Images of Haria and Arrecife, Lanzarote

This is an early afternoon in the town square in Haria, in the north of the island. The area is one of the few in Lanzarote where the availability of water means that there is an abundance of trees and plants.








Looking out from Haria toward slopes terraced for farming. Some of them are still cultivated, and where they are you can see the plants growing green against the black volcanic pebbles used to shelter the soil from sun and wind and conserve moisture.






The view out to sea from the Modern Art Museum in the Castillo de San Jose, one of the spots we loved in Arrecife.











Evening falls over the Charco de San Gines, the tidal sea water lagoon in the city of Arrecife where many of the smaller fishing boats and other local boats have their moorings. The church of San Gines is in the background.








Art and daily life mix in the city of Arrecife, and some times the effects are odd...












While we were in Arrecife the East wind blew in clouds of sand from the Sahara. It filled the air with a reddish brown haze, hiding the nearby hills and creating a spectacularly different sunset.

Arrecife, Lanzarote

Our time in Arrecife began with what we now think of as “Adventures in Anchoring”. The Puerto de Naos, tucked up at the southern end of Arrecife’s harbours, is one of the safest anchorages in the Canaries. Unlike most, it provides protection from all directions. It is also crowded with moorings, mostly occupied by smaller local boats, and has become a place of choice for cruisers settling in for a long term stay - two boats we were told had already been there for about a year, two others for two years. Then there were some abandoned boats, slowly deteriorating over time as they sat and rotated in tide and wind on their moorings. We dropped our anchor first in the only space we could see at the time, and spent too much time watching and worrying about how close we would swing to the boats moored near by.

So we took the first opportunity we could to move to a more open space among other boats swinging to anchors. We dropped the hook, and felt it grab, then stayed aboard for a couple of hours just to be sure. So imagine our horror when we came back from a trip ashore to find our boat rafted to another (rather bigger) one - and how profusely we thanked those aboard Tigress for corralling our dragging boat. Re-anchored, we sat aboard as the wind came up. Some hours into the blow, we could feel her moving again, so up with the anchor - and the two tyres which were attached to it. We tried reanchoring not far away, but were not satisfied that the anchor was holding - finally, we found a spot closer to moored boats than we liked - but at least the anchor was holding. And this time we were given very good advice by Trevor on Nergal - drop the anchor, but do not pull on it, the bottom being too soft - best to let the anchor sink by itself. We dropped and held, and in the morning decided our best chance was to swing like a moored boat. Two more anchors out, and we were finally in a spot we could stay in, and did for the next few weeks. But we never felt comfortable leaving Into The Blue for long.

Much of our time off the boat was spent walking around Arrecife. It is an interesting town, in the process of transition from a major fishing port to something else, a mix of tourist destination and business and government centre. Abandoned buildings where homeless people squat, the presence of beggars in the downtown commercial area, a profusion of graffiti - a few pictures and a lot of tagging - these and other things suggest that the transition is not an easy one. But we also found ourselves walking through beautifully landscaped and designed areas, enjoying the murals and sculptures we found along the streets and appreciating the very human scale of building we found here - only one high rise in the whole town and that a hotel. Much of what we enjoyed reflected the influence of one man, Cesar Manrique, and his supporters. And one of the places we most enjoyed in Arrecife was the Museo Internationale de Arte Contemporaneo in the Castillo de San Jose, a fort which was beautifully restored to house the museum under Manrique’s guidance.

We did take the time to travel by bus to Haria, a town in the northern part of Lanzarote. We had hoped to visit the Museo del Arte Sacre there, but found it closed for repairs. So we simply enjoyed the atmosphere of this town with its graceful public spaces and profusion of plants and its views of the surrounding hillsides with their terraces now only partly cultivated. On the drive to Haria we travelled through the hills, and saw the sloping fields covered with black lava pebbles with rows of bright green leaves growing through them. One field was being worked by two men guiding a small plough pulled by a mule. Occasionally we caught a glimpse of the coast from high above before we began the descent down a steep narrow road into the narrow roads of the town, roads not built for the kind of traffic they bear now. Our drive back took us along the coast roads a ways, before we turned back inland. And as we travelled we saw examples of Manrique’s influence - some of his wind toys, giant mobiles, in one of the roundabouts we passed, his former home which now houses the foundation he created, the cactus garden he designed - and these just a small part of the work he has done here. His work is so wide-ranging that you can only wonder at his ingenuity, creativity and strength.

