanageable as we’d feared. Unfortunately the bigger one ripped right down the length of a seam the first time we got it up but the smaller one was brilliant and kept us going in mimimal wind.



We were happy to sail along gently until the speed dropped below 3 knots. Then the sails started slatting and the boat rolled uncomfortably. This is generally what happened when the sun went down so for the last week we motor-sailed at night. This also meant better sleep for those below and less to worry about for the person on watch.

We all enjoyed our night watches. Doing one three-hour shift each meant we got plenty of sleep and so we weren’t struggling to stay awake. It was warm enough to sit out on deck and just enjoy being surrounded by the stars and the ocean.
The water rushing past the boat sparkles with phosphorescence and the turning propeller leaves a ten-foot luminous trail behind. This is caused by tiny organisms in the water which are disturbed by the boat and glow in self-defence.




Dave woke me one night to come and watch a pod of dolphins playing in front of our bow wave. There were up to nine of them, all weaving in and out, crossing over each other and swapping sides of the boat. But the amazing thing was the stream of phosphorescence they left in their wake. You could clearly see the track of each dolphin as they darted away from the boat and double-backed on themselves, weaving back in with the pack. They looked like glowing torpedoes. We all sat on the bowsprit looking down as they effortlessly kept up with our 5-knot speed. They stayed with us for over an hour. Absolutely magical.

The calm seas and warm weather made for lazy days on deck. The boat rolled so little Katie was able to walk around fairly easily. After experimenting with bulky lifejackets and her frustration at being pulled back by a short tether, we found a good compromise. We put a harness on her and attached the other end to whoever was walking her around the deck. She liked to carry something in one hand and helped us with the daily chore of changing icepacks in the cooler on deck.















Otherwise, lots of books were read. We made a token effort to learn some Portuguese.
Jackie and Jay both started knitting a hat each. There was an element of competition to it so we were surprised when both hats were nearly finished and they both unraveled the lot and started all over again!
We watched as Portuguese men-of war drifted by and pods of dolphins fed in formation.
A whale surfaced thirty feet from the boat then disappeared.

In the afternoons we got the paddling pool out for Katie. One balmy evening we had a BBQ on deck. I would never have believed how flat it could be in the middle of an ocean.
We were able to run the water-maker and the washing machine. One day we had every available ounce of sail set and strings of washing flapping on the line!














Our crew have been great on the trip. Jay seems to have survived being the only American on board. He stuck a small Stars & Stripes flag by his bunk to remind him of home, only to find it was made in China!
He had the biggest appetite on board and woke several times from a nap with the horrible feeling that he’d slept through lunch. I wouldn’t say we played on this but we did put the clocks forward two hours one day and pretend we’d already eaten!


Jackie impressed us all with her dedication to her knitting and we are confident that her first ever hat will eventually be finished despite many false starts, dropped stitches and tantrums along the way. As Dave says, knit one, purl one, drop two…
She was brilliant with Katie, they are now the best of friends and Katie has honoured this by trying to call Jackie by her name - a real first.

A hundred miles from Flores, the peace was disturbed by the gaff on the main sail coming down. The tongue of metal holding one end of our gaff up had shattered, probably from all the swinging in light airs. We immediately got the sails down and lashed safely, Dave climbed the mast, retrieved the sheet block and replaced the broken fitting, and within half an hour we were relaxing on deck again. Luckily it broke when it did and not in bad conditions or at the start of the trip…

It was almost an anticlimax when the faint outline of land appeared ahead but we got excited as it grew clearer and we could make out the lush green hillsides. We saw yachts’ masts from behind the breakwater and as the picturesque harbour opened up we were amazed to see our old friend Nick, (who has sailed around the world since we last saw him in the Caribbean two years ago!). He came alongside in his dinghy, showed us the best place to anchor and joined us in a celebratory glass of bubbly and a cooked dinner. A nice welcome to the Azores!