Blogs from Flores, Azores, Portugal, Europe

We find the days go by so quickly and it is now the weekend of the Festival of Emigrants. We had great plans of going to Santa Cruz by bus, doing a few more hikes and getting lots done on the boat with this extra week (Janice’s plan). We did do one more hike which was spectacular, we met some new people that have arrived in the marina (lots of socializing), worked some on the boat (you already heard about Bob’s favorite job of rebuilding the head), visited with some of the people that we have met on the island, had a great dinner and evening of socializing with Mike and Jeannette on Dutch Link, went to the local restaurant for dinner with Renee from Yoyo, had great visits on the dock with Christa, Pascal and ... read more

The island of Flores is the fourth smallest island of the Azores archipelago and has only about four thousand inhabitants, making it the second least populated. We feel very fortunate to have made our first landfall in Europe on this island. Traditionally the island of Faial, city of Horta is where most sailors make their European landfall. However last year a new marina was opened on Flores which we had heard was very nice and well worth the visit. As Flores is farther west than Faial and we knew we would not be coming back to the Azores in the near future we wanted to explore this island. We are very glad we did. The marina in Lajes is very new and is still in the process of completion, however, the docks are very good and ... read more

For those of you that might be interested in some of the facts and figures about our crossing we have a few for you. We lifted the anchor in Marigot Bay, St. Martin at 6:20AM on June 6, 2012 and put our anchor down in the harbor at Lajes, Flores in the Azores at 4:50PM on June 25th giving us a grand total of 19 days, 10.5 hours to sail a total of 2,550 nautical miles. Our average speed was 6 knots; however, when the seas were large we surfed over them and registered a high of 10.8 knots!! For those of you that are not sailors, this is really flying for a boat like ours. We put way too many hours on the engine for this trip, but fortunately Caliber provides us with very large ... read more

Just a quick update. I am having a great trip here in Europe. My first few days in Lisbon were amazing. I really liked it there and saw all sorts of amazing things. Beautiful, fun, interesting city. Three days did not do it justice. I even went to a Manchester United futball game (was the biggest game in Lisbon for the year). The conference in the Azores is also going very well. It is amazing to be with some many brilliant minds. I am learning so much from them and making great contacts. I already gave my talk and it went well, but there is a lot of suggestions that I got that I think will be very helpful. I don't want to waste too much time typing and not enjoying my short time here so ... read more