Time, as it always seems to do, flew past. We did some work on the boat, and finally came to the point where we needed the facilities of Las Palmas - for the second time, we needed our radio fixed. So we left Arrecife and the Puerto de Naos, leaving behind its older men gathered mornings and evenings on the dock by the rescue boat and the pilot boat, spending their time watching the comings and goings in the harbour and enjoying their arguments and discussions. We left behind the few fishermen in their small local boats who still went out to fish - we often waved to them as they went past, and sometimes they even slowed down as they went past us - and they waved to us as we left. We learned from our friend Trevor that you can pull anchors up by dinghy as well as laying them out, and with his help we we retrieved anchors and set off on a cloudy morning for an overnight sail to Gran Canaria and the anchorage in Las Palmas.

The sail from Graciosa to Arrecife had been pleasant; a day sail with good enough winds to get us there in plenty of time to enter the harbour in daylight and find a spot to anchor. That must be why Mother Nature decided to make our sail to Las Palmas a little more eventful - starting with brisk winds, which then became stronger and on the nose, until shortly after midnight when they turned light and behind us. We went from reefed sails to as much sail as possible, and managed to get to Las Palmas shortly after dark the day after we set out, slightly battered and worn and glad to drop anchor and sleep. And now we have another city to explore, while we get ready for our trip across the Atlantic to the Caribbean.

October in Graciosa

When we think of this past October we will think of the beauties of Graciosa with its golden sand dunes and brown, ochre and red-gold volcanic cones. We spent almost the whole month there, exploring and enjoying the simpler life of a small island. There are no paved roads; sand roads and tracks cross the dunes instead. Four wheel drive vehicles carry visitors and locals when needed, and everyone else walks or bicycles - though in this sandy terrain cyclists are likely to find they are doing as much pushing as pedalling. Visitors arrive by boat or ferry to swim, surf, camp and walk, especially in the summer - by October the tourist season was coming to an end. Still we saw the tourist boats pulling into the anchorage almost every day that we were there bringing people to swim and kayak, off the beaches, and the ferries arrived full of beach-goers on the weekends and left packed with sunburnt and sandy passengers on Sunday evenings. Still, the winds were building and the weather starting to cool - while we were there we hunkered down for three very windy days in the anchorage off Playa Francesa (winds from from the north-east) and there were more while we were in the marina, this time from the south. None of which discouraged us lingering for a while, meeting friends and exploring.

Graciosa is an island that repays exploration. When we first approached it looked almost barren. But walking through the sand dunes you pass clumps of plants that are spreading through the dunes and begin to notice the birds, insects and occasional lizard among their low scrubby growth. You see the flowers that bloom among what look like dead, dry twigs and the leaves that suddenly appear after any rain. In the towns people create little oases of greenery, cultivating small gardens of cactus, palms or tropical flowers like hibiscus. Some create their gardens outside their houses for all to enjoy, others in inside courtyards we sometimes glimpsed through unshuttered windows. In some of the gardens plants grew among black volcanic pebbles used to collect dew and hold water and send it down to their roots.

So we spent time walking. We walked with friends along the shore between the island’s two towns, finding unexpected golden beaches among the rocks and enjoying the blues and greens of the ocean. We walked up two of the volcanic cones along trails which wound over rocky ground and along small, eroded gullies, and looked out over the island from their slopes. We found stone walls looking as if they marked off fields or property, and places where people had used some of the plentiful stones to build small shelters - on the beach or at the top of a trail, or in the camping area. We were able to look closely at a house wall built the old way - from loose stones closely packed and curved around the room within - such wall have survived for hundreds of years. We saw how tanks were built beside some of the houses to collect water, and roofs used as catchment areas - difficult to keep clean when the house is close to the harbour and gulls. We even found a small farm with horses, goats, chickens and dogs, surprising in a place where there is no real grazing. And when we were not walking we spent time swimming and snorkelling, off the boat and from the beaches, observing how the old lava flows have created clefts and crevices where fish, squid and octopus swim and feed.

Being in the marina at Calheta del Sebo meant being in the harbour around which much of the activity on the island revolves. The ferry boats come and go from here, and so do the local tourist boats. Work boats bring in building and other supplies, and fishing boats come and go. There is a travel-lift, and the fishing boats are hauled, maintained and repaired in an area by the dock. Fish are frozen and stored in a building close by, and we saw small fish spread out to dry under fishing nets used to keep the gulls away close to the slipway.

