Horta, Portugal (Faial Island, Azores)
History
Back when whaling was the cool thing that all the Atlantic islands were all into Horta was a slave to the cool whaling trend. However, now that most of the world thinks that whaling is just not as cool as it used to be Horta has decided to embrace the niche industry of catering to trans-Atlantic boaters. Basically if you're crossing the Atlantic and are not in a crazy rush, you stop in Horta.
Geography
Faial and all the islands in the Azores in general were craped out by volcanos. From Horta the most obvious landmark is Pico Alto, a giant volcano on the adjacent island of Pico. Faial has it's own volcano. A 1 hour scooter ride from Horta gets you to this volcano, and the adjacent museum. Inside the museum is a 10 euro entry fee. The animal life that can be seen from the side of the main road incudes cows, horses, birds, geckos and tropical fish. The whole island is very green with nothing growing too tall. Hydrangeas infest the landscape. They are all over the roadsides and people even use them in the shrubbery walls that separate properties. The beaches in Horta involve a lovely dingy grey sand. They are so popular that the larger of the two is being torn down to make more room for a new marina. Kids can actually be seen swimming in the nasty marina water rather than walk the 10 minutes to walk to the remaining beach 4 blocks away. Tourists drive the hour to swim near the volcano to avoid the sand altogether and swim on sharp rocks.
What to do
Drinking is a favorite past time of any sailor town and Horta is no exception. When in doubt about what to do the central sailor bar (Cafe Sport) is the most frequently recommended option. In fact travel guides to Horta basically look like the writers never left that one specific bar. For the locals the grass is always greener on the other island. “It's way cheaper on the far side of Pico” 2.5 euros for just about anything you want to drink in the most popular bar quite steep and it's true that just about anywhere else a beer is about 1 euro. 1 beer however is .25L large. Furthermore anything liquid anywhere on the island is smaller than what you're used to. ¼L is really the standard size for all liquid consumables. Also the concept of a cup of water is unheard of. You pay just as much if not less for beer/wine. As for other attractions, as the sailors say “Anything in the Atlantic is just a stop, not a destination.” Horta is no exception.
Saturday, July 25, 2009
Tuesday, July 21, 2009
Land Ho
7/20
We're 24 miles away from our first destination. I eagerly peer out the window in hopes to see land first and be able to shout LAND HO! Sadly a large fog has descended and with the first outcrop of land less than 20 miles away all I see is fog, and birds. We skipped the first island, we would have arrived there yesterday but the ship is in need of repairs and the first island has no facilities to make them. The list of broken things is HUGE. First and foremost the starboard engine does not start. We spent 2 days trying to fix it to no avail. Second, the navigation system is currently flickering on and off. It's like the GPS in your car except it has all the info on how the boat is moving which is very difficult to tell without it. The autohelm is not working again. This morning while manually steering the boat I actually had to look at a compass. I feel like I'm sailing through the 18th century. Next on the importance list is probably the radar. There is nothing quite like the shock you get as you look around while in the middle of the ocean to see a giant tanker suddenly appear a mile away from you. Tankers should not appear out of nowhere. That is why radar exists. The power generator is also not working but luckily the engines charge the batteries. On the subject of charging we are missing one off 2 solar panels and one of two wind generators. The hatch in my berth leaks and the combination of that and some other unknown forces make us empty the bilge on the port pontoon every two days. The sat phone randomly dies. The fitting for the cooking gas has broken and the spare does not fit the tanks we have, we're on an emergency tank, it looks like it's older than the boat its self. There is damage, though mainly superficial, to the jib. It looks like it has been attacked by a dozen rabid raccoons. Despite all of this we've made it. The town of Horta on Faial island in the Azores (Portugal) is supposedly the best of the island chain for boat repairs. Peter hopes to at least get the starboard engine fixed before moving on. This should give us time to take the ferry to the adjacent island (Pico) where I plan on hiking to the top of Pico Alto, a 2351m tall volcano. I'm looking forward to being on land.
