REMOTE ISLAND Landfall – Post Gale | Sailing Florence Ep.165

We knew when we set sail that crossing the Atlantic Ocean on a small boat would not be easy. This ocean crossing has tested us again and again. But now, after enduring five days of gale-force winds, our next chance for rest lies just over the horizon. We are aiming to pause in the Azores, a group of small isolated Portuguese islands 800 miles off the coast of Europe. Landfall after weeks at sea battling the elements is always a special moment. But landfall on the rugged and beautiful island of Flores, with its spectacular landscape and waterfalls, is even more special. We look forward to arriving and exploring these remote islands, before returning to the sea to complete our journey home to England. We are Amy and Matt, and this is Florence, our home and safe haven upon the ocean. Together, we have sailed over 46,000 miles around the globe on a seven-year voyage of discovery. And now it's time to sail back to where this journey began. The gale-force winds that have sped us on our way for the last few days are subsiding. But we still have 200 miles to sail before we reach the Azores. So as the wind decreases, we need to change gears on Florence. Step by step, we increase our sail area at each watch change. Okay, ready to round up? Okay, ready? Go for it. Ready? Wow, well, what a difference today. Beautiful day out here today. The breeze started to ease in the night, so at half past one in the morning at watch change, we shook one reef out, and at the next watch change, four hours later, we shook out another in the main sail. And then this morning, put the spinnaker up because the breeze is easing. Unfortunately, the breeze is easing so much that we're probably not going to arrive in Florence for daylight tomorrow. Probably be just after dark, but can't do much about that. But this is much nicer. Nice, gentle sea state and beautiful breeze we're sailing in today. A world away from the last five or six days. The waves are a lot calmer today, and we're still getting thrown around a little bit, but after the waves that we've had, it feels like a mill pond. So I am making some bread. We actually thought that we'd still be at sea on Matt's birthday, and I promised him a bacon sandwich with freshly baked bread. If we were, but as we're going to arrive early, we're going to have the bacon sandwich early, or at least that's the plan. So I can have my birthday ashore with ice cream. Yeah. Six years ago, well, seven years ago, we sailed south until the butter melts, and now we sail north until it doesn't melt anymore. And then we're going to sail north until it freezes. That's your stupid idea. Oh, look at those! Out in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, spinnaker up, beautiful sailing with a freshly baked roll with bacon in. This is so different to what it was like yesterday, the day before, and the day before. Sometimes ocean sailing can be absolutely brilliant, and this smells amazing. I had a good time the other days too. I don't know, I had a good time the other days, but this is better. Thank you very much. We've also put the fishing line out. It's only the third time I think we felt like fishing on this trip, because it's either been at the start we were feeling a bit queasy, and then we fished for a couple of days, and then it's been so rough that even if we caught a fish, I wouldn't have been able to deal with the fish. It'd just get thrown around. It would have been dangerous trying to fillet the fish on the back deck. So I've just put the fishing line out again, and we'll see if we get anything for tea. Well, that's a much nicer reason to have to get up from my bunk. We just finished tidying up from dinner, and I literally just gone to bed, and I heard this weird squeaking sound. I said to Matt, I'm pretty sure I can hear dolphins, and sure enough there's a pod of really tiny, really gorgeous dolphins all playing around about. You are so beautiful. Very light winds though, and unfortunately that means that we're probably not going to get to Flores before dark tonight. So we're just drifting along under the spinnaker. But the wind's shifted forward, so it's really quite a tight angle for the spinnaker, and if it goes any further forward, we're going to need the genoa. And if you remember, we had a problem with the genoa right at the start of this leg from Bermuda. The stitching on the back edge of the genoa is UV damaged and weak, and it all started to come undone. So we failed the genoa, and we've not been using it ever since, because we don't want to cause any damage. At the moment, all it needs is a line of stitching putting up it, and it'll be good again, hopefully. So what we're going to do, so we continue not to use that, is we're going to swap to our old genoa. But this is the second biggest sail on the boat, so we've waited until it's light winds now, instead of trying to do it in the really windy stuff earlier, we've waited till it's light winds so that we can handle this on the deck. So we're going to have to drop this sail, flake it, roll it up, unroll the new one, the old one, and then put that one up instead. And then we may end up going back to the spinnaker, because it's the right sail for this angle and this light winds. But at least then we'll know that we've got all of Forenter's sails available to us again, depending, because you never really know what the wind's going to do. So this is the damage, the back edge, you can see that this line of stitching down here is all coming off, and that's because the UV damage to the thread has made it weak, and then it's chafed a little bit against the rig, and then it's all come off. But that's the leech line that's supposed to be tucked in there, so that line of stitching down there is not just holding on the sacrificial UV strip, it's also holding the back edge of the sail, which is something that I didn't realise. I thought that once that stitching went, the worst case that would happen would be that the sacrificial UV strip was flapping