The marina is one of the few places in the Canaries which is safe in almost any weather, offering shelter from all directions. Cruisers are beginning to discover its advantages, and many people who arrive intending to stay a few days end up staying a few months. The atmosphere there is relaxed and the security good. The only catch is that there is often no space for the new arrival, so it takes a combination of luck and timing to get a spot. There would be more room if the number of available spaces had not been reduced by damage from last years freak hurricane, and this may take a while to change since we saw no signs that the damage will be fixed soon - we were told that things do not happen very quickly here. We decided that it was best not to leave until we were sure we would not be tempted to return - so we waited until we were ready to head for the main island of Lanzarote before we finally said goodbye to friends met and seen again and cast off the dock lines for a brisk sail to Arrecife. But more about that next time...

Graciosa Pictures

We came across flowers blooming on small dry plants growing wild in the dunes, dark reds and delicate creamy colours among the dry brown stalks.









Here fishermen are working just outside the anchorage at Playa Francesa on Graciosa. The large boat waits as the smaller ones lay out nets and reel them in, while a diver in the water keeps an eye on the catch. The mount of the net will be closed with the fish inside, and once that has been done the big boat will come and lie alongside the boat which has the net, and the fish will be loaded on to it by hand.






Plants are spreading through the dunes of Graciosa, doing their part to anchor the sand around the volcanic cones which rise above them. Almost all the growth we saw outside the cultivated gardens of the towns was low, brown and scrubby, at least until you looked closer.





Looking out over the dunes and slopes of Graciosa toward the coast of Lanzarote on a day when it was shrouded in haze.









Our walk between Caleto del Seba and Pedro Barba took us over a rocky trail past ocean tumbling on to rocks and beaches.










Alright, for those who asked - here is a picture of us on the trail between Caleta del Sebo and Pedro Barba on the island of Graciosa. It was a good hike along the coast through some beautiful scenery, with good friends - worth the tired legs we ended up with...







We passed this whimsical garden on one of our walks in Caleta del Sebo. In spite the general dryness of the climate, we found gardens with bougainvillea and hibiscus, as well as thriving palms trees and cactus. The stones are like those used in the old style of building, and the houses and fences built with stone walls have curves rather than squared off corners.

Porto Santo, Madeira and Graciosa, Canaries

This is the town square in Vila Baleira, Porto Santo, Madeira - on this Sunday, only some of the cafes were open, and there were few people around until later in the day when they drifted up from the beach. It was also the free wi-fi zone, shared by inhabitants and visitors alike to reach the rest of the world.






Looking along the beach on the south coast of Porto Santo from Vila Baleira toward the harbour of Porto Santo where we anchored. It was late in the day - earlier the beach was full of people sunbathing, swimming and playing.







The sun is setting over the island of Porto Santo in a bright silver haze after a hot day.











From the breakwater of the Marina on Graciosa you can look across the narrow gulf toward the much larger island of Lanzarote. The slopes you see changed colour and definition constantly, from muted grey to warm gold, from misty shapes to sharply defined slopes and chasms.








A different mood: the sun is setting on a cloudy evening over the anchorage at Playa Francesa.










This house down toward the eastern end of the village of Caleta del Sebo actually had a lot of greenery around it - the cactus to the right was also sporting a groom, mop, and sundry other bits of cleaning equipment whenwe passed.






The coast of Lanzarote travelling west from Graciosa, with its volcanic cones and lava plains and its sand blown in from the Sahara. The light in this whole area is constantly changing, as the haze of sand and dust grows less or more and the clouds and spray and morning mist come and go.







At the beginning of September we left Praia da Vitoria on Terceira for Porto Santo, the smaller island off Madeira. We enjoyed a couple of day with good winds, which dropped on our third day out. For the next three days we had light winds and slow sailing, days in which we meandered along covering between forty-five and seventy miles a day. Then the winds picked up and we moved briskly along again, arriving in Porto Santo seven days and about seven hundred miles later.

Having arrived there we would have liked to stay longer in Porto Santo, and to have visited Funchal on the main island of Madeira, but were discouraged by a change in policy which saw sailboats anchored outside the harbours being charged commercial rates for the time they spent there. Some people we spoke to about this opted not to visit Madeira at all; others who found out about it while they were there refused to pay - those in the most difficult position were boats which had anchored out while waiting for daylight to enter a harbour, and were told about the charges only after they were in a marina.

