Flores to Horta…Willem arrives and we have a great stay on a lovely island

38:31.53N 28:37.30W

26^th June 2015

Lajes, Flores to Horta, Faial.

11,108 Miles Since leaving Ramsgate by log.

My new hat as mentioned in previous blogs. Don’t I look all Pithy?

Before I start this blog I have to mention that Steve has been given two penalty points in the daily distance run competition due to receiving outside assistance. Unknown to us he has been getting moral support from his sisters or as they are also known the Devonian cheerleaders while the rest of us carry on without any hint of a  supporters club to provide moral support. Having said that he actually stands no chance of getting fat on the amount of chocolate bars that he has won so far.

On day one in Flores it was all hands on deck to fix the old girl up again after her experiences on the crossing from Bermuda. Now that we had a stable platform we could slacken off the backstays and connect the forestay to the alternative fitting point on the bowsprit. The advice form the marina manager was not to use the local welder as he was, I quote, “a bit agricultural and not very good with stainless” so that is another job for back in Ramsgate. As a complete aside and absolutely nothing to do with my needing a welding job done I hear that Russell Creighton has now officially retired and is bored already, don’t know why that popped into my head spooky eh. So we have now got everything re-rigged and we are good to go. The plotter continues to do its own thing and randomly switches on and off but each day it seems to regain another function so I think the internals are drying out. Steve has stripped and cleaned it so that is about all we can do with that at present. While we were doing those jobs Norma stripped the boat out to dry everything off and Jen sewed a chaffing patch onto our fore sail, so we were all kept bust until well after lunch.

Enough of that boat stuff, my little finger has knitted back together rather nicely under Norma’s ministrations and is now smaller than my thumb which does add a certain symmetry to my left hand. We found a lovely restaurant on the back edge of the village of Lajes that provided masses of very good homemade food for ridiculously cheap prices 60 Euros for five including drinks. Everything here is very cheap and the whole island is beautifully tended and maintained in pristine condition. My only thought when comparing this to the Caribbean islands and Bermuda is that there must be one hell of a lot of Euro millions pouring into the place. Willem is aboard now so that makes six which is crowded but we will get by. His main interest is the astro navigation and he has already cleaned and adjusted my old sextant to the Nth degree.     

Yesterday was wet and windy and so we hired a car to tour the island from you guessed it the café at the back of the village, no drivers license required and 35 Euro for the day. As we headed up to the volcanoes’ caldera we immediately drove into a cloud so the view from the top was spectacularly white with no sign of anything else. Not to be deterred we headed back to sea level and found some really nice small villages huddled along the shoreline, each one had a spectacular backdrop of high cliffs and cascading waterfalls. Every road, hedge row, garden and house is absolutely festooned with flowers making a drive around the island a complete delight. At a quirky jazz bar on the beach we had a spectacular lunchtime meal of red grouper shared between Steve, Jen and myself. Norma who is not a fish fan had an omelette and of course as poor old Adamant is still strictly adhering to Ramadan he just watched on, although he did drool a bit at one stage and kept asking us how good it tasted. We were under the impression that Santa Cruz the capitol was having a sardine festival but on entering the town we found out that it was closed for the public holiday and nothing was doing. Back at the marina the café overlooking the bay was celebrating the sardine festival in style and so we queued up with the locals and had an amazing BBQ sardine dinner. It was delicious and this time as the sun had gone down Adamant joined us and immediately devoured two huge platefuls of sardines complete with chunks of local bread.

One lunchtime meal devoured

The view from inside a cloud

Sardines and steaks on the BBQ in the fisherman’s cooperation in Lajes

And that’s one sardine eaten while Norma looks on admiringly and look Steve has his happy face on. 

Our new crew member Willem on the right

Later we went to the bar/restaurant at the top of the hill (again) and met up with the crew from a cat that was anchored out in the bay who we had previously met in Bermuda. As the crew had an Irish member Norma and Gerry were soon swapping stories and as they say the craac was good. One interesting discovery was that the local seagulls have a really odd call that sounds just like “Bullshit, Bullshit” being repeated over and over. The strangest thing was that as soon as I started up on a tale of my own I was treated to a chorus of “ Bullshit, Bullshit, Bullshit……. Bullshit, Bullshit, Bullshit” from the birds on the cliff much to the amusement of the gathered masses. Damn those birds they know too much.

Not a Bullshit bird but I think this one is the greater crested, golden breasted, Azorian flying Penguin, or maybe something else.

On the trip around the island I changed my mind about our route back. The lack of a refuelling facility or gas depot on Flores would mean that we would be setting off with half of our supplies already exhausted. The alternative is to go to Horta, 130 miles away and top up on everything there, so that is what we are going to do. The other advantage of this approach is that it will give Willem a 24 hour passage to get used to us and the boat and for us to get used to him before we are all lumped together in a Tupperware box for two weeks. After a bumpy night in the marina as a vicious low pressure front swept by we finally set sail at 1400 hrs yesterday headed for Horta. Almost immediately I felt something was wrong as Spectra was doing no where near the speed she should have been doing for the revs applied. We pulled a sail up quickly so that we could clear the harbour and then when in safe water I went below to investigate. The dip stick on the gear box had worked loose with all of the bouncing about that we have been doing and a considerable amount of fluid had escaped resulting in the clutch slipping. I topped up the gearbox, always fun at sea laying on your back in the rear cabin with your head and one arm jammed into a cupboard while your legs are sticking up in the air and all seems to be fine now.

It is now 10am on the 26^th and Faial is in sight with Horta just around the corner. We had to motor for 5 hours from midnight but now the wind has returned and we are zooming along at 8 knots with all sails set and we have been joined by a large group of dolphins which lets face it when compared to the London underground is really not a bad way to start the day…

Below, Waterfalls and beaches on a rainy day

Below are views of Faial on a sunny day

A lovely little garden by a watermill in the mountains

Spectra in Lajes harbour

Jen painted the traditional signature picture of a passing yacht on the harbour wall.

Or, committed an act of vandalism by tagging a wall, depends on your perspective I suppose.

Our last view of Lajes harbour.

A different breed of dolphins come to play

And play and play and play

On the trip around the island I changed my mind about our route back. The lack of a refuelling facility or gas depot on Flores would mean that we would be setting off with half of our supplies already exhausted. The alternative is to go to Horta, 130 miles away and top up on everything there, so that is what we are going to do. The other advantage of this approach is that it will give Willem a 24 hour passage to get used to us and the boat and for us to get used to him before we are all lumped together in a Tupperware box for two weeks. After a bumpy night in the marina as a vicious low pressure front swept by we finally set sail at 1400 hrs yesterday headed for Horta. Almost immediately I felt something was wrong as Spectra was doing no where near the speed she should have been doing for the revs applied. We pulled a sail up quickly so that we could clear the harbour and then when in safe water I went below to investigate. The dip stick on the gear box had worked loose with all of the bouncing about that we have been doing and a considerable amount of fluid had escaped resulting in the clutch slipping. I topped up the gearbox, always fun at sea laying on your back in the rear cabin with your head and one arm jammed into a cupboard while your legs are sticking up in the air and all seems to be fine now.

It is now 10am on the 26^th and Faial is in sight with Horta just around the corner. We had to motor for 5 hours from midnight but now the wind has returned and we are zooming along at 8 knots with all sails set and we have been joined by a large group of dolphins which lets face it when compared to the London underground is really not a bad way to start the day…