Back on Pico

We had quite a bit of activity this vacation, so keeping up with timely posts has been a challenge. In contrast to the crossing when I had "official" time off, I'm the only person aboard who knows what to do, so it has not been easy to find that time for myself to convert thoughts into characters on the screen. While recreating this story, I'm by myself in Ponta Delgada. But I am clearly jumping ahead.

Our sail from Graciosa to Madalena was rather uneventful under motor. The wind was so light that sailing even for a short time was not an option. Nevertheless, while some crew were sleeping, others were keeping a lookout. Somehow between Irina and I, we got into the habit of picking up trash from the sea. It's not like we drag a huge net to "catch it all", but if we see something that looks like it doesn't belong to the sea, we try to get it out and put into the dumpster in the next port. "Garbage at 3 o'clock," said Irina. I oblige, turned the boat and slowed down. When the "garbage" heard the change in the engine RPMs, it dove down! It was a turtle!

On we motored and within a couple of minutes we saw another turtle shell. I thought if I slow the boat down in advance, the animal would not mind and let us motor by slowly. WRONG! The next turtle we saw a minute or two of motoring away (let's say less than 400 meters). This time I did circles around it holding the RPMs steady, doing 6 knots. Even when we were less than 50 meters away, the turtle was ok tuning off the background noise and ignored us. It felt like we were sailing through a grid of turtles evenly spaced a few hundred meters apart, only one pair hanging out together and the rest just minding their business on their own. Most of them didn't care about the boat at all -- I stopped changing the engine RPMs as we got closer.

And yes, our favorites, the dolphins also came out. But then they decided to go fishing north, while our destination was due south and it was getting late.

Madalena

The description of the harbor is that inside one finds sand where the anchor can be dropped without trouble. There were a few boats already anchored and one boat seemed like it was figuring out how to anchor. But the crew told us that they were leaving and that their spot was "perfect". Ok, we take the "perfect" spot. The view was definitely great!

We heard the fishing boats on the pier of the commercial dock, but we were too busy getting our things together to get dinner. We went to Garrafeira da Vila, the fanciest place we have been to on the voyage. I was brave enough to order "lapas" (sea snails) again, but even though others tried them, I was the only one to enjoy the chewy texture.

Back aboard we found that the fishing boats had no intention of shutting their engines. We watched through the binoculars the white captain bossing around a few dark-skinned crew, but clearly they had work to do and the noise discomfort they were causing us was not a consideration. Andy tried to sleep outside as the nights before, but ultimately came into the cabin where he was at least partially shielded from the noise. (Should we have stayed in Santa Cruz for the festival?)

Caves

We all have our different ways of figuring out what to do. Barbara was keen on finding something that would be interesting for the kids. Despite the fact that she is claustrophobic, she found 2 sites where one could descend into caves. One of them was way too much, but the other, an unmanaged free attraction seemed like a good option. We took the dinghy ashore and found a cab.

Madalena had great weather: partly sunny, 25C. As we went up, it got cloudier and cloudier. Our driver assured us that it won't rain, but he was wrong. As soon as he dropped us off, the moist air turned into a drizzle that turned into a light rain. After all, we were on the side of the mountain and we haven't yet seen it not wrapped in a cloud. Inside the caves it was much drier!

Once we have explored the caves, the opinions split: Irina and I were up for a walk down. The rest of the crew were not in the mood. We decided to split. The rain more or less stopped. Good time for walking! As Irina and I walked down it started to drizzle. Since we were moving, it actually felt pleasant. After all, it was warm. Turned out, the rain was relatively heavy up a the caves, so they had to seek shelter in the caves while waiting for the cab.

As we kept walking down, the rain kept getting thinner until it stopped and out came the sun. Now the only water that we had to cool us off was in the backpack.