Government policies and their effects aside, Porto Santo itself was a pleasant place to visit. We anchored in the inner harbour for a relatively small charge, and found the people we dealt with friendly , polite and quick to help. From the harbour we bicycled in to the town of Vila Baleira where we were able to pick up supplies and take advantage of the free wi-fi which we found in the town centre. Several afternoons found us sitting with our computer on one of the stone ledges surrounding the town square, along with other visitors and some of the local young people - while we picked up e-mail and checked weather, others were listening to music and chatting. An interesting example of the way the long arm of the internet reaches more and more places now.

We liked what we saw of Vila Baleira, which is an attractive town fronted by a long and beautiful beach which literally stretches for miles, the beach being the main attraction for many of the visitors who come to the town by plane or boat or ferry. On the Sunday we were there we found the beach filled with visitors and locals alike - then it suddenly emptied in the late afternoon and we noticed that many of the people from the beach made their way to an ice cream booth in the town square which did a couple of hours of brisk business. Though our stay was short, the day we left we managed to fit in a visit to the Christopher Columbus Museum - there are several scattered through the Azores and Canaries in places where he is known to have stopped. We enjoyed the way the exhibit placed Columbus’ stay in Porto Santo in the context of the marine history of the times as well as the history of the island. Though the exhibits were presented and explained in Portuguese there were translation sheets in every room for those of us who speak English - a great help.

We stayed three nights and four days in Porto Santo and left on a windy evening with the gusts funnelling down off the mountains. The wind was with us all the way to Graciosa, the most north easterly inhabited island of and our first stop in the Canaries. We had a fast, hard sail getting there, covering the two hundred and ninety miles in less than two and a half days and spending several hours with the boat hove to off the coast waiting for daylight before we entered the harbour. The sun rose to show us the island of Graciosa on one side of the channel and the towering cliffs of Lanzarote on the other, a landscape we have been enjoying ever since.

Our first couple of days in Graciosa were spent sleeping; in between we managed to find the supermarkets - the restaurants and bars were easy to see. On our fourth day here we moved out of the marina and anchored off a beach about forty-five minutes walk from the village, Playa Francesa. And there we stayed with the days just drifting past, finding it very easy in this setting to relax and slow down. We did some boat work, repairing and maintaining; walked into town for supplies every three or four days; and swam off the boat most days, enjoying the clear water and clean conditions. When we first got to the anchorage there were only five other boats there, but over time the number grew until, at the maximum, we had about twenty boats there, large and small. Most were European - French, Dutch, German, Norwegian, Swedish, English, Spanish - though we did meet the crew of one American boat and of a couple of boats from Australia, and glimpsed a Canadian boat which changed its mind on its way into the anchorage and headed for the marina.

A few mornings we were able to watch small local fishing boats at work close by - they are well maintained and colourful, and the men on them travel around the area they are working in and look for fish before they set out their nets. They look the old fashioned way - standing on the bow of the boat looking into the water, or using glass-bottomed box-like instruments to see below the surface. Considering how difficult fish can be to see against the bottom, it must take a combination of sharp eyes and experience to be good at finding them - but then fishing has been a way of life here for a long time.

You wonder if they notice the beauty of the landscape they are working and living in. You also wonder about the kinds of conditions which have lead to the building of the thick-walled white painted houses with their small shuttered windows that people live in in the village. Partly it must be because the original houses were constructed with the material most available here - volcanic rocks, which were piled into thick, sometimes curving walls for the houses and sometimes the property around them. Building on such sandy soil must also have had an impact on the design - but so far we have not been able to learn much about such things. Perhaps in the future.

One fascinating thing we have noticed here is that the light changes all the time, and with it the colour and textures of the landscape. Lanzarote’s cliffs can be steely grey in the morning, washed out brown at midday, and full of detail and colour in the evening. The coast of Lanzarote falls away to the west in a series of plains and volcanic cones, sometimes looking soft and misty and at others standing out starkly beautiful. The dunes on Graciosa change colour in the light too, from almost white to golden yellow, the vegetation on them sometimes dry brown, sometimes green interlaced with brown and black. The clouds come over the cliffs of Lanzarote - indeed they are there most mornings - and soften the starkness of their outlines. Perhaps not a place which is beautiful in the conventional way, but beautiful all the same.

