Falmouth
Back in Europe and not, June 29 2016
Arriving in Falmouth feels like coming home to Europe, but the Brits have voted for a Brexit.... To our big surprise everybody seems to be in a state of shock, like 'we voted for a Brexit, but we do not want it'.... So maybe Falmouth is not part of Europe any longer?
We are looking back at a wonderful stay in Faial, the island of Horta, and a day trip to Pico, the adjacent island in the Azores. The weather finally cleared and gave is some warm and sunny skies. Our mainsail got repaired and we checked the mast and all little things that could cause problems there. We did find many of the tags that sailing friends have made on the concrete harbour walls of Horta in the past to commemorate their stay. A special visit to Piet and Jelka from the Aeson, who have settled in the North and sunny side of Faial. Their life is perfect, with a big house and view of the sea. For us a prolonged stay on this island would still lead to island fever (the feeling that you are confined to too small a place).
The staircase to the lighthouse in Faial that was covered in ashes of a vulcanic eruption.
Porto Eira on the north shore of Faial. Everybody enjoys the sun.
The Vulcano of Pico seen from Faial with a lenticular cloud on top.
The Caldeiro dos Inferno just before Horta.
Horta view from the Caldeira. In front is Porto Pim with some very nice Tapas bars.
Kids watching clowns in the park
A geological oddity: a bubble of lava sitting on the shore of Faial.
End of life for a lot of Portugese Men-of-war.
Very small scale wine yards. The walls protect the vines from the harsh winds and hold a bit of warmth. The wine is supposed to be excellent. Helas we could not find a bottle of it.
These trees in Faial were the same as the 'Christmas tree' from New Zealand. I do not know where they originally come from.
A view of Faial from Pico
Thanks to Anneke's good vision we spotted lots of migrating whales. Many of them seemed a lot bigger than humpback whales.
We left Horta on Friday 17 June with a perfect weather window for the next ten days. Both Anneke and me felt like we had company of our guardian angels Mieke and Chris. On many occasions Anneke was the first to spot big spouts of whales breathing, sometimes estimated at 20+ meters high in a double clouded puff. For us that indicated a big whale, maybe a blue fin whale? Imagine these huge animals just below the surface while they are migrating to their summer breeding grounds and we only see a puff of air of them. to me these puffs seemed like a volcanic eruption, so high and quick they rose.
Falmouth is still in its traditional style. Brits will always long to go back to the days of the big empire and ruling the waves...
These nice presents from our guardian angels were offset by uncertainties about the running of Stampers engine and the analysis of what was the real problem. We were losing coolant liquid at an increasing but irregular rate, the engine was difficult to start and one time was blocked by water in the cylinders. So once we got the engine started again with still four days to sail, we decided to keep the engine running. The chance of not being able to start her again was too high and even though we were not able to guarantee that we had enough diesel to reach Falmouth, it was better to get as far as possible with the available diesel. For that last part we would be in a much better position to request a tow than still in the middle of the Atlantic. And we always had the option to sail. It turned out that my estimates were too much on the safe side and we arrived on the 26 June with a running engine and still some diesel in the tanks. An engineer checked out our old engine after two days of anxiously waiting. The verdict was that the head gasket was not leaking but most likely a pinhole corrosion had occurred in the engine block. That pinhole caused a leak either in the exhaust manifold or in the bus of the pistons. Most likely only a very small leakage as no CO2 of CO gas was detected in the coolant liquid. Any bigger leak would have been detected with the tools the engineer used. He advised us to head home, keep the engine running while at sea and plan for getting a new engine once in Holland. Pinhole corrosion in the engine block was a sign of an old engine that would develop more and more of these and money spend would be a waste.