Meeting old and new friends

We should be able to get to our home port tomorrow. That will conclude a year of traveling, voyaging, visiting, seafaring. We met dozens of interesting people, we got to know some of them quite well from visits to bars and pubs.

So after a year of socializing with perfect strangers, the experience which made it all the more worth wile, thank you Bernard, Jeanne, Nicolas, John, Gerry, Sam, Alex, Miguel, Robert, Quentin, Gabrielle, Frederik, Tomas, Lars, Carol, Frits, Marleen, Lulia, Dorival, Catarina, Matt, and many more whose names escape me right now. Also thanks to all the crew and friends who participated in the journey.

After tomorrow we'll see the start of a new adventure, in which we'll move on to new horizons, but perhaps we'll also meet up with some of the people we met along the way who invited us to come visit if we're in the neighborhood. A new page may well be written in the history of Victor Too after this trip.

Final repairs

We've gone through three belts for our old Autohelm. The last one was nearly giving the ghost so we desperately needed a new one. As we sailed from St. Mary's, the autopilot wouldn't hold course after the wind got up to force five and the waves started building.

So we were in the market for a new belt. We'd asked Matt if he knew someone who could help us out and we were in luck! In Falmouth marina, a small chandlery happened to have just the belt we were looking for. Obsolete, hard to get, but now at least we can let the boat steer itself all the way to Ostend. Still 300 Miles to go, and only five more days to do it.

But lucky for us, the wind will turn North West starting Monday, so we're all set to go for our last stretch through the English Channel.

Scilly

In just two days, we managed to visit three of the Isles of Scilly. Unfortunately, on Friday night a Force 7 South Westerly was predicted with gusts up to 36 knots, so we decided to head for Falmouth on Friday morning.

The first day was after our early morning arrival, we set off to see Bryher as we were anchored close to it in New Grimsby Sound. This is a very small island with less than a hundred inhabitants, mainly pastures, and one hotel.




It is windswept as it's exposed to the Westerly Atlantic swell and wind, and there are a lot of barren rocks on that side.



We had a pint of Cider in the only bar and went to bed early in a freshening North Westerly breeze.

The next morning, I had opted to leave early on the rising tide to make the shallow between Bryher and St.Mary's. We anchored off Tresco for three hours and visited Tresco Abbey and its wonderful gardens.



After a quick lunch in the Gardens' restaurant, we headed out to St. Mary's where Chris took a ferry out to the mainland, and we ate at the Atlantic Inn.



Afterwards, we went for a nightcap in the Mermaid where I had a Guinness last time I visited St. Mary's with the Aquafit. We had just stepped outside when Matt of Safe Arrival came rushing out and called after us. He'd just gotten in from his own crossing and was having a drink with two friends of his.



Needless to say, more drinks were had by all until the dinghy ride back proved to be a real challenge. Thanks to Matt, we found Victor Too among the moored boats, as we forgot to bring a flashlight. Next morning, getting up was a tough proposition but we managed to depart for the mainland a bit after nine.

Speeding home

On the 22nd of June, at 5:30 in the morning, we arrived in the Isles of Scilly. Wonderful islands of birds and rocks and beautiful gardens.

But a storm is pushing us forward, as there aren't many safe anchorages in Scilly we continue sailing home.

Another day, same ocean

First it was repairs that held us in the Azores, now it is weather. A violent storm coming from the South West is battering us right now with 36-knot winds and heavy rain. We are waiting for it to subside to start on our crossing to the Isles of Scilly.

The good ting is that in its wake we will get favorable winds. The drawback is the possibility of more depressions getting through because of the weakening of the Azores high. This should normally protect us from heavy conditions in June, but this seems not to be the case this year.

So we sit inside while the winds buffet the boat and the rain prevents us from wandering outside. We read, talk and use the internet for weather updates and blogging.

Yesterday was good, with some sun and the first warm weather in a while. We walked around the town, to Monte Brasil and the fortress. Later we went to the bull run in the streets of the old city. A lot of people, many tourists and four bulls made up for two hours of local folklore.



Today, however, the conditions are nasty for venturing outside, so we wait, sleep a bit and try not to get too bored. The temperature outside is only 18°C, the humidity 100%. I am waiting for a handyman to bring us a fabricated spare part for the autopilot, so even if I could, I wouldn't get out. We've got some laundry drying inside so humidity here is also helping get the experienced conditions feel worse than they are. We may have to switch on the heating later, which is the first time since we are in the Azores.