We will stay here a while longer, and explore the island more before we move on to Lanzarote and the work of the architect/artist Cesar Manrique.

Pictures from Terceira, Azores

Throughout the town festival in Praia da Vitoria the streets along which the parades travelled were decorated with lights and the poles were draped in fabric. Businesses stayed open, and the cafes were always full to overflowing.







The town square was all lit up for its part in the Festival. Every night people gathered there to watch the parades (a different one every night), and to enjoy the performances of groups in the parades, followed by another performance on the stage erected at the top of the square, in front of the post office.







When we visited Angra they were getting ready for a Festa there. The main streets were busy, decorated and narrow - and of course from the harbour everything is up.








The start of a race - round an island to the north of Praia and back, nine miles in all. Starboard or port start, in the end it did not seem to make much difference...









Looking at the marina at Praia da Vitoria, from the breakwater which protects it. There are two Canadian boats in this picture: ourselves,the light blue hull on the right and Joint Venture, the Alberg 37 yawl with the green sail cover, dodger, bimini and weather cloths. There were American, German, French and English boats here as well, and one of the boats racing was Polish. There is also an active fleet of local racers.





The pavements and sometimes the streets are decorated with patterns created from dark and light stones. This part of this street in Praia da Vitoria from the beach to the square is for pedestrians only.







Looking down from a hill above Praia da Vitoria toward the marina and beaches.










It was a windy day, and this sailor was out for an exciting ride.

Praia da Vitoria, Terceira, Azores

We arrived in Praia da Vitoria, Terceira just before the start of the annual ten day festivals held every August. There are two festivals held at the same time - a gastronomic festival, with top regional restaurants (and this year a Mexican one) serving their dishes in mini-restaurants under tents close to the marina, and the town’s festival. And this is a town that really knows how to put on a festival...

We became night owls for the duration. Every night (except one) there was a parade, starting with the first night’s bands and dancers and small but beautiful floats. Followed by parades of bands, folklore parades, a children’s parade, a parade of clowns,and finishing with an international folk dance parade with groups from countries like Ireland, Holland, Norway... And these parades were nothing like the parades we are accustomed to. True, the crowd lined the streets. They also walked through the streets in the interval between one group’s passing and the next or stood chatting on the parade route until the next group came along or followed along behind one of the bands or groups. In the square was one of the best places to be; the older folk sat along the parade route in chairs provided by the town council, and almost every band stopped to perform for them and the rest of the crowd gahered there. Because that was part of the parade too - instead of moving along the parade route, the dancers stopped to dance, the singers to sing, the clowns to make fun, the floats to be admired. If we were in a hurry or coming late to a parade we could start working our way up the route from the end toward the beginning and see all of it. The square was our favourite place to watch from for another reason too - there was a cafe selling very good ice cream there.

After the parades came music. In the square there was folk music and dancing - each island has its own dances, somewhat different from the others. Or there were band concerts, or youth groups performing. In the Club Navale, close to the marina, there were concerts by local groups. At the bandstand by the beach there was a mixture of local bands and others from “away” , doing everything from great sixties and seventies covers to jumping jazz to a heart-pounding combination of drums and bagpipes to a young local group doing Beach Boys and Elvis tunes. For the younger crowd there was a club/disco tent. And the music was topped off with a Blues Festival - we thoroughly enjoyed the two performances we went to, Cajun blues belted out by Lisa Haley and the Zydecats and stadium blues with John Lee Hooker Jr. And there was food everywhere.

The final day there was a bullfight, Terceira style, on the beach. No harm was done to the bulls, or to anyone competing. The bull was (somewhat) restrained by eight men, four each at the end of long ropes. Then it was a matter of seeing which of the many young men present would tease the bull into running after him. Many of them took to the water when the bull approached - but so did the bull from time to time. Traditionally teasing the bull seems to have been done with umbrellas - waving them around in front of a bull does get his attention, as two of the young men on the beach demonstrated. The bull moved quickly to drive away those annoying things waving around in front of him; the young men themselves managed to stay well clear of the bull’s horns, even if they did have to move very rapidly from time to time, and when they closed the umbrellas the bull quickly lost interest in them.
It seemed that every group found some way to take part in the festival. We saw divers bring up a sunken car - they had sunk it themselves after carefully removing all toxic or dangerous material. We saw demonstrations of rock climbing, table tennis, beach volleyball, and missed others - like skateboarding and the Portuguese Air Force helicopter demonstration. There was a regatta, with sailboats racing about twenty miles from Angra, one day, then racing in the harbour the next. The windsurfers did not seem to be officially a part of anything, but we certainly enjoyed seeing them flying by whenever the wind picked up.