A couple of hours later we met the rest of the crew at Ancoradouro, the restaurant that we enjoyed with Natasha and Assi's family the week before. Andy and Barbara have pre-ordered lunch for Irina and myself and despite our late arrival (and therefore departure), the staff were very accommodating and did not refuse serving us dessert

Playing "Portuguese"

Our next destination was to an open air swimming area (surprise!). It was hot, the sun was up, and the very-much-not-hungry crew made its way slowly to the pools.

The water was lovely as usual. And once everyone had enough sun, we headed out. We had no plans for the dinner, but then nobody was too hungry after a late lunch. The decision was to cook something simple aboard, but per captain's request, we should have fish (that we haven't caught). The local supermarket was not as exciting as the one in Horta, but we found steaks of barracuda that looked interesting. As I was about to put the fish onto the grill, we saw a couple of people swimming by with snorkles. Two Bulgarians! One of them is living here, working as an electronics specialist, and the other came to visit his friend. "The weather is great! But not between January and May." Duly noted.

As we sat down for dinner, we noticed that Pico shed its "clothing" and was happily naked in the setting sun. And even after the sun has set!

Of course, the cloudless night did not prevent the fishing boats from running their engines all night long...

On we sail

By the morning, everyone has had enough of Madalena: the noise, the rocking from the swell. The only thing we haven't seen was the local farmer's market. By the time we got there it looked like a shadow of a market. A stall selling jewelry-like things and two small stalls selling leftover veggies and fruit. Definitely not exciting.

Given the forecast of light winds, presumably from the west, we had an option of escaping the things we didn't like for something new: Sao Roque. The harbor is completely open to the east, the anchorage was described as rocky and unreliable, and yet it seemed like a great way to escape the madness of Madalena.

The wind was very light, but there was enough to be able to fly our spinnaker! The wind was directly behind us, so we did the unconventional wing-on-wing spinnaker and main. Curiously, the wind was wrapping around Pico, so we ended up turning some 20 degrees while having the same angle to the wind. This lasted an hour or so before the wind died and on came the motor.

We thought we have seen enough lava rock fences, but being so close to land, we had a different perspective. Some of the fields looked like signs left by ancient civilizations.

Sao Roque

We dropped the anchor, and it even seemingly held. There were diverging opinions from Peter and Andy as to whether the anchor was in sand or in rocks. But since the anchor was holding, we jumped into the dinghy and went ashore to find lunch. We ended up in a place that seems to cater to locals: aside from another table with Italian speakers everybody else spoke Portuguese. The food was simple and honestly rather dry. The main entertainment was that it started to rain. We moved to a different table that was under an umbrella and were dry. Our neighbors were dry, but half of their table was under one umbrella and the other under a different one. They had to reshuffle their food and drinks so that it wouldn't get flooded.

The rain stopped and we went on a short walk, finally going to a visit of the whaling museum. A rather gruesome sight, a memory to a way of life that earned big money for the locals until mid 1980s, when whaling was finally outlawed.

On the way back to Salty Ginger, Peter and I swam back while the others took the dinghy and only then splashed into the water. I put on the mask and confirmed that the anchor was on rocks and thanks to its weight and the weight of the chain we were not going far. However, it seemed prudent to take the mooring as an extra holding. Just in case. Our neighbors were dependent on it completely.

We had a quiet evening aboard, watching the sunset, and then the moonrise. The night before the moon came out from behind Pico Mountain. This time around the red disk at the horizon was partly hidden by the clouds, coming out of the water at the end of the island.

Attaching ourselves to the mooring was a mistake: the light winds rotated the boat, twisted the anchor chain and the mooring line and made a lot of noise in the forward cabin where Irina and I were sleeping. Everyone else had a much more comfortable night, but for the first time during the vacation, we had to set an alarm: our guests were leaving to catch an 8am flight.

The rain stopped just long enough for me to get them ashore, then it restarted while Irina and I were folding the dinghy. Once Salty Ginger was cleaned up, we motored out and pointed our bow to Terceira.

