The Good the Bad, and to be honest............Rather Ugly
Cat-man-do
Fri 30 May 2008 16:23
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Hello,
Sorry for leaving it so long between blogs, but to
be honest when we got to Horta, neither of us felt like sitting typing away on a
keyboard, so we didn't!
We arrived early on the Tuesday morning after a
lovely last few hours sail down the South side of Faial. Some lovely scenery
with very impressive cliffs and two separate Whale sightings. One alone and
another pair of Sperm Whales happily swimming in tandem just off our Port
hand side. All this whilst the island of Pico dead head poked the summit of it's
volcano above a layer of cloud in the morning sunlight. What a way
to arrive in Horta...
Into the marina and tied alongside on the
reception/fuel berth and onto dry land for the first time in 18 days 22 hours 30
minutes. With a distance of 2455 nautical miles covered.
I went off to sort out Customs, Immigration and
berthing arrangements (see, you don't worry about that on a package holiday!!)
Whilst Andrew did what sailors do best and had a Rum n Coke. After I'd completed
the formalities, I returned to the boat and have to admit had a little Whisky
myself to celebrate our arrival. We then popped over to the fuel berth and
filled up with diesel. Surprisingly it only took 209 litres. Oh, and that'll be
cash only please sir....
We then moved on to our allocated berth, the
tightest spot I've ever had the misfortune to try and get a boat in. Boats
rafted 3 deep either side of a spot, just long enough for this boat, and the
wind blowing us off the quay side. Eventually, with the help of some very nice
Americans we shoved it sideways against the concrete wall. A first for me, being
alongside a solid wall in a tidal area.
We made ourselves secure, and headed off for the
local cafe for a spot of lunch and a Beer or two.
We then returned to the boat to freshen up and get
ready for our first evening in Peters' cafe Sport, a quite famous (amongst the
yachting community) watering hole. On entering I was greeted by Caroline, who'd
left England on Rally Portugal in May the previous year and has turned up with
us in, St Lucia, Antigua, The Canaries, Spain, Portugal and now the Azores. It's
a small world. Overall impressions of Horta are great, it has a lovely un spoilt
atmosphere to the place, the prices are reasonable if not cheap to eat out
and the local people are very friendly and helpful. Definitely worth a visit, if
only to see the marina, where literally thousands of visiting boats over the
years have "graffiti'd" their boat names, crew names and where they've been all
over the marina walls. There's some remarkably good pieces of artwork amongst
them, and it's enjoyable hour or so to wander round them all looking at where
people have been and when they visited.
We obviously couldn't leave without some souvenirs,
so hit Pete's cafe shop and bought one or two memento's before heading off to
the fishing shop (apparently the best ever, but I wouldn't know) for some more
supplies before our departure.
Also before leaving we needed to sort our Genoa
out, which we did after 2 trips to the top of the mast, and our mainsail
problem. Ideally the mainsail would need to come off to "proper" fix it, but the
weather wasn't playing ball with the wind, so we effected an alternative
solution and fitted a new outhaul halyard to the boom.
So, after a couple of Magnum ice creams on the
Wednesday we had our final evening in Peters' and a reasonably early night
before are planned early departure on the Thursday. All in all Horta's a lovely
place and hopefully one day I'll get to visit again when I've got more time to
explore the island. I'm quite taken with it. Oh and the Marina's cheap
too!
Thursdays' early departure didn't happen for two
reasons. 1) On waking up there was very low cloud and mist and it was POURING
down. 2) We had a French couple raft outside us the previous day after their
crossing from the BVI's and they upheld Yachting tradition by celebrating pretty
heavily into the night. When it came to getting someone roused to move their
boat, let's just say it wasn't the easiest task in the world.
By the time we left the Marina, the cloud was
lifting and the water was flat and calm. So we popped the mainsail up and
motored off South between Faial and Horta. This where things get bad. The wind
got up, and was bang on the nose of the boat and the swell against the wind was
horrendous. Not particularly large but small, very close together and very
steep. The boat bucked about like one of those bucking bronco fairground rides
and life in general was very unpleasant, as the boat smashed into wave after
wave about 10 seconds apart, for.............the best part of 26 hours Myself
and Andrew have never been seasick on a boat, but it's the closest I've ever
been. We both looked at each other, both wanting desperately to be somewhere
else and neither admitting till sometime later that they actually felt rather
ill.
Of course sleep in those conditions is also
impossible, Andrew tried on several occasions only to find himself being
physically thrown off the bunk, to land back with rather a painful
jolt.
The ugly (sorry Andrew) well to me, came as
darkness fell last night, and Andrew managed to land his second fishing catch of
the trip. Another Tuna, though a different sort to the first one. Somewhat
larger than the first one, and weighing in at 15 lbs.
We managed to sail most of the night but the seas
were very confused and say it was an uncomfortable night would probably be
playing it down. About two hours sleep was the best we could manage. The only
consolation being the Phosphorescence which last night around the boat was
awesome. We left two long trails of it behind the boat, looking something like
the trails left behind the starship Enterprise from Star Trek. Our ship itself
surrounded by thousands of twinkling stars in the water. This became even more
surreal as the Dolphins came to play and you could see them in their own
phosphorescent tubes darting around the boat, Very difficult to describe but a
wonderful thing to see.
We are as I type this heading for a channel between
the last two islands at the Eastern end of the Azores. The Sun has come to pay
us a visit but the wind has yet to make an appearance in the right direction.
The forecast though (and keep fingers crossed) is that it should fill in through
tomorrow and hopefully should be pretty stable and in the right direction then
for the rest of the week.
We're about 800 miles West of Lagos. It seems an
awful long way from Antigua..
Keep well everyone
Bri and Andrew
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