Horta Part 3

Some European sailboats have a double keel so that when the tide goes out the boat sits on the keels and doesn't fall over like a single keeled boat.

Somebody did laundry.

Loading a container ship.

Traditional Portugese sailboat in front of Horta, what a gorgeous sight.

They were out racing on this evening.

We visited with some Portugese men who were fishing off the pier across from us in the evening.

In Horta we could buy long distance phone cards and use them in the public phones. The problem was that the lady that came on to give me instructions on what to do only spoke Portugese and I only understood English. We had no phone service on our cell phones there.

Anth sleeping in my bed. It was a bit short for him but it was a nice little bed.

Doing ordinary things in very unordinary places...laundry.

... making bread....

Standing on the sea wall.

Horta Part 2

Pico in the background. What a beautiful mountain! It's on the island of Pico across from the island of Faial where Horta is.

Some of the homes in Horta are absolutely grand.

Peter's Cafe Sport for the sailors to come and visit, get information, Scrimshaw, etc. This is Captain Jim, Tony and me.

An artsy shot.

The gardens are beautiful in Horta.

Birds of Paradise.

We were walking up to the supermarket to get food for the boat.

The flowers were amazing.

I was playing with my macro lens.

I love the old homes in Horta. The walls were really thick and they looked so interesting, as if they had many people's stories to tell.

This plant was growing on the palm tree. Looks like Christmas colours doesn't it?

Horta

Tony at the front of the boat putting the flags up before we come into Horta.

The Portugese flag, a flag from a friend of Tony's and a yellow flag (actually Tony's t-shirt) indicating that we need to see customs because we have entered European waters.

Horta at dawn, 6:00 am. What a fantasy land!

Captain Jim toasting LANDFALL after 13 days and 1 hour. We made it across and loved it.

Me toasting LANDFALL. We dug out Jim's glass wine glasses for the toast and used wine we had made in Port Credit and stored in large plastic bags in the bilge. We had a tap to get the wine out of the bags. We thought we might drink a glass of wine with our meals on the way across but we didn't drink hardley anything except at Landfall so there was a bag and 3/4 left when we got to Scotland.

To give you an idea of the interior of the boat there was a setee like the one above on both sides of the boat and Tony and Anth slept in them most of the time, sometimes we traded around.

This is the fore cabin where I slept sometimes. It was kind of short but I did fit in it and it was private.

This is the head.

This is the quarter berth up by the nav station and Captain Jim slept here on the way from St. John's to Horta.

I took this picture for my mom whose name is Helena. Look how many times this boat came to Horta, 14 times. On the sea wall in Horta sailors painted pictures as signatures of their boats and themselves in honour of arriving in Horta. It's really interesting to read all the dates, names of boats and people have been on the sea wall in Horta.

Anth sitting on the sea wall beyond where our boat is rafted.

This is open market where Anth and I ate our lunch each day. The bistro on the right served traditional Portugese foods, fish, fish soup, fish casserole, corn bread, homemade bread, etc. It was very, very good.

This is a government building in the middle of Horta. On the right is where the post office was.

This is me after 13 days and 1 hour of not washing my hair, not showering and wearing the same clothes day and night.

This is me....all clean.

On the Pond to Horta

This is Jim Christie the skipper and owner of Carmen 1. What you can't see is his right hand is on the tiller. He is on his watch and he's steering the boat and watching that compass. Jim turned 80 on the trip. His dream was to take his boat home to Scotland. He built his boat in Canada in Etobicoke area.

Just some little boat bites, I miss judged the string on the bimini and ran my arm down it as I was sitting down. Owwwww!

Tony on his watch at the helm.

Sunset!

Sunset with the windvane in the shadows. Unfortunately the windvane didn't work...that's why were self-steered on the passage.

My turn at the helm. 2 hours on and 2 hours off with two crew on the watch together. One to steer and one to watch for freighters. Man it was hard waking up every 2 hours through the night. My worst times were the one around 4:00 and 7:00 am.

This is our GPS readout. It is telling us we have 502 nautical miles to Horta, with about 100 nms a day that's about 5 days. We're going 4.7 knots right then. The compass reading is around 138 degrees, its 20:02 and we have 12.5 volts in the batteries. We had some difficulty holding a charge in the batteries until Jim got the problem fixed in Ireland. The wind generator didn't seem to give any power to the batteries either. That will require a call to Kiss to find out about the wiring.

That upside down broom is our flag pole. Jim was improvising.

Water and sky and clouds, water...sky...clouds...water...water....water.

Great cloud formations and more water.

Jim forward on the boat trimming the sails.

Me on a sunny day. We only had about 4 sunny days on the boat in the two months.

I'm in the cockpit looking down into the boat. Anth is lighting the stove to cook some supper. We all took turns cooking. I did a lot of it but Jim and Anth often cooked too. The pressure cooker is on the floor behind Anth. We made lentil soup, pork and beans, boiled potatoes, potatoe soup and cooked beans in the pressure cooker.

Tony and Jim talking in the cockpit.