Blogs from Azores, Portugal, Europe - page 8

Here are a few photos (sorry about the quality of them) to give you a very small view of what it was like during our crossing.... read more

First, we want to apologize to all of you that switched over to our new blog while we were crossing the Atlantic. We are moving those entries to this blog site so we can have a complete journal of our travels when we are finished. Those of you that have read these before, hopefully you can enjoy some of the photos that we added. Unfortunately we are having major technical difficulties as we are not able to access the photos from our hard drive so until we can find someone to help with that we will not be able to put up photos from our crossing. Hopefully we will be able to do so at a later date. All new entries will be added to this site so you can continue to get email messages when ... read more

Hello all – it’s been a while – we had Ports of call all close together therefore no time to write anything and followed by 6 days crossing the Atlantic. It is now Day 5 of the crossing with just Tuesday to go before arriving in the Azores on Wednesday – and it will be great to hit land again. As I wrote at the end of the last one we attended the cocktails where once again after entering the fray for a couple of free drinks we were invited to leave after a mere 25 minutes but we did admirably, claiming all available passing full glasses on the way out! We arrived in Key West on the morning of the 25th with yet more fabulous weather and headed on foot up Canal Street, which is ... read more

INTRO You are not Portuguese? You don’t have family here? Then why did you come to visit the Azores? My wife and I heard some variation of this line of questioning more than once during our recently completed ten day trip to the Azores archipelago. A large number of people have emigrated from the Azores to the United States, primarily Massachusetts, so that today there are approximately three times as many Azoreans in the U.S. as there are in the Azores. So, while tourists from Germany, The UK and Scandinavia are common in the Azores, American tourists who are not visiting family, or not travelling with a group, tend to be few and far between. WHAT & WHERE ARE THE AZORES? The Azores archipelago is the westernmost part of Europe. It is approximately two-thirds of the ... read more

Nach einem eher unfreiwilligen Bus-Trip einmal Rund um La Palma, bei dem ich noch einige schoene Gegenden dieser farbenpraechtigen und facettenreichen Insel bewundern konnte, bin ich vor einer Woche in Santa Cruz de Tenerife wieder an Bord der Bessie-Ellen gegangen. Die war meist sehr gemuetlich und entspannt. Wir hatten selten mehr als 5 Beaufort Wind, dafuer aber auch fast nie keinen und konnten deshalb fast die ganzen 750 Meilen unter Segel zuruecklegen. Trotz wenig Wind hatten wir manchmal starken Seegang und auf Vorwindkurs bei wenig Wind hat die Bessie-Ellen trotz ihrer Groesse ziemlich geschaukelt. Trotzdem wurde ich gluecklicherweise nie Seekrank und konnte die Ueberfahrt in vollen zuegen geniessen. Mit drei Wach-Teams bekam man immer genug Schlaf und ich hatte sogar noch viel Zeit zum Faulenzen und Lesen (hab jetzt die Bibel endlich fertig :-) Wunderschoene Sonnen- ... read more