I saw the horizon briefly 2 hours ago, now it’s all shades of gray and clammy fog yet again!
Right now I can see no further than across an average school square, so especially my young readers – hope you are still there – must forgive me for boring reports.
No fog means I see much more and that makes it much more entertaining for me too. But I see dolphins daily as they come past in small groups of 2-6 animals. No big whales within my small circle, but I will see some for sure when I get closer to the Mid-Atlantic Ridge about 150 nm (3 days?) ahead.
That’s where the sea floor rises from about 4000 to 2000 m and where Earth’s hot and liquid inside gets squeezed up and gradually widen the gap between Europe and America.
Some places volcanoes form and produce islands, like Iceland and the Azores, just S of me soon. These islands are Portuguese, have high tops with craters, black, sandy beaches, lots of Hydrangia bushes with either blue or red flower depending on the acidity of the earth they grow in, friendly people, mosaic pattern in the pavements, great sea-food. And they make excellent wine.
When we first sailed to Horta, Faial in 1982 in “Red Admiral”, hunting sperm whales was still important industry. We took the ferry across to Pico with crew from “Scally” and saw one huge specimen. It was a pretty gruesome sight as it was being parted. In fact World opinion made them stop a couple of years later. Now the old yards on Pico and Faial are museums. We were back with Red Admiral in 1991 and White Admiral in 2014 and saw whales at sea each time.
My most faithful company are the birds, especially the ” krykkje”, fulmar gulls.They are curious and especially if I row slowly, like most of yesterday, some will land close to the bow, paddle as fast as they can to keep up, fly off, do a big circle and land just outside the range of the oars once more. And so on! They probably hope for food. Sorry!
46 nm last 24 hrs.
Strong winds forecast for later.