Anyway, I'll be putting up some pictures with this and hopefully responding to emails soon.
Surprised you've read through all of this,
-Dimitri
PS The island is beautiful. It's 8:30 in the morning we couldn't get a spot on the dock last night, especially with only 1 engine but this morning is calmer and we're going to have to try. I have yet to be on land. The island has green hills where land is separated by enormous hedges. White houses with red roofs are sprinkled sporadically. I can't wait to get off the boat.
We're 24 miles away from our first destination. I eagerly peer out the window in hopes to see land first and be able to shout LAND HO! Sadly a large fog has descended and with the first outcrop of land less than 20 miles away all I see is fog, and birds. We skipped the first island, we would have arrived there yesterday but the ship is in need of repairs and the first island has no facilities to make them. The list of broken things is HUGE. First and foremost the starboard engine does not start. We spent 2 days trying to fix it to no avail. Second, the navigation system is currently flickering on and off. It's like the GPS in your car except it has all the info on how the boat is moving which is very difficult to tell without it. The autohelm is not working again. This morning while manually steering the boat I actually had to look at a compass. I feel like I'm sailing through the 18th century. Next on the importance list is probably the radar. There is nothing quite like the shock you get as you look around while in the middle of the ocean to see a giant tanker suddenly appear a mile away from you. Tankers should not appear out of nowhere. That is why radar exists. The power generator is also not working but luckily the engines charge the batteries. On the subject of charging we are missing one off 2 solar panels and one of two wind generators. The hatch in my berth leaks and the combination of that and some other unknown forces make us empty the bilge on the port pontoon every two days. The sat phone randomly dies. The fitting for the cooking gas has broken and the spare does not fit the tanks we have, we're on an emergency tank, it looks like it's older than the boat its self. There is damage, though mainly superficial, to the jib. It looks like it has been attacked by a dozen rabid raccoons. Despite all of this we've made it. The town of Horta on Faial island in the Azores (Portugal) is supposedly the best of the island chain for boat repairs. Peter hopes to at least get the starboard engine fixed before moving on. This should give us time to take the ferry to the adjacent island (Pico) where I plan on hiking to the top of Pico Alto, a 2351m tall volcano. I'm looking forward to being on land.
Anyway, I'll be putting up some pictures with this and hopefully responding to emails soon.
Surprised you've read through all of this,
-Dimitri
PS The island is beautiful. It's 8:30 in the morning we couldn't get a spot on the dock last night, especially with only 1 engine but this morning is calmer and we're going to have to try. I have yet to be on land. The island has green hills where land is separated by enormous hedges. White houses with red roofs are sprinkled sporadically. I can't wait to get off the boat.