São Jorge & Graciosa (Aug 6-7)

Exploring the island 

In the morning I got a call from a Portuguese number. A bit surprised I answered and heard Jose from Velas marina say that he has a spot available for us, rafted to another boat. We were almost getting ready to take the dinghy to the dock in order to get picked up by a cab, but it seemed much more prudent not to leave the boat at anchor for the entire day and take the offer. We quickly got our act together, tied the dinghy alongside Salty Ginger and narrowly avoiding a collision with rocks (the captain was multitasking), we tied up to a red-hulled boat flying a Swedish flag. The owners instantly recognized us: we helped them with the lines in Lajes do Pico. Since the cab was already waiting for us, we quickly tidied up the lines and left, thanking the owners for being rafted to their boat.

Our desitnation was Faja de Ouvridor. A picturesque place with a natural outdoor pool. The northern side of São Jorge has one faja after another: these are relatively flat outcrops of land where building a village is actually feasible. Few of the fajas are easily accessible by boat, and none are suitable for Salty Ginger. There are also fajas that are not easily accessible by car. Since less than half of our company was in a mood for a hike, Ouvridor was a perfect location.

I have to say, I love these outdoor natural pools. Just adding a ladder so that one can get in and out without scratching yourself on the rocks makes the pool accessible to many people. We snorkeled, swam for fun, jumped from a rock a couple of meters above the water surface and had a grand time until it became way too hot in the sun.

We called the driver and went to get drinks and ice cream at a little stand. The nearby restaurant is closed only on Tuesdays.

Antonio came to pick us up and per Irina's requests made a few stops on the way to take pictures of the hydrangea-lined roads and fences. Irina's objective was to find cows that perfectly matched the scenery.

Antonio dropped us off at a local cafe, but when we walked in the owner told us that they were closing and would not feed us. Supermarket came to the rescue: we got fish, burgers for kids and went down to the boat to cook a late lunch.

The Swedish couple saw Valentin and I setting up the hammocks on the bow (next to their cockpit) and invited us over for a boat tour. They have been living aboard since May last year, and were now finishing up the North-Atlantic circle that we are starting. Their next destination is the Med, where the boat will winter. Before I could finish the beer kindly offered to me by our neighbors, I was called by Irina: another boat was pulling in and was going to raft alongside.

The Portuguese skipper was very talkative, yet polite. He was delivering a boat back to Lisbon after a regatta aboard with his wife, daughter and son-in-law. "I love boating," he exclaimed, "but it's bad for your wallet, liver and back." With that he offered us a bottle of wine which we declined, since we wanted to go swimming.

After a late dinner, nobody was in a mood to go to a restaurant. We actually did make a reservation at a restaurant up the hill, but we couldn't find anyone to take us there and nobody was in a mood for an hour-long walk to get food. Instead we had salad and simple food on the boat. The boys were quickly done and went onto the bow to talk and ... be boys. At some point I walked over to our Swedish neighbors to drop off chocolates and to tell them that they should inform us when they go to bed so that we don't annoy them with noise. "Oh, that's totally fine! We raised 3 kids, and we now have 3 grandkids, this is what kids are supposed to do."

Sail to Graciosa

The Portuguese were scheduled to depart after getting groceries in the morning. We were going to follow suit after finishing breakfast. With the checkout procedures completed, we untied ourselves from our neighbors and motored out. There was practically no wind, so motoring was the only way to get us to the other island.

Shortly after we rounded the western tip of São Jorge, Irina shouted, "Whale!" Indeed, a sperm whale was coming up to the surface, showing us its back and then submerging for short intervals. At some point he dove and did not reappear. Within a couple of minutes, we were surrounded by dolphins. At first, these guys didn't seem particularly interested in playing with the boat: they seemed to be feeding. But as we circled around, they decided that after all it could be fun to play with the bow and played in the bow wave as I accelerated the boat. We watched the animals feed and play around the boat for a good half hour. 

At some point, it was clearly sailing weather. It didn't last long, but Valentin and I did a few tacks as the wind kept shifting. Once our speed fell below 3 knots, we turned the motor back on.

