JUNE 2002
June was a milestone month! One of our lifetime goals was to sail across an ocean. In June we completed the first leg of our first major ocean crossing. We crossed the Atlantic Ocean from the island of St. Maarten in the Caribbean to the island chain of the Azores, Portugal. The crossing was 2350 miles and took us 15 days. Our good friends Rod and Dee joined us to help us during this long journey. You can refer to our “Atlantic Crossing” web page for all of the crossing details. Here is a quick summary of our thoughts about an ocean crossing… An ocean can be very tranquil and peaceful. We had lots of time to think and reflect. We enjoyed reading books and found it really can be relaxing. Oceans can have wild and untamed moments. Oceans quickly teach you to never take “Mother Nature” for granted. “Walking on the walls” heeled over 24 hours; cooking, sleeping, or just trying to stand-up gives new meaning to roughing it.
We were very nervous and apprehensive at the start of this long journey. At the end, we were relaxed and very content. The ocean seems to have true “healing” qualities. Mother Ocean was good. It was a good journey.
We arrived in the town of Horta, on the island of Faial, in the Azores on June 10th. We tied up in the marina in Horta and popped open a special bottle of good French Champagne to celebrate! We then decked out in our “Reality Atlantic Crossing 2002” shirts and went out for dinner and a night on the town!
We stayed a week in Faial, sight seeing and enjoying the island. The weather was not the greatest. Timing is everything in life and ours was perfect. We had gotten in just in time. It blew 25 to 35 knots for days. The ocean was a mess... but there we sat drinking Vinho Tinto, Vinho Verde and good Portuguese Madeira! Life was good. We rented a car and toured Faial. It was an overcast drizzly day but still the beauty of the island was very apparent. The island is very green and rural. Farmhouses are scattered throughout the island. A lot of the land is pasture divided into tiny plots by a maze of never ending black rock walls. The little villages are as pretty as a post card. The houses are either natural rock or white stucco but all have red tile roofs. Most of the village streets are still cobblestone. The town squares and walkways are all beautifully designed mosaics using black and white stones. Of course every little village has a beautiful church perched on a knoll near its town center. The most wonderful part of the island is that all the pasture rock walls are lined with mile upon mile of blue and white Hydrangea flowers. A lot of the pastures are also scattered with wild flowers so there are flowers everywhere you look! The Azores are called the “Flower Islands” for good reasons...they are beautiful!
We took a ferry from Faial across a four mile channel to the island of Pico. We rented another car and toured. Pico has a volcano that is 7500 foot tall. It snows every year at the top!!! It was a cloudy, rainy day again so we were not able to see the beautiful volcanic mountaintop or see any of the dramatic scenic views but the countryside was lovely. The island is very volcanic, black lava dominated the countryside. Some of the flows are recent enough to be void of any vegetation. The most amazing thing about Pico was that miles and miles of the volcanic rock area had been cultivated into vineyards! The early settlers spent what must of been thousands of hours stacking all the volcanic rock into walls 3 to 4 feet high creating little individual boxes for each grape vine. They had to place a bucket of dirt at the bottom of each of the cubes to get the vines started. Once the vines matured the roots could penetrate the volcanic rock. The cube walls protected the vines from the wind and the black rock help retain the heat to keep the vines from freezing at night. It was amazing to see the huge areas and steep, steep hillsides all terraced and rocked walled creating a maze dotted with grapevines. The Portuguese obviously love their wine!
Before leaving Faial we joined the local tradition of painting a design of our boat name and crew on the sea wall surrounding the harbor. They say signing the sea wall is a must and it will bring you “good luck” while sailing. There were hundreds and hundreds of paintings along the sea wall. It was fun to see just how many other sailors had passed through. We even recognized some of the boat names. The whole team helped design our painting. Sharon was the assigned artist to implement the design.
We sailed to the next island in the Azores or Acores as the locals would say, the island of Terceira. Just by chance we arrived in Terceira just days before their biggest event of the year, a week long Festival. We hadn’t planned to stay too long here but of course we now had to stay to enjoy the Festival! The town was completely decorated with lights and flowers for the occasion. Everybody on the entire island came to town to join in the festivities. We had a wonderful time! Every evening there was a different parade. Every town or club had a group dancing and singing in the parade. It seemed half the island participated in the parade the other half lined the streets to watch and cheer for the dancers. The costumes reflected their local traditions and were beautiful hand created. It was a very colorful affair and everybody was out to have fun and a wonderful time. It was great to see all the families; everybody, young and old having a grand time.
Each night after the parades we would wander down to have a great dinner at all the local food tents. Then at 11:00 to midnight a band would start playing some really great music until about 2:00am. At which time we all wandered back to the boat for a good nights sleep. The locals kept on partying till morning… after all the festival only comes once a year! The last day we stayed at the Festival was the day of the “Running of the Bulls”. We had to see that! It’s a crazy local tradition where they block off the streets in town around town central. Then they let six fighting Bulls run wild in the streets! All the “brave” guys in town are down on the street with the bulls. They tease the bulls and as the bull starts to charge them they duck behind a tree or hope their buddy will distract the bull and get him to turn and chase him instead. All the women, children and chickens like us watch safely from balconies and rooftops.
Terceira was also starting a tradition of having sailors sign the sea wall…so of course the “Reality Crew” needed to add our painting for good luck again.
Next we sailed overnight to the last of the Acores islands we visited, the island of Sao Miguel. We again rented a car and toured the island. Like the other islands the countryside was rural, very pretty and full of flowers! The Acores were sure living up to their name of the “Flower Islands”. Sao Miguel had several high volcanic mountains. We drove a dirt rode along one crater rim that was knife edge narrow with huge vertical cliffs dropping away on both sides…quite dramatic.
The volcanoes are currently dormant but the whole area still has a lot of geothermal activity. There all lots of hot springs, furmerals, geysers, bubbling mud pots, the works. For lunch we had to try their local tradition of cooking. They take clay pots and fill them with meats and vegetables. Then they bury the pots for six hours in the volcanic steam vents and let “Mother Nature” do the cooking. Lunch was good but the food had a very different…semi surfer taste!
We really enjoyed the Acores we could have stayed for months. But we still had the 2nd leg of our journey, another 900 miles of ocean to cross. So on July 1st we said goodbye to the wonderful islands of the Acores and set sail to complete our Atlantic crossing.