We heard rather than saw firecrackers from time to time during the festival (and after). They went off with great bursts of noise during the day or early evening, and were used among other things to announce the beginning of the bull fight and the changing of the bulls. But on the last night, at midnight, there was a spectacular fire works display, and the night filled with noise and colour and music. It was a great way to end.

After that it took a little time to recover, but recover we have. We have enjoyed the beaches here and taken a little time to walk around and see more of Praia and to visit the other big city in Terceira, Angra do Heroismo. In Angra we discovered they have a wonderful museum, full of history and paintings and including a chapel full of religious art. We walked around it far too rapidly, and it is one of the reasons we have decided we have to come back here and spend more time. That and the friendliness we have found here and the fact that there is so much more to see and do, so many more places to go. We have barely scratched the surface. And it does not hurt that the harbour is sheltered and the marina protected and the cost of staying here very reasonable.

Tomorrow, the winds being right, we will set off for Sao Miguel. But we will be back.

The Island of Flores, Azores

These rocks lie off the coast of Flores, close to the harbour at Santa Cruz. The harbour itself is tiny and difficult to access, and yachts are no longer encouraged to go there since the breakwater at Port das Lajes was built.







The town of Santa Cruz, overlooked by a hill with one house visible at it's summit - as well as various communication towers. You can see the red tiled roofs which are everywhere, set off against the white walls of the houses. Almost all the houses have blinds or shutters to keep the sun out.






The sea swirls in eddies and rips around the rocks off Santa Cruz, beautiful to see though it would be terrifying to be among them. We were glad to be seeing them from on shore...







Houses, cafes and shops perch on the hillside above the harbour at Ponta das Lajes - the western-most point of Europe. At the top, the church overlooks harbour and port. There are still some of the old stone buildings, black stones outlined with white. The old cobblestone streets are also made of black stone, and black and white stones make patterns along the pavements.







This is the anchorage at Lajes, looking down from the street above. The black sand beach is very popular with the children and young people of Lajes, who spend summer afternoons swimming and jumping off nearby rocks and the dock.







Flores really is the island of flowers. These were growing by the roadside along which we walked almost every day up to the town above the harbour in Lajes.

Horta, Faial

This museum, which gives the history of the Capelinhos volcano and the effect its eruption had on the lives of those living nearby, is housed in one of the island's old stone houses, carefully restored and with a few more modern features added. You can still see houses like this in some places, though many have fallen into disrepair and others have been improved beyond recognition.






Ponta dos Capelinhos was the site of the most recent volcanic eruption in the islands of the Azores. A volcano erupted just off the point in 1957, and continuing eruptions created a new area of land joined to Faial itself. The area is dramatic, steep slopes and dark sandy soil with the sea lapping below.








An old windmill, carefully preserved but no longer in use. It's sails are tethered and its stairs anchored to the ground so that the top of the windmill will no longer revolve to take best advantage of the wind.







Like many other islands, Faial is proud of it's "natural swimming pools". On a calm day, this wouldhave been a very inviting place to go swimming in spite of the steep climb down.







From the Monte da Guia you can look down past the beach at Porto Pim to the harbour and marina at Horta. The Monte da Guia and the smaller Monte Queimado are both volcanic cones.









Windmills for producing electricity tower above the farms and houses outside Horta. We saw cattle in some of the fields as well as a few horses, and hay bails wrapped in a white plastic covering.









From Horta and the island of Sao Jorge you can see the island of Pico, with it's volcanic cone towering high above. Sometimes shrouded in clouds, sometimes lightly veiled, sometimes clear - Pico has many moods. Here is the mountain at sunset, seen from Horta's marina.

Flores and Faial

The Island of Flores, Azores

Our voyage from Bermuda to Flores in the Azores was one of those trips that make you glad you are out there in a sailboat. We spent eighteen days on the bluest of oceans, visited by dolphins and flying fish and petrels and shearwaters. We listened well to Herb on Southbound II, and travelled much further north than we had ever thought we would to stay in good winds and favourable currents. And good winds and favourable currents we had most of the way, as well as the company of other boats on the radio and friends waiting for us when we made landfall.