We decided not to pull into the village of Praia, but instead head to an anchorage, where according to the harbormaster in Velas, at least 4 boats can anchor. The entrance into the shallow anchorage spot is rather inconspicuous, making it very well protected from the ocean swell. Inside we found 10 boats already at anchor. I haven't anchored in such a tight environment since Block Island, so I did a round to find a good spot, briefly ran aground next to a boat almost identical to Salty Ginger and finally dropped the hook without getting into anybody's way.

Graciosa

The water in the anchorage was not clear, so rather than swim there, we packed the swimming things and took the dinghy ashore to go into a natural pool. It looked small, so I didn't even think of putting on the mask at first, but the diversity of living creatures was quite large. Andy even spotted something that looked like a lion fish.

After taking showers on the beach, we walked to Santa Cruz for dinner. The village has a nice feel to it, and after a short walk we ended up in a small restaurant. Run by the locals, for the locals. Lovely food and wine!

In the morning we took another walk to the town, and went into the town museum. It tells a nice story of how the Portuguese settled the island and the amazing diversity of artisans that the island needed in order to be able to sustain humans: farmers, wine makers, coopers, metal workers and so on.

We got some provisions while walking through the town and decided to skip the town festival and instead head back to Pico to anchor in Madalena.

Given the long distance between the islands, we couldn't leave too late, but that still allowed us to squeeze in a swim. This time around, the high tide erased the natural barriers of the pool and the fish were not around, but nevertheless, everyone appreciated jumping into the refreshing water. And taking a fresh water shower after that...

Once we were back on Salty Ginger, I heard a commotion while getting the dinghy ready for departure. Turned out that a small lizard hid inside Barbara's bag and was now on the loose inside the boat. Hopefully it can get some insects, but what is it going to eat afterwards? And what happens when it runs out of food?

Change of crew

Horta

Sunday morning called for a bit of boat cleaning. Things get a bit schmutzig after a week of living aboard. We didn't do a full deep dive, but the heads and the floors were clean, we collected the laundry that needed to be done and then went ashore. The laundry "room" has somewhat new terms of service than the ones I'm used to. There is an attendant who sees you loading the machines, but then she was the one who moved the washed clothing to the dryer, so all we had to do was to come back after 13:00 to pick up the dry clothing. By my standards (and the price we paid earlier in Horta) 24 euros for 2 loads of laundry was not cheap, but hey, that's the cost of being on the islands.

I looked up the opening hours of Ah Boca Sante incorrectly, so we ended up tracking to the municipal market to find it closed. That called for a change of plans for lunch and, given that we enjoyed eating there a few days before, a change of plans. Irina was very keen coming back to the place that she liked, but yet ran out of the sandwich that we wanted to have. Now we needed to be in Horta at 11:30 on Monday, so our planned voyage to Graciosa, which would have required an early departure, was not to take place.

We stumbled over to Peter/Cafe Sport -- the place where Alice, Frank, Mark and I had our first meal on the islands. We got a seat outside, but overall our experience was not that great. The next items on the agenda were to get food and saline solution for Peter, who has been unable to shake off a cold for the past week. But first we took a "break" in Hotel do Canal for espresso, caipirinha and WiFi. Peter and I left Irina there and walked over to the supermarket.

The apothecary advised me to take Peter to a local hospital to ensure that nothing was really off with his nasal passages, but otherwise was not worried about what he observed and helped me navigate Portuguese descriptions for what seemed like the best solution (pun intended). In the end, Irina did take Peter to the hospital and they didn't find anything dangerous, so life goes on with a clogged nose and ears...

We saw the plane of the next crew fly over Horta. It was simply too much coincidence: there were very few planes and they were supposed to land in 3 minutes. However, it did take them more than an hour to reach Horta. First they had to wait for luggage, and then the streets were closed because of the parade. The irony of the street closure at that time was that the parade was taking place on the water. I just took the dinghy back to the island and Irina called me to make sure that I didn't ignore the loud honking that was coming from the water.

