Blogs from Azores, Portugal, Europe - page 6

BERMUDA TO THE AZORES – The Journey Home We had a fabulous crossing from Bermuda to the Azores. Delays caused by sorting out the roller furling gear seemed to have put us into a favourable weather window. We enjoyed a passage from Bermuda to Flores in just under 13 days with down-wind sailing and relatively light airs. We used the weather files to steer ourselves around poor weather and balanced our fuel and wind to get the best route and benefit from our limited fuel. We felt it was better to load our daily log entries as it reflects how we felt at the time. Apologies if you have read them all before – hopefully the photos will make it more interesting. Day 1 Position as at 2242 UTC: 32 36 557N ... read more

Went to breakfast and then met the gang and went shore. Four of us (Roxie, Pat, Kenny and I) hired a taxi to take us to the crater lakes. Absolutely beautiful island. Everything is sooo green and in multi-shades of green. Cows in the pasture. The island is the top of an undersea volcano and we went to the top and saw water all around us going up and down the mountains. First warm, sunny day we have had – probably in the 60’s. Lots of beautiful hydranian’s. Then I went back to the ship and caught up on my blog entries, which you got hit with yesterday and checked my 400 emails, much of it spam. It was Italian night at dinner so we all ate very well. After dinner Roxie, Barb, Gary & I ... read more

Just before we left Sao Miguel we were strolling on the walkway near the marina at Ponta Delgada and all of a sudden the sky became enflamed and luckily we had our trusty camera with us. It seemed that every couple of seconds the sky kept changing and as a result we took numerous photos to try to capture some of it. As we had so many photos that appeared to be quite good we recruited some help from our friend, Cyndie to be our photo editor! She did a great job of narrowing down 33 photos to 6 which was an amazing job. If you count the photos here you can see that there were a couple of more that I just felt I had to add. Make sure to scroll down below the text ... read more

Ah, the joys of sailing! The last blog entry stated that we thought we would leave for Santa Maria on September 16th. Instead we set off at 7AM on the 17th, the winds were predicted to be better. It turned out to be not bad, we had enough wind to sail the 10 hours arriving in Vila do Porto at 5PM. The ride was rolly because the wind was directly behind us and the waves were hitting us on the beam (non-sailors, on the side), but it is much better than “on the nose”. This gave us more time to play tourist therefore as a result we have a few photos to show you from the last couple of days on Sao Miguel and our arrival on Santa Maria. Instead of going far afield the last ... read more

Sao Miguel is the largest and most populated of the nine Azores islands. The marina is in the city of Ponta Delgada which is also where the cruise ships come to therefore they are definitely accustom to tourists. Fortunately for us we have not seen any cruise ships in port as it must be out of season here. We just found out the other night that the cruise ships only stop in November and April when they travel between the Mediterranean and the Caribbean – lucky for us! The town itself has numerous historic buildings dating back to the late 1500’s. Most of the churches we have seen are in the architectural style referred to by the guidebooks as “Portuguese Simple/Manueline”, but there is nothing simple about these churches. They are primarily constructed of locally obtained ... read more