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Agua Dulce - Bom dia, Faial and Pico!



We arrived in Horta on the island of Faial on Tuesday morning at about 0700. After a very quiet but peaceful and pleasant night just barely ghosting along between 1.5 and 3 knots, we arrived in the harbor with the “yellow shirts” from the ARC Europe rally ready to take our lines! We rafted up next to Tara on the fuel dock, cleared customs, and immediately got started filling our fuel tanks. As it turned out, we made it in with some fuel to spare in our tanks. We enjoyed having drinks and lunch at Cafe Sport, one of the most famous sailing bars in the world. We all spent some time cleaning up the boat and then ourselves, and afterwards enjoyed a fun dinner cooking on “hot rock plates” with the crews of the other boats who had arrived in Horta.



Wednesday was spent catching up on email (350+ for me - yikes!), paying bills (ugh) and checking in with family and friends. Charles and the men were busy working on “plugging in” to AC power at the docks. We recently had a transformer installed which will allow our American boat to plug in to European power, but since this was the first time for us to test it out, there were a few kinks which had to be worked out. All is well, and we are up and running! We ended the day with a wonderful dinner at Genuíno’s in an open air dining room overlooking the water. The restaurant is owned by the delightful Genuíno Magruda, the 10th man and the first Portuguese to circumnavigate the world in a sailboat alone. He has actually made the trip twice on “Hemingway”, a Bavaria 36. He was a wonderful host and spent time talking with us after dinner about his trips around the world.

Today we joined the crew of Tara and left the marina at 0700 to take a ferry across to the island of Pico. We had contemplated hiking up the mountain there - the highest in Portugal at 2351 meters! - but the day started quite cloudy and a little rainy. The 6 hour round trip hike would have been up into the clouds with no view to be seen. So, we opted for renting a van and touring the island. We visited a whaling museum housed in one of the old whale processing plants, one of Pico’s small family run wineries, and had lunch at Resort Fonte where we enjoyed traditional Azorean food in a beautiful setting on the coast. It was a fascinating drive around the island which is the youngest of the nine Azorean islands at only 300,000 years old. All the islands are of volcanic origin, the oldest being Santa Maria which appeared 10,000,000 years ago. As the youngster in the group, Pico’s terrain was distinct from Faial. There is sharp black lava rock covering the outer edges of the island which slowly becomes integrated with green hills that continue up the slope of the mountain until the vegetation stops again nearer the top. There are many vineyards on the lower elevations near the coast, but they look nothing like the vineyards of California, Tuscany or France. The Azorean people cleared their land of lava rock and used the rocks to build walls anywhere from 4-6 feet high in a labyrinth type network stretching for miles. Then they planted grape vines in between the walls as the plants were well suited for the volcanic soil. We sampled some of the wines which ranged from dry and sherry-like, to sweet fruit liqueurs, to aguardentes that tasted like rubbing alcohol with a faint fruit essence. The people of the island are warm and hospitable and eager to tell you of their history.


Looking forward to exploring more of these surprisingly wonderful islands out here in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean!


Gretchen Cunningham

S/V Agua Dulce

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