Once Andy, Barbara and Valentin were aboard Salty Ginger, we took a swim, relaxed and headed back to Cafe Sport. This time we were sitting inside (after getting a few drinks while waiting outside) and sinking in the atmosphere of the place we got our guests and ourselves into a proper sailing mood. Seeing the pennants from all over the world does give a certain level of respect for the cafe and its customers who have sailed from all over the world: Europe, Asia, Americas, Australia...

Faial

In the morning the plan was to have a cab take us to the top of Caldeira crater, the oldest and greenest on the island. Our driver told us that it would be much more impressive to take a look at the Capelinhos crater, which is where an eruption took place in 1957. It didn't make any sense to argue, so we had Valter drive us to the opposite side of the island. We asked him to come along and show us around, which he was quite happy to do.

The short story is that seismologists have been monitoring the volcano in the 1950s and by the time the eruption happened, the village of Capelo was evacuated, so nobody died, but quite a few houses were buried under the volcanic ash. As a result of the eruption the island became a few hundred meters longer. As of a few years ago, the area was marked as protected, so it's no longer accessible to humans, but birds are happily nested on the volcanic ash.

The photo below is the location where the village used to be. You can see a few walls of houses that were not fully buried under the ash.

Valter took a scenic route back to Horta and dropped us off at the municipal market, so this time around we could grab lunch at Ah! Boca Santa.

Back in the marina, it was time to get fuel and go. I took Peter and Valentin aboard and we had the rest of the crew take the lines from us. The fuel dock person is separate from the marina and his lunch is 13:00 till 14:00, so we had to wait a few minutes for him to come back. Irina put her feet into the water and started to throw bread. The fish appeared quite quickly and when they were done with bread, they started to nibble on Irina's feet.

Back to Sao Jorge 

We expected complete absence of wind, but to our surprise outside of Horta harbor there was almost perfect wind for a closehauled course directly to Velas. Our guests had a great introduction to sailing on the Azores.

The harbormaster did not have a spot for us, so we had to drop the anchor outside the marina. Given the forecast light northerly wind, it made the anchorage tenable. The anchor dug in right away, but when I jumped into the water I was concerned about how it held: there were huge boulders right under Salty Ginger. As luck would have it, we dropped the hook onto sandy bottom, so the only concern we now had was a wind shift. It was not in the forecast, but we've seen the forecast diverge from reality quite often.

After snorkeling along the rocks near the shore, we took the dingy ashore, checked in with the marina and went to find dinner. Since we had access to the marina facilities, even though we were at anchor, they had us pay for the stay. All of 6 euros.

After dinner as we strolled back to the harbor, we heard someone playing the piano. The pianist was very good, playing improvisations of jazzy songs. Nice touch to a relaxing evening.

São Jorge & back to Horta

Our initial plan was to go back to Horta after the stay in Lajes, but while Natasha and Irina were swimming, I found out that there are no spots in Horta, and in any case we have seen most of it. Instead we decided to go around the eastern tip of Pico and head to Velas on São Jorge. The harbormaster in Lajes assured us that we would enjoy the harbor and the harbormaster in Velas told us that he will have a spot for us rafting to another boat. I was a bit cynical about rafting, but I also knew that it would be possible to anchor given the forecasted light winds.

Motorsail to Velas

When we pulled out of the harbor, we saw the whale watching boats a bit offshore, but generally on our way, so we pointed towards them. We did see a spout from a distance, but otherwise our whale watching attempt was underwhelming.

The wind was light, precluding sailing, but based on the forecast, my hope was to be able to sail once we would round the tip of the island. The cliffs on the southeastern tip of the islands offered a nice view, so it was not boring and we had something to look at. Once we were around the tip, the reality diverged from the forecast: the wind remained light and sailing with any sort of decent speed was impossible. On we motored directly to Velas.