The Margarita of my life
July 12th
Come tomorrow the boat will be covered in salt. Every surface of everything will have big gobs of salt. “Clothes covered in salt don't dry” Peter mentions. It's true, try it at home go outside into the humidity, sprinkle some salt on a piece of paper and wait. It's 9:30 in the morning and I want to write out the events of the pat 24 hours before I go to sleep. I slept about 1 hour last night. When I went to bed, soaked from head to toe even in all of my waterproof gear, the wind at around 40knots had just ripped off one of the fan blades of the wind generator. It made a horrible noise but the other blades flew off a few minutes after Jessica's watch started. It stands motionless. I couldn't sleep. The howling of the wind, crashing of the waves, the dampness, the movement of the boat... all of it kept me awake for the 3 hours Jessica was on watch. No sooner than 10 min after Peter came to relieve her I knew any chance of sleep tonight would be destroyed. Before she had even dried off and gone to bed I heard the whiiiiiine CRACK flutter flutter and knew I would be getting no sleep tonight. Right before Peter called me to help him Jessica informed me that the wind hit 60 knots on her watch. For reference 64knots is the threshold for a hurricane. Peter decided that with the great power of the electric winch he would fight this wind and tighten the sails. To his great surprise he did not win that battle. I had recognized the sound from an earlier experiment. While on a dock we tried to change the sail and when the new sail got stuck Peter just put more force into it until a pulley was ripped from the mast. When Peter yelled to me that the main sail is stuck for some reason, over the howl of 40knot winds I pointed to the same exact pulley that had broken before that was now jammed between the lines and the mast. “We need to fix it” he said. So throwing on only a jacket and the pants still wet from my watch, and keeping it mostly closed with the harness, bare chested I ventured out onto the front of the boat in killer winds and spent well over an hour fixing the mistake it took only seconds to make. High tension lines, crashing waves, crazy winds, my kind of morning. When all was fixed I took my 1 hour of damp sleep to find the weather calmer for my watch. The winds had subsided to 30knots (the fastest they had been outside this instance with only 1 brief exception). The waves picked up a little and the ensuing roller coaster had shown its effects on the boat. The carpets were soaked, things were scattered all over the living room. A solar panel had ripped off and rested in the dingy. Fish the size of my arm jump from the waves and jiggle in the air as if to see the the ship that survived the storm. We have 800 miles left to go. Peter, seeing me tells me “there is good news and bad news” I save the good news for last. The bad news is the auto pilot has stopped working and we may have to steer the rest of the 800 miles by hand. Awesome. The good news? We're actually on course as for the past 2 days we've been about 60 degrees off. For reference this is like driving from NYC to Boston via Albany. Yesterday we hit halfway point. So far this trip has not been a disappointment.
Come tomorrow the boat will be covered in salt. Every surface of everything will have big gobs of salt. “Clothes covered in salt don't dry” Peter mentions. It's true, try it at home go outside into the humidity, sprinkle some salt on a piece of paper and wait. It's 9:30 in the morning and I want to write out the events of the pat 24 hours before I go to sleep. I slept about 1 hour last night. When I went to bed, soaked from head to toe even in all of my waterproof gear, the wind at around 40knots had just ripped off one of the fan blades of the wind generator. It made a horrible noise but the other blades flew off a few minutes after Jessica's watch started. It stands motionless. I couldn't sleep. The howling of the wind, crashing of the waves, the dampness, the movement of the boat... all of it kept me awake for the 3 hours Jessica was on watch. No sooner than 10 min after Peter came to relieve her I knew any chance of sleep tonight would be destroyed. Before she had even dried off and gone to bed I heard the whiiiiiine CRACK flutter flutter and knew I would be getting no sleep tonight. Right before Peter called me to help him Jessica informed me that the wind hit 60 knots on her watch. For reference 64knots is the threshold for a hurricane. Peter decided that with the great power of the electric winch he would fight this wind and tighten the sails. To his great surprise he did not win that battle. I had recognized the sound from an earlier experiment. While on a dock we tried to change the sail and when the new sail got stuck Peter just put more force into it until a pulley was ripped from the mast. When Peter yelled to me that the main sail is stuck for some reason, over the howl of 40knot winds I pointed to the same exact pulley that had broken before that was now jammed between the lines and the mast. “We need to fix it” he said. So throwing on only a jacket and the pants still wet from my watch, and keeping it mostly closed with the harness, bare chested I ventured out onto the front of the boat in killer winds and spent well over an hour fixing the mistake it took only seconds to make. High tension lines, crashing waves, crazy winds, my kind of morning. When all was fixed I took my 1 hour of damp sleep to find the weather calmer for my watch. The winds had subsided to 30knots (the fastest they had been outside this instance with only 1 brief exception). The waves picked up a little and the ensuing roller coaster had shown its effects on the boat. The carpets were soaked, things were scattered all over the living room. A solar panel had ripped off and rested in the dingy. Fish the size of my arm jump from the waves and jiggle in the air as if to see the the ship that survived the storm. We have 800 miles left to go. Peter, seeing me tells me “there is good news and bad news” I save the good news for last. The bad news is the auto pilot has stopped working and we may have to steer the rest of the 800 miles by hand. Awesome. The good news? We're actually on course as for the past 2 days we've been about 60 degrees off. For reference this is like driving from NYC to Boston via Albany. Yesterday we hit halfway point. So far this trip has not been a disappointment.
