Position 38:31.84N 28:37.37W

 

Us Three Musketeers from Jori, Anna Caroline and Zoonie who had travelled up the spine of the South and North Atlantic in single file celebrated our arrival in Horta aboard Jori with three bottles of bubbly (Henk was not drinking alcohol and Weitz is tea total anyway, so 4 of us did rather well!), a bottle of wine and a bottle of gin; well of course Henk and Marjolein have to empty their booze cupboard as they are flying home soon, so we were helping them! It was a lovely event especially as Henk was looking so much better.

 

The next day, quietly and without my remembering our run back to Zoonie in the dinghy(!!) we took a long walk to the hospital to see if we could have a second Covid Jab while we are here, happy with either outcome. The Astra Zeneca vaccination is doing the rounds of the islands at the moment and is not due here for three weeks; also the doctor said we should follow the UK policy of the second jab being done three months after the first, so that would be the beginning of July, when hopefully we’ll be you know where!

 

On our way back down the hill we thought we’d better do one church while we are here so the interior shots are in the finely named Igreja de Nossa Senhora das Angustias. The flowers were fresh and beautiful and the silverware reminded us of churches in Prague, and Santiago, Spain, very Catholic.

 

Lunch took the form of a humus salad for me which was yum, and then we were shown around the world famous scrimshaw museum above the bar by a charming young lass who loved her job and missed the visitors during the Covid times.

 

The whalers used to be paid in whales’ teeth and money from the oil, which would be divided amongst the boat crews when the payment arrived one year after catching the whale; the harpoon man getting the lion’s share. Well this meant the whalers were always poor and waiting for what was owed. The first generation man, Jose Azevedo, who had a craft stall in the town centre, made it his business to keep them in food and funds in the months they waited for their pay. He is depicted on the right hand side whale tooth carving wearing glasses and his son, whose nature was equally hospitable, is to the left. Today’s proprietor of the bar is another Jose Azevedo, the namesake of his great grandfather. Jose’s father was Henrique Azevedo, on the whale’s tooth to the right of his son and during WW2 he served on the Lusitania. Because the commander of the ship thought he resembled his own son, Peter, he gave Henrique that name and hence the name Pete’s Cafe Sport. The Sport accolade coming from the fact Henrique loved sport. The hospitality the generations of Azavedo men offered included the crews of the early trading ships, the whalers as mentioned, the crews of the telecommunications cable laying ships and of course present days crews of pleasure sailing craft like us. A visit to Horta doesn’t qualify until one visits Pete’s Cafe Sport!

 

Whaling finished in 1985 but since then hoards of whales teeth have been found in the homes of whalers as they have died out and on clearing their homes their families have found the stockpiles and donated them to the supply of scrimshaw ready for the artists’ sharp scalpel. The process of creating the pictures is similar to enamelling. The bone is covered with ink (burnt whale oil in days of old) and then the picture is carved into the bone and revealed as white on black. The process is then reversed by cleaning off the ink and re-applying it so it sticks just to the newly carved areas. A crude description for some beautifully fine work as you can see. Then the sculpting is done with great care to create objects ranging from miniature decanters and goblets, to model ships and jewellery to name just a few.