I left Horta the morning of September 1 bound for Lagos, Portugal, which would be my first landing in my boat on another continent. I stayed a total of 9 days in Horta, 2 days longer than originally planned. Even with the extra days, and a day trip on the ferry to nearby Pico island, I still felt like I’d hardly gotten to know the place. Horta is such an iconic stop for sailors I felt sentimental about leaving.

The first three days in Horta were largely occupied with having a new generator transfer switch installed, along with a stainless steel spigot for watermaker sample water fabricated and installed.

I also had to deal with a problem with the battens in the mainsail. Inexplicably, the battens would work their way aft out of the batten pockets, sometimes several inches. If I noticed soon enough I could push them back in, not so easy at sea, but in two cases they worked their way out of the batten boxes on the luff edge of the sail, beating around there and damaging both the batten and the batten box. I found a sailmaker in Horta who replaced the damaged fiberglass battens but didn’t have the batten boxes. I contacted the original sail manufacturer about the problem – they didn’t know why it was happening but suggested a remedy they use on significant offshore passages. They told me to drill a hole through the batten and the sail and sew the batten in place. After finding some sail thread, that’s what I did. So far on the new passage the problem has not reoccurred.

The first few days moving east through the Azores, between Pico and Sao Jorge islands was into headwinds with motoring and upwind sailing. I saw large groups of dolphins in this channel, some coming just a few feet from the boat.  That evening as the sun was setting off the east tip of Pico Island I saw several whale spouts, the closest perhaps a half mile from the boat. Whale-watching is a popular tourist activity out of Horta and other towns in the Azores.

Motoring into headwinds and contrary current past the north side of San Miguel island, the last Island I would pass in the the Azores, the wind finally turned south in the middle of the night, on to my beam. I got out of bed, set the sails, and shut down the engine.

With San Miguel Island behind me it’s been open ocean sailing, often with wind directly astern requiring me to jibe periodically across the wind to get a reasonable sailing angle. At least it was pushing me east.  I was also hit by much stronger-than-forecast winds that  lasted several hours. When you’re expecting 15 knots and you’re hit with 20-30 knots, it’s a scramble to reduce sail in a rolling boat in the middle of the night. The swells were around 3 meters, spinning out of a large low pressure system to my north. Taking those swells on the beam made for a very rolly time below – always hanging on to something or bracing myself against the roll.

Last evening the winds rotated to the southwest and today have weaken below 20 knots so I have better, less turbulent, sailing with a heading directly toward Lagos after veering north yesterday to set up the sailing angle. I expect, hope, this condition will last last a couple of days.

I expect to arrive in Lagos late Sunday but probably will slow down when I get close so I arrive at the Lagos marina during daylight hours on September 12.