First Thrid
7/7/09
I met a guy once at a party who, some said, had some amount of psychic ability. He was my cousin's room mate for a while and said that he is glad to do readings but he never answers his friends on the subject of love or money. Someone at the party he did not know however wanted some insight into his current relationship. “Is she the one?” was the first question. “No.” Was the certain answer. Then came a series of follow-up questions. “how long will it last” “how may more till I find the one” etc. The answer was 2. 2 years, 2 more. “look” the psychic said “ I'm getting a lot of twos when it comes to your love life.”
I wonder if a subject can be connected to a number.
As I ready to tell the trip so far I have come up with many twos as well. Two days before the Atlantic crossing started we had 5 people planning on making the voyage. Two days after the trip started we lost two people. The first, dropped out the day before, he had a scheduling conflict and couldn't make it though he wanted to. The second, I felt never wanted to to begin with but being 16 and not being in full control of his life he was onboard when we departed only to succumb to sea sickness for two straight days and be taken off the boat via emergency medical helicopter. He felt like there was something seriously wrong with him, while the 3 of us knew it to only be sea sickness. However as we were not capable of making decisions for him we called up his father who summoned the coast guard to get him off the boat. We stood around and snickered as an airplane and a helicopter and a rescue crew boarded the boat, put him in a survival suit and evacuated him to the nearest hospital. To be honest it was good to be rid of his constant whining. Two days later the diagnosis came back: seasickness and dehydration... caused by seasickness. We had 2 days of the wind in the wrong direction. Followed by two days of no wind and fog so thick that at mid day I could not see more than 20 meters in any direction. Then two days of good wind with no fog and two days of low wind behind us. One particular night between one of these shifts we had winds behind us with gusts of 30+ knots and waves easily 20something feet high (that was a fun night). So far I have seen 2 large ships pass us. We have had 2 important devices stop functioning. The first, the radar that warns us of large ships in our area, the second, the generator that charges up our batteries in the most gas efficient way possible. The boat is powered by 2 engines which we can run individually for maximum efficiency. Only one has a working fuel meter but as I write this, 1/3rd of the way to our nearest destination that meter reads '½'. We have enough fuel onboard to refill both engines once. All of our limitations are in some way connected to fuel. The solar panels and wind generators don't make enough energy on a good day to power all the electronics and the extra freezer we have which is filled to the brim with frozen meat. There is no chance of us going hungry on this boat. Water however, is a limiting factor. Luckily we can generate water if we have spare power. And our only way of getting spare power is to run the engines. Everything boils down to fuel. The three man watch is hard but you get used to it. 3 hours on 6 hours off. At best if you're great at falling asleep you can get 5.5 hours in a single span. I'm not too good at falling asleep on command so I usually take a nap sometime during the day. We all do. At this point, day 8, we've run out of most of the fresh vegetables but we have plenty of cans and enough meat to feed a village. The fact that outer space is closer to me at the moment than dry land is, by a few hundred miles, hasn't caused any anxiety in any of us as far as I can tell. Peter reads books like a machine but spends an hour on occasion staring at the sat phone. Not sure what he does with it. I'm surprised to see how many birds there are this far from land. More than one type too. Most prominent though are black ones with white undersides and a 2ft wingspan. They are very sleek and fly around with their wings inches above the waves. I've seen dolphins following the boat and jumping in the moonlight, some sharks, flying fish, but mostly birds. One day Peter declared that it was Sunday and that he's making himself Sunday brunch with eggs and all that. I found the whole thing a little surreal. I haven't known what day of the week it was since my last sea shanties.