Our first sight of Flores was breathtaking. It was dawn, and the sun was beginning to rise. We first saw the island as a great dark rock rising out of the ocean, steep-sided and stark. Then as the sun rose higher it began to soften - we could see the cliffs were topped with trees and hilly slopes covered with a patchwork of green fields. The port of Lajes lay below the cliffs, it’s breakwater a solid line with masts behind it below the buildings that were becoming visible, climbing up the hill into the village proper. We could see rising layers of red tiled roofs, some above old stone walls, the black stones outlined in white, others topping painted cement walls. Above the harbour we could see the church, two cupolas either side of a scalloped triangle of roof with a cross on top. It looked, somehow, exotic.

On shore, we found that every place was up from the harbour. Some of the cruisers nicknamed the trek from harbour to the main street through the town of Lajes the cardiac climb, since only the very fit could make it without feeling their hearts pounding and their breaths coming short. On the other hand, we told ourselves, it was sure to make us fitter. We told ourselves that every time we climbed it... It helped that much of the road, here as in the rest of the island, was bordered by beautiful flowers, big and bright. We saw them in parks and gardens as well - though many of the gardens, front and back, in Lajes were used mainly to cultivate a wide variety of vegetables. That, we were told, was why there was not much of a selection in the stores - almost everyone grew their own. And there were chickens and sheep around the town as well.

In Lajes almost every cruiser and a great many other visitors as well frequent the Cafe Beira Mar, where the owner, Paula, serves as a gateway to Lajes, and to Flores as a whole, as well as being a source for fresh vegetables and fresh-laid eggs. She speaks excellent English, and is ready with information and help of all kinds, including translation services when necessary. To top it all off, the food she serves in her cafe is excellent, something we learned when our first and second evenings were spent watching World Cup football with friends there. It was surprisingly quiet for a group of soccer fans - it would probably have been a lot noisier and certainly much happier if Portugal had won the consolation match.

There may not have been much celebrating then, but the Feast of the Emigrants made up for that. It takes place over a four day weekend, mostly in the evenings, with booths and concerts and on Sunday a free beef lunch (broth with bread soaked in it, and platters with beef prepared two different ways). The lunch is served complete with wine, juice and water at rows of tables set up in the largest building in town, a well-cleaned out municipal garage. Most years there are hundreds of people there but this year the inter-island ferry failed to run, as it has for months, and most of the expected visitors did not come. The festivities went on anyway, and we saw two concerts, one of them including traditional music and dancing, and a magnificent display of fireworks on the cliff above the harbour. There should have been more people there to enjoy it - hopefully the ferry will run again very soon, and the island will benefit from having more visitors.

We visited Flores’ capital, Santa Cruz, by land. The drive there was along winding roads, with views that tempt the visitor to stop frequently. We saw the harbour there, and were glad that the harbour in Lajes has been improved. The coast by Santa Cruz is laced with rocks; the sea foams green around them. The harbour itself is tricky to get into, and tiny. We would not have felt at all comfortable there. Access to Lajes is much easier, but even there one has to mind the weather and watch the direction and strength of the wind. When we left for Horta it was not so much because we wanted to leave Flores as because the coming weather was going to make the anchorage a very uncomfortable place to be. And so we left for Faial, and that place well known to many sailors - Horta.

We planned on the trip, about a hundred and thirty miles, taking about twenty four hours, and left Flores shortly after nine o’clock on a Thursday morning. That way it would certainly be daylight when we arrived off Faial, and if the trip took a little longer than anticipated that would be fine as well. But we were on a broad reach all the way in winds averaging twenty knots, and arrived in Horta only twenty-two hours after we left Flores, earlier than anticipated! We approached the island on a hazy morning, thankful for the GPS co-ordinates that helped us be sure of where we were. There was not much time for sleep along the way, and the journey was too short to settle into a routine, so we spent most of our first day in Horta sleeping...

Horta being one of those destinations favoured by many cruisers, a lot of the people we have met along the way were either here before us or came in shortly after. And it is no wonder many people stop here - a sheltered marina at very reasonable rates, access to shopping and many kinds of services. lots of good company, lots of cafes, bars and restaurants, a constantly changing view of the cone of Pico, across the channel, from your cockpit- all this, and a whole island to explore too. And everything kept immaculately clean - the garbage bins in the marina are emptied three times a day!