We haven't seen that much floating garbage in the ocean, but now I noticed a piece of a very thick rope floating. We tried to maneuver to pick it up, but it was too heavy to be brought up by a net and too thick to hook it. There was only one possibility: swimming to get it. Peter was ready to take the wheel, Irina was on a work call with her interns, our guests were looking at me in disbelief that I would jump into the water. Reaching the rope was quick, but swimming with it was very slow and even the light wind was drifting Salty Ginger away from me way too fast: we still had the mainsail unrolled. I told Peter to do a loop around me. The life ring was already in the water, but the line was tangled. Assi untangled it and as Peter steered the boat around me in a circle, I grabbed the line and Assi pulled me onto the boat. Irina was still on her call, pretty much unfazed by all the activity around her. Assi and Natasha complimented her on being able to just carry on with the call and were a bit unhappy with me for not providing adequate instructions on how the whole retrieval process should have gone once the skipper is in the water and not aboard.

The clouds over São Jorge were slowly coming down into the canal between it and Pico island. And some clouds apparently created localized drizzle, but it looked as if they came down to touch the surface of the ocean.

São Jorge

The clouds dissipated by the time we were pulling into the harbor. It was sunny and hot. Prime time for a swim. The harbormaster directed us to tie up to a large boat at the end of the pontoon. The French owners made a crossing from Dominican Republic and have been exploring the islands for the past 2 months. "C'est magnifique ici! And the people are very friendly!" It still felt a bit strange being tied up to another boat with the owners aboard, but they didn't seem to mind. The only rule was not to walk in shoes on their deck, which was easy to respect.

On we went to a natural pool. Comfortable water temperature, some fish that we could see while snorkeling. Simple relaxing time. Vacation!

The village is quite small but tidy and pretty. Wide street covered with cobble stones and lava rocks give it a welcoming look. Yes, that's the one very welcoming street in the village.

Sail to Horta

In the morning Natasha and Assi got up quite early and came back with pastries for breakfast. Assi looked up what the wacka-wacka birds might be and discovered that the noises we've been enjoying for the past few nights were coming from Cory's shearwaters. And the noise they make is their mating call. At least that explains the different tonalities of the sounds that we hear.

We looked at the weather which very clearly said that it was supposed to be sunny. Instead we had a steady drizzle. Half hour later it was indeed sunny. In any case, the wind forecast was boring, calling for a light northeasterly. Well, maybe we can fly the spinnaker.

Out in the São Jorge channel the wind was very very light. All 2 knots of it made the direction absolutely irrelevant. We were motoring. 

When I jokingly said that we should see where the whale watching boats were, the general reaction was "whatever, we don't care". But once we were a few miles out of the harbor someone did ask where they were. It was 12:15, so clearly they were in port. With no pros to orient us towards the wildlife, we simply set course for Horta. Then I noticed a splash directly ahead of us. And another. Soon we were next to a pod of dolphins who were not interested in playing with the boat, but they didn't mind our presence either. They were not in a hurry, and once I slowed the boat down to 3 knots we were going alongside the dolphins who periodically would breach and spin in ways that clearly indicated that they were having lunch. We stayed with them for at least 20 minutes. Our daughter called us on Whatsapp and got a live show transmitted to Zurich in real time. A few minutes into the dolphin watching I jokingly said that "nobody cares about dolphins anyway, so we might as well resume course". That was not well received.

The motoring in flat seas made everyone feel good, so for the first time we had a passage when nobody was sleeping and everyone was hungry! Salad, pasta, white wine, coffee... The European way.

Back on land

Irina wanted to take advantage of the warmth and wanted to swim. We walked to the northern side of Horta to find a small sand beach, but the amount of floating sand raised by the breaking waves did not make the water look welcoming. So instead we walked to a cafe where our departing guests got take-away sandwiches and we had beer and port wine.

The three of us went back to Salty Ginger and while Peter was entertaining himself on a digital device, Irina and I plunged into the clean water. Who needs a beach when the water in the anchorage is pristine?