The forecast was tempting, it looked like a chance to not have too much down south at the Canaries and none near the Azores. A situation quite typical in the summer. Now it looked like Saturday, July 23, is the right day to depart from Gomera. Wind was predicted for almost all the way to be NNE to NE between 11 and 18 kts. The routing software predicted exactly 5 days for the 966 miles to Flores -with the wind on the beam we would be running at good speed all the time.
But we knew that this was unlikely and calculated with our usual 175 miles a day and a difficult last day when we would reach the center of the Azores high and so we left Gomera very early to get at least half a day of extra daylight. We raised our anchor at 5 am and quietly sailed out of Valle Gran Rey and quickly picked up the strong accelerated wind around the corner of Gomera. It was a fast ride to the south end of La Palma, where the wind picked up even more and then suddenly switched to nothing behind the island.
After motoring for three hours the full blow came back for some time and eventually we were clear of the islands and in the sort of wind we had hoped for. Blue skies and nice sailing for the rest of the day.
Given the forecast one would think it would go on like this for most of the rest of the journey, but the next day was all overcast with many low rain clouds and while the wind maintained the predicted average, we saw it pick up to 22 kts approaching a cloud, and drop back down to 8 kts afterwards. To make things worse, the stronger wind backed so that we always found ourselves 60 degrees to the true wind, moving to 110 degrees as it dropped.
Practically this means our sail surface needed to be constantly changes. Being an old an lazy couple, we left the main double reefed and tried to regulate things with the genoa. On average this means we didn't carry enough sail to keep optimal speed. And it was a bit annoying to work the sails every 20 minutes. This sort of went on for over two days.
We had more luck near the Azores: The High had moved to the SE of Flores and formed a ridge in NNE to SSW direction, with Northeasterly winds on one side and Southwesterlies on the other. We reached the top of the high shortly after sunrise on the last day, passing well south of the island of Pico and Faial. (See sunrise pictures with the silhouette of two islands).
The void going over the top turned out short and we only motored for half a day, before we had a fast motorsail into Lajes on Flores where we arrived Thursday, July 28 at 8 pm.
The marina in Flores is new, and had just opened a month ago. Still not really open and therefore still for free. It has been well accepted and quickly filled with many of the boats returning from the Caribbean, but now beginning of August it should slowly clear out. Our friend Anne Hammick inspected the webcam and gave us an update via e-mail on our last day. So we had an idea where to go. We had picked out a yacht in the middle of the long pontoon to go alongside.
Looking into the marina, that yacht turned out to be AbraCadabra with Phil and Anne and their two kids. We first met them in Chagos, and we have been together many times there, In Seychelles, In Madagascar and South Africa. Very nice surprise!
Phil pointed out that there was enough space behind them towards the corner of the marina and so we backed into this cozy corner and tied up.
Looks like we will stay in this nice place for some time.
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