The most dramatic scenery to be found in Faial is at the site of the volcano which erupted just off the island in 1957. By the time the eruptions were finished, the volcano had created an island which then became linked to Faial, the nearby lighthouse had been destroyed and many houses in the nearby village were buried under the ash it created. Many of the people displaced moved to North America; John F. Kennedy came specifically to invite them to the United States to resettle there. The landscape left behind is stark, mountains and cliffs of rock and lava rising out of dark, sandy soil. The ruins of a lighthouse still stand there, and not far away you can see the roofs of buried houses. It is an awesome reminder of the power of the earth.

After that the rest of the coast and the fields of Faial feel gentler. Much of the island is green and dotted with houses and hay bales and cattle and horses; there is more flat land here than in Flores. Although the land still slopes precipitously to the sea in many places, and some towns tumble down old volcanic slopes, the ranks of red-tiled roofs arranged along narrow roads. Old and new mix: on one ridge we saw a few old windmills, carefully preserved, and on another close by a row of new windmills for producing electricity. As in Flores, the churches are prominent, very much a part of people’s lives as well as helping preserve both tradition and sacred art. The museum in Horta has a room full of sacred art, as well as a room devoted to carvings using the pith of fig trees, very fine, delicate, detailed depictions of ships and buildings and people. Yet another room showcases current artists.

Horta is getting ready to put on her best face for Sea Week as we write , painting buildings and kiosks, stringing up lights, setting up booths, removing dead trees along the sidewalk and putting in new plants - like a house being prepared for special visitors. We will miss the festivities - we hope to be heading for Terceira and the summer festivals there by the time Sea Week arrives. But in the meantime we enjoy the hustle and bustle and seeing Horta’s waterfront getting all dressed up. And it will be interesting to see how Flores and Faial compare to our next stop...

Some Bermuda Pictures

The sun is setting over St. George and the anchorage is filled with boats waiting for a good opportunity to continue their voyages. Some, like us, are going to Horta in the Azores, others are en route to the United States or the Canadian East Coast. There are flags from Britain, France, Denmark, Germany, St. Kitts/Nevis, flown on sloops, yawls, ketches and even schooners of all sizes.






Small cruise ships also moor in St. George (as in only ten storeys or so high). They are one of the reasons that Bermuda Radio monitors all arrivals and departures - no other vessels is going to be able to transit the main cut into the harbour when one of these is going in or out.







These dinghies were racing out of the East End Mini Yacht Club (in the pink building), through the cruising boats and across the harbour. They looked as if they were thoroughly enjoying themselves.










From St. George we walked to Fort St. Catherine. On the way we passed beaches and there was a golf course that the roads ran through. The road going up to the Fort overlooked this small beach and gave us a different view of the other roads we had walked along.







All kinds of people ride scooters - all ages, shapes and sizes. Bermudans on their scooters seem so comfortable that it looks as if they were born riding them...










In the middle of this picture is one of the Fitted Dinghies, with its long bowsprit, large sails and low freeboard (sides). Six is the standard number aboard, necessary to keep the boat as level as possible and bail when needed - which seems to be often.









Downtown in Hamilton, capital of Bermuda, on a Saturday morning. There are lots of cars and scooters on the streets, and pedestrians on the sidewalks. People are out shopping and looking; for the young people we saw it seemed to be a "see and be seen" kind of day and place.

Working on the boat in Miami

The sun is setting over Biscayne Bay, as we look out from Hurricane Harbor. After working away , this was the part of the day which we most often enjoyed, watching the sun set and the birds and boaters settling in for the night.







The interior layout of our boat has been changing as we travel. Here you can see part of the starboard side, complete with fireplace, bin behind seat for supplies we want ready to hand while voyaging, food hammock and ventilation holes in the lockers and bulkheads.













Further aft on the starboard side: the table is tied back for traveling and has a storage area underneath it for larger pots and pans. It serves as our nav table while underway. Beside it the cooler has been set into the shelf; you can catch a glimpse of the potholders we had heightened to hold the pressure cooker. The curtains covering the outboard bin are meant to contain any implement trying to leave its normal place...










In the middle, the vee-berth is packed and ready to go, bicycles upright on either side and miscellaneous gear farther forward. The berth on the port side is made up for travel, with the lee cloth lying across it ready to be put up.













Leaving in the evening, the wind finally favourable - Key Biscayne is behind us as we motor out the channel and get ready to set our sails and wind vane on our way to Bermuda.