I think I can easily take at least another week of this without feeling any toll. I do hear that after a while you start to hallucinate. I'm excited about it. Two thirds left to go.
I met a guy once at a party who, some said, had some amount of psychic ability. He was my cousin's room mate for a while and said that he is glad to do readings but he never answers his friends on the subject of love or money. Someone at the party he did not know however wanted some insight into his current relationship. “Is she the one?” was the first question. “No.” Was the certain answer. Then came a series of follow-up questions. “how long will it last” “how may more till I find the one” etc. The answer was 2. 2 years, 2 more. “look” the psychic said “ I'm getting a lot of twos when it comes to your love life.”
I wonder if a subject can be connected to a number.
As I ready to tell the trip so far I have come up with many twos as well. Two days before the Atlantic crossing started we had 5 people planning on making the voyage. Two days after the trip started we lost two people. The first, dropped out the day before, he had a scheduling conflict and couldn't make it though he wanted to. The second, I felt never wanted to to begin with but being 16 and not being in full control of his life he was onboard when we departed only to succumb to sea sickness for two straight days and be taken off the boat via emergency medical helicopter. He felt like there was something seriously wrong with him, while the 3 of us knew it to only be sea sickness. However as we were not capable of making decisions for him we called up his father who summoned the coast guard to get him off the boat. We stood around and snickered as an airplane and a helicopter and a rescue crew boarded the boat, put him in a survival suit and evacuated him to the nearest hospital. To be honest it was good to be rid of his constant whining. Two days later the diagnosis came back: seasickness and dehydration... caused by seasickness. We had 2 days of the wind in the wrong direction. Followed by two days of no wind and fog so thick that at mid day I could not see more than 20 meters in any direction. Then two days of good wind with no fog and two days of low wind behind us. One particular night between one of these shifts we had winds behind us with gusts of 30+ knots and waves easily 20something feet high (that was a fun night). So far I have seen 2 large ships pass us. We have had 2 important devices stop functioning. The first, the radar that warns us of large ships in our area, the second, the generator that charges up our batteries in the most gas efficient way possible. The boat is powered by 2 engines which we can run individually for maximum efficiency. Only one has a working fuel meter but as I write this, 1/3rd of the way to our nearest destination that meter reads '½'. We have enough fuel onboard to refill both engines once. All of our limitations are in some way connected to fuel. The solar panels and wind generators don't make enough energy on a good day to power all the electronics and the extra freezer we have which is filled to the brim with frozen meat. There is no chance of us going hungry on this boat. Water however, is a limiting factor. Luckily we can generate water if we have spare power. And our only way of getting spare power is to run the engines. Everything boils down to fuel. The three man watch is hard but you get used to it. 3 hours on 6 hours off. At best if you're great at falling asleep you can get 5.5 hours in a single span. I'm not too good at falling asleep on command so I usually take a nap sometime during the day. We all do. At this point, day 8, we've run out of most of the fresh vegetables but we have plenty of cans and enough meat to feed a village. The fact that outer space is closer to me at the moment than dry land is, by a few hundred miles, hasn't caused any anxiety in any of us as far as I can tell. Peter reads books like a machine but spends an hour on occasion staring at the sat phone. Not sure what he does with it. I'm surprised to see how many birds there are this far from land. More than one type too. Most prominent though are black ones with white undersides and a 2ft wingspan. They are very sleek and fly around with their wings inches above the waves. I've seen dolphins following the boat and jumping in the moonlight, some sharks, flying fish, but mostly birds. One day Peter declared that it was Sunday and that he's making himself Sunday brunch with eggs and all that. I found the whole thing a little surreal. I haven't known what day of the week it was since my last sea shanties.
I think I can easily take at least another week of this without feeling any toll. I do hear that after a while you start to hallucinate. I'm excited about it. Two thirds left to go.
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