38:43.6 N 27:03.4 Anchorage

After the Gale Two the wind went down to 20-25 kt by 2000 hours, by midnight went up to 29 again Gale Three and stayed that way till noon the following day. Very noisy night couldn’t figure out where the noise was coming from and I don’t mean the waves and the wind. We where scooping the seas from the lee side of the boat as we slid down the waves. Twice I had to put the cockpit electric pump on to assist emptying the cockpit. I got drench while standing in the companion way. When to find another fleece in the forepeak when a wave lifted us and then dropped us from some height. The noise was tremendous, I got drenched again from the fore hatch ventilator. Everything in the boat moved and relocated from the port side to the starboard side. I looked everywhere for my partial denture which I kept by the sink to no avail. A day and half later by process of elimination I found them in the documents box. As the document box’s contents were up in the air and on the star board side items from the port side made their was in the box before the lid closed the box. The cockpit was in a mess, tore part of the starboard dodger, bent a stanchion and to my most annoyance re-arranged the contents of the tools draw so that I could not open it. I have only sorted this yesterday by cutting the two side of the draw and extracting the face of it. Then glued and reinforced the face to the sides. You wouldn’t know it happened.  

Called a vessel that was overtaking me and his forecast for the day was 7/8s till midnight of Saturday 27-5-17. My noon log in fact reads 27 kt. By 1600 hours started dropping to 20-23 ktAt 0315 hours on Sunday gone down to 14-15 with an ETA around 1700 hours for Terceira (my waypoint). Then kept on dropping as low as 6.6 kt, at 1400 hours I sighted Terceira.

It was decision time I either slowed the boat down to spend another night at sea or put the engine on. I do not like the engine noise, so reduced sail. To my surprise then the wind picked up. So I marched on. There was a lot of traffic many boats kept crossing my path to and from Horta.

Eventually another decision had to be made when do I put the engine on as the wind was dying yet again. This time the auto pilot had a bad day at the office, refused to steer. A bit lumpy but it was a pleasant evening. Cut the corner from the waypoint, all visual  by then. Anchored at 0430, could have possibly done it much sooner, I would have liked to have sailed in, but there was hardly any wind in the approach to the harbour.

When I got up in the morning it was so peaceful, no one around I did not want to start the engine and spoil the tranquility of the place. The air smelt cows and cow dung which reminded me of the Lizard in the fog. We were coming back from the Fastnet 1991 race, we had no instrument and were going on EPs, we knew the Lizard was there somewhere, so to be safe we went south probably then we needed to. Better safe then sorry, especially as I had the safety of 8 crew to consider.

 

Here I have been busy, took me three days to find a place that sells diodes. I connected those this morning. Ihad the under sink battery charged by a friend, I do provisioning daily, sometimes twice. Fitted the new instrument panel that Dave made for me, looks lovely with it’s blue led lights. Checked the anchor warp markings, put loctite to the furling drum screws, topped up the water tank, secured one of the solar panels that had lost it’s lashings.     

 

Now I am waiting for Guy to arrive.

 

Glen and Nancy are here too. They will keep their boat here for good and come over for holidays. I think they are looking for something bigger. Alex from Hythe is selling his Nicholson 32 for 30000 €. Jane and Michael also from Hythe overwintered here.

I thought I lost this...live mail will not send it so copied and pasted here, let's see if I have any success...