off, but actually it's stitching that is essential to the strength of the back of the sail as well. So yeah, so that's why we stopped using that, it's a good job we stopped using that, but there's no damage other than the thread, so it does look like we can just take it to a sailmaker, and get them to run around the whole sail, replacing all the threads that have been exposed to UV, and that should be good to go again. Which we should have done in Bermuda, but we were told that the sailmaker was really expensive, so we didn't, we just did a bit of hand stitching on the bits that looked dodgy at the time, and then a few days later it all went, so that was my mistake. The bits where I've stitched it are absolutely fine, but hand stitching the entire sail would have taken forever. We were just doing the washing up, and I was looking out of the window by the kitchen, and I just saw this whale surface coming straight towards us, I was like, whale! And we legged it up into the cockpit, and this whale just went just behind Florence, I think there were two of them, just behind Florence, and off. I think it was a sperm whale. Oh, you saw his head! He's a two, he's got a baby. I think that was a sperm whale, but that was really cool, that was really cool. We were hoping to see some whales as we were sailing into the Azores, and sailing around the Azores, but yeah, that was a bit, it's been watching out for them all afternoon, and yeah, one turns up when you're doing the washing up. We're just coming up to our final night at sea. You can just see the island of Flores appearing through the clouds behind me. We've still got about 25 miles to go, which unfortunately means that we're going to arrive in the dark. We're not quite sure yet whether or not we're going to try and go into the port in the dark. We're just going to go as close as we think is safe, and make an assessment when we're there as to whether or not we hold off, or try and go in tonight. I'm really happy with how this passage has gone, even with those 40 knot squalls. I feel like we've been really lucky with the weather that we've had, and Florence has sailed absolutely brilliantly. So the Azores are the westernmost point of Europe, and this is the first time we are re-entering Europe since we left the Canaries back in October 2006. It's a really mountainous island, and we've heard the Azores referred to as the Marquesas of the Atlantic, so it's going to be interesting to compare them to the Marquesas of the Pacific that we visited. There's supposed to be lots of hiking available on the island, lots of whales in the surrounding waters, and this island in particular, Flores, is the island of flowers. It's supposed to be absolutely beautiful, so we're really looking forward to getting ashore and having a look around here. Overall, it was a really challenging passage, but actually a really enjoyable one. It feels like a real achievement to have crossed the North Atlantic. It was a passage that we were a little worried about because it does have a bad reputation for those low-pressure systems bringing lots of wind, and we did have a lot of wind. We had over 30 knots for five or six days, but we kind of got used to that, and it actually became kind of exhilarating and really enjoyable. We decided to sail in and arrive in the night last night. It was a really calm night. We motored the last three miles because there's absolutely no wind, and then we cautiously came in, but there was plenty of space to anchor out in the main harbour. This morning, once it became light, we came round and tied up to the wall here. With Florence safely tied up to the wall, we couldn't wait to see a little more of this isolated island in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. So we set off on foot to explore. After 12 days of seeing nothing but blue sea, the lush greens of Flores were a welcome change. What a place to arrive into. It's so lush and green. There's tons of pretty Portuguese houses with red roofs and stone walls and flowers everywhere, and just the sound of birdsong. I always feel like when we've been at sea for a while, all of our senses are just accentuated, and the sights and the smells, everything seems brighter and stronger. We've just hiked up from the harbour through the town. It's a pretty steep hill all the way up to here, and this is the trail that we're going to do today. And as we were coming up through the town, it's just beautiful. All the buildings are really picturesque, and there's loads of flowers. This is the island of flowers. And also allotment plots, people growing their own produce beside the road. It's just stunning. So we've got to the end of the road and the start of the official hike, and just look at this view. This is definitely going to challenge our sea legs because it goes straight down really steeply, and then we have to come back up here. There are lots of marked hiking trails in the Azores, and this is the closest one to the port, so we were able to get here on foot. After 12 days of not walking further than 37 feet along Florence's deck, we are looking forward to exploring the walking trails here in the Azores. So we made it down to the beach at the bottom of the hike, and like all of the beaches in the Azores, it's a black volcanic sand, which really reminds us of the Marquesas, especially with the sheer really lush green cliffs as well. Absolutely spectacular. There are tons of man-of-war jellyfish washed up on the beach here, and we saw loads of them when we were sailing across the North Atlantic all the way from nearly as far as the Bahamas. We're going to have to be really careful any time that we're in the water here because they're supposed to be incredibly painful and can even leave a scar on your skin. That just left the return leg up the cliff and back to Florence. Next time, we fall in love with this magical island, but discover that we're still at the mercy of the weather and why a sailor's stay here can only be temporary. 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