Azoren on Merrimac

Off to Ireland Together

Sat, 22 Jul 2023 15:18:03 +0200

The last few weeks in Ponta Delgada flew by, mainly because it turned into a real revolving door. I’d barely waved one lot of friends off before the next lot turned up. The funniest encounter was completely unexpected. A Dutch gentleman was standing on the pontoon next to the boat: nice boat, sir, the usual chat, nice bloke, so I invited him aboard. At some point, just as I was about to show him below, his wife turned up too. She said hang on, I’ll fetch our other two as well. Five minutes later I’m standing in the forward cabin, having only exchanged first names, when I suddenly catch the second gentleman’s surname: Korte. Hey, my first boss at Oracle was called Wim Korte too. Flabbergasted, I said: but Wim, you know me, I’m Kees Verruijt and you hired me! Imagine meeting again like that after 30 years! It turned into a few very pleasant days with Wim, Margaret and their friends. Good company for trying out the better restaurants, too. The morning after the photo below, Margaret was standing at the boat: is my passport at yours? No, sorry. And an hour later: can I borrow your bike, because the passport is still at the restaurant! What a relief!

Alone? Whatever gave you that idea!

Wed, 21 Jun 2023 18:03:19 +0200

I know it’s time to update this blog again when friends start messaging me to ask how things are going. So here’s a little update. Sailing-wise not much has happened: I’m still in Ponta Delgada, and I’ll be staying here for a few more weeks.

São Miguel

Thu, 01 Jun 2023 13:03:43 +0200

In the end, the passage from Harlingen to the first island went very smoothly and was pretty much uneventful. Once again we could stand our watches inside, and there was remarkably little shipping after we turned SSW off Brest and crossed the traffic separation scheme there. For some reason there wasn’t a single ship we had to avoid, or that had to alter course for us.

Champagne sailing

Mon, 22 May 2023 13:42:19 +0200

Well, we’re incredibly lucky. It’s honestly unbelievable how lucky we are with the weather. The weather in Europe is all over the place: the lows are tracking between Scotland and Iceland, and there’s been a rain area parked over Italy and the surrounding region for weeks. But all that air blowing east has to come back somewhere, and this week that’s through the English Channel and on towards the Azores… And wouldn’t you know it, that’s exactly where we’re heading?!

A Prosperous Start

Fri, 19 May 2023 15:08:32 +0200

We left yesterday around 10 o’clock with very little wind. By about 3 o’clock we had passed Den Helder and could finally get the sails up. There wasn’t much wind all night, but just enough to keep sailing.

Since Zeebrugge the wind has picked up. First under the code 0 (a really big headsail) and now just under the jib, we’re making around 10 knots, except we’ve got 2 knots of current against us. That will turn soon enough, and then we’ll be flushed nicely down the Channel.

Back to the Azores

Sat, 13 May 2023 08:04:07 +0200

Marion is busy with the church renovation this year, so this time I’m setting off the old way: with crew first. To keep my sea legs in shape, and because it’s a truly beautiful spot on this planet, we’re heading back to the Azores.

Waiting for family on Faial

Sat, 10 Jul 2021 18:00:59 +0200

For about six weeks I was on board alone in Horta, on the island of Faial. Very relaxed: I wasn’t going anywhere and had little else to do than wait for the family’s holidays to start. A bit of work on the boat and, for the rest, being sociable. You’re in just about the best possible spot for that, because Horta is of course the hub for ocean sailors, the place everyone passes through between America and Europe. On top of that, the summer weather on Faial is lovely. Sometimes a bit cool (17 degrees), but usually low twenties, with plenty of sunshine.

3,200 miles from Bonaire to Faial (Horta)

Tue, 08 Jun 2021 19:14:00 +0200

I had been looking forward to crossing the Atlantic from west to east for a long time. Sure, we had done east to west, but that turned out to be very easy: point the bow west with plenty of wind from behind! Ten days is very fast, though; it’s actually a bit too short for the real experience. Since I was on Bonaire on my own, I had plenty of time to go through the route planning properly. If you try to sail the rhumb line from Bonaire, you have to sail hard on the wind for a long time, and after that you (often) end up in a large area of calms and light winds. On Merrimac we have a PredictWind subscription, which lets you set up a polar diagram describing how fast the boat sails in which wind. It’s never quite right, but it’s reasonably close. At sea you can fine-tune things a bit more: you can enter a percentage of your polars, which winds you want to avoid, and whether you want to sail fast or comfortably. The Bonaire - Faial route is actually too long, some 17 to 25 days, to be routed in full: the forecasts don’t look that far ahead. But on Bonaire it’s pretty clear: there’s a huge area of high pressure and little wind. So we opt for the “classic route” after all: try to go around that area; along its northern edge there’s westerly wind. You sail north first, and then east. That takes you almost to Bermuda, or even past it. That’s handy too: if anything goes wrong you can divert there. In normal times you’d drop in there anyway, but in Covid times that’s all a hassle again with quarantine and so on.