July 19th, position 38º 24,051 N; 28º 24,207W, South of Pico, Azores

Around the Atlantic: ✔ Next stop: Circumnavigation
Ron Noordhoek
Thu 19 Jul 2012 10:13

38:24,051 N 28:24,207W

Angra do Heroismo is the town were the marina is on Terceira. It's much more a town then Horta and Eline finally got to go out shopping :-) She and Rutger went to explore the town while I took a nap. They were gone for hours and came back loaded with bags. Rutger wanted to buy some new jeans and Eline helped him together with the lady from the shop. Ha, they made him try on a load of stuff and combined all kind of shirts. In the end Eline of course also had seen a nice shirt, a dress and the pair of shoes she was looking for so long... Anyway, since I wasn't there... it was Rutger who paid for her stuff as well, ha!

That night we had diner at a nice restaurant near the harbor and went for a coffee to the main square It's a real nice and pretty place and a very good marina. After coffee I went back to the boat while Rutger and Eline stayed a bit.

Next morning at around 5.30 I woke up... just in time to see Eline get undressed and go to bed... :-)

They had asked the waitress if she would know a place to go out. She did actually, but that was in another town. If they wanted they could join her and a her girlfriend... they too wanted to go out too after work.. Of course Rutger and Eline didn't mind to wait a bit... but after work was around 2.30 pm... Anyway they went to different places ending up at the beach close by the marina and stayed there till sunset :-) They had a great time!

'Next' day we would leave for Horta but not before midnight since Eline very much wanted to sail at night. So we spent the afternoon at the beach, relaxing.. which was in fact our first day at a beach.
Too bad I only had two decent beach towels, meaning I was on the tiniest towel you can think off, lying in the sand for the most part :-(

The water was a bit colder than in the Caribbean let's say very refreshing. Still it was very nice swimming there. It's surprising how little tourists there were, I think we were sort of the only ones while the beach was packed...

We left around midnight and sailed to the South-East point of Pico, then we’d go West following the coast and cross over to back to Horta, Faial. It would take us most of the night to get down to Pico, getting there early in the morning. That’d be the best time and place to see whales…

Of course Rutger and Eline had to say goodbye to their new friends before leaving, meaning I had the first watch :-o Eline stayed on deck too though and she was very excited about the night scene. It was a perfect clear night with more stars she had ever seen. Already in the first half hour she saw 4 shooting stars.. leaving her without wishes :-)

Later that night we were welcomed by some 10 dolphins. This was her first time to see dolphins in the wild and she couldn't stop telling how COOL is was :-) They stayed with us for at least 15 minutes. Then when they were gone.. by then Eline was very tiered and went to bed. So did I :-)

On my second watch I too saw something new for me: Venus and Jupiter so extremely bright... it was amazing !! Later I woke Eline to watch the sunrise which was beautiful too. At home we of course never get to see the sunset at the beach :-o

After we rounded the SE end of Pico we saw the little boats that take people for whale and dolphin watching so we altered our course a bit. And then suddenly there was this big whale very close by the boat. Just long enough to see it and realize what we saw and then it was gone again. Getting closer to the other boats we saw several more, just relaxing cruising around for a while before disappearing again into the deep. We also got to see lots of dolphins, little ones that really jump out of the water and bigger ones that just swam alongside. It was a really exciting trip with perfect conditions except maybe for the wind, which wasn't really there.. but who cares, we didn't :-)

 

 

 


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