Later today we'll fill up with diesel and water and get some last minute shopping done, so that when the weather does improve, we're ready to go for the 1100 Miles back to Europe.

Boat and crew - and wind

Weather windows are a difficult subject among sailors. Do you need an entire period of safe sailing or are forecasts worthless after five days?



I've always tried to hang on to forecasts as long as possible. Even when the actual conditions weren't the way the forecast predicted, I've always used them to understand what was going on. It helps to study weather fenomena extensively, of course. I've been watching weather develop for ten years now, and I've got a decent idea where it's all coming from and what the effects are.

But the most difficult part of understanding weather is trying to get a grip on the medium term forecast three to five days on, and devising strategies to handle what it throws at you in the middle of the ocean.

Being without detailed forecasts for ten days in the middle of the Atlantic did my interpreting skills a lot of good. With just a general synopsis, limited to the hazards to shipping from Bermuda Navtex, I drew my own little maps and tried to devise what the wind would do next. The best I got from that were short term forecasts, and they couldn't account for everything we got in those days.

I realized the relativity of long term forecasts even better than I already had in the past. They depend heavily on up-to-date information, something we couldn't get without satellite phone. But at least it didn't get us into trouble, like when we evaded the Easterly gale with a three days out of date forecast.

So we come back to the weather window. Is it good up to three days into the future, or is only the next day forecast dependable? It of course depends on the area you are in. In the Western Europe waters, the weather is highly unpredictable. Today we're getting a forecast for a gale passing tomorrow, and its position has shifted by a couple hundred Miles in the past few days. When we leave tomorrow night, we'll get a second, smaller depression to provide us with good winds for the first three days. Or so the forecast says. But it could be more, less, or from a slightly different direction.

So does this help us make a good decision on when to leave - and where to?

Well it helps, but if it will turn out to be adequate for a good crossing, is something that remains to be seen. With good continuing weather updates, we will hopefully escape the worst and get the best wind for a fast crossing. But that gale that's still lurking on the East coast of the U.S., might get us in the end, just before we reach the Isles of Scilly. Because that is ten days on, and no forecast can predict the weather in a certain location that far into the future.

So for that gale we might come to depend on our fallback position, which is a very sturdy boat and a hardened crew.

Faial

After being in Horta for nine days, we managed to escape the repair cycle and actually visit something. We only had one day and the rental car was due in the next morning, so we made the most of it.

We started out early morning, and the roads were pretty quiet as it was a Sunday and most Portuguese don't do much before noon except go to church. So did we:



A very nice ruin in Ribeirinha, left from the last big earthquake in 1998.

The new peninsula in the West after the eruption of Capelinhos also merited a visit, so we walked around the old light house and read the signs depiction the cataclysmic events of 1958. Since the visitor center wasn't open until the afternoon, we walked around the area covered in volcanic ash for a while and then sought the trail to the cauldron from a previous eruption. Unfortunately, we couldn't find the end of the trail so we coudn't visit the cone.



The old light house, partially covered in ash.

While driving up the volcano, we did come across the Levada trail, whit its nice meandering water conduit in very good order. It reminded us of Madeira and the excellent trails we have taken whilst visiting that island.



Next up was the Northern coast, where we drove down to the ocean and visited the destroyed harbour of Porto da Eira. It's amazing how the fishermen could have used this port over hundreds of years, when it was always just a small indentation in the coast, without any protection from the ocean swell. It was destroyed by a winter storm and doesn't look like it will be used for anything else than bathing anytime soon.



Whilst driving back to Horta, we passed the Botanical Gardens, and even though the sign at the gate indicated they were open, there was nobody there. The gate itself wasn't shut though, so we could walk the gardens at leisure. We didn't however get to buy the T-shirt, because the souvenir shop was closed.



Back in Horta, a parade was underway for the ascension festivities, so we visited the Monte de Guia cauldron as we couldn't get through town. Next to it is a nice little museum in an old whaling factory. It has some interesting displays as well as documentaries about Faial's past as a whaling station.



As the big Continente supermarket was open until nine p.m. - and this on a Sunday! - we did our shopping for the crossing to the Isles of Scilly.