Position @ 1200 UTC
38⁰ 01.01 N 31⁰ 06.93 W
Horta Marina
A very long good night’s sleep was had by all of us and probably helped by the alchol we all consumed yesterday: Worth every drop! In fact we had “Kir” o Brixham buddy up to us in the early hours of the morning and were told there were 5 people on our decks lending a hand, yet we all slept through this activity!
Laundry this morning was the priority quickly followed by Customs and Immigration; by heck, I thought the Caribbean was bad enough for paper work etc but here I had to go to 4 offices for this that and the other. I have to repeat the performance when we clear out and each island we visit, we have to go through the same rig marlole; 16 times in total whilest in the Azores!
Back to European ports and we don’t have a plug to connect into the mains, typical! Chris and Andrew were despatched to find one. We are in such close proximity to all the other boats that we daren’t run the generator!
I had a second load of laundry which I managed to get through the system before the place closed,soat least when I get back to Spain there wont be mountains of dirty washing!
This evening was a reception by the tourist board, a finger buffet with drinks followed by Prize giving for this leg. Unfortunatly the minister for tourist was unable to attend at the last moment so the main (serious) prizes have been put on hold ’till we get to St Miguel. This was folowed by an early night as still we are all knackered!!!
Tomorrow we have some jobs to do,cleaning the boat but more importantly we have to reverse the cotter pin at the bottom of the main forestay. When the stay was re-connected in Trinidad after Anam Cara was put into the water, the cotter pin was put in from the wrong side. so instead of the cotter pin shoulder taking the tension, the split pin ntakes it. We have already had to replace the split pin once and don’t want to do it again!
I also have to book out as we leave 0530 hrs Sunday Morning; this is before the customs offices etc open and we are sail 70 miles to Angra de Heroismo, on the Island of Terceira.