Atlantic Adventure

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Follow the attached link to see a few pictures from the trip:

Azores to Ireland

 

Pinball Update 01/07/2004

After arriving in Horta in the Azores, John flew back to the UK to do a couple of weeks work and replenish his funds. Susan and I had a great time cruising in the Azores with most of the ARC boats. The boats were very sociable and because it is a small number of boats everyone got to know each other very well.

John rejoined the boat in San Miguel on Thursday 17th June for the leg up to Kinsale in Ireland. We left San Miguel in the Azores at 9.30am on Tuesday 22nd June after delaying our departure to allow a dangerous low to pass just North of us. Another very deep low came across on Friday and Saturday 25/26th, but we headed East and managed to remain to the SE of it and to miss the worst of the winds. There were 5 ARC boats adopting the same strategy and we managed to remain in contact with the rest of the fleet for almost a week. Our Iridium satellite phone stopped working with the computer so we were unable to get the weather forecasts other than via the VHF from another ARC boat. It also meant that we could not send any e-mail updates for our website.

We arrived in Kinsale early Thursday morning at 7.30am. The sailing was a real mixture of light winds right up to force 7/8 and from bright sunshine to drizzle and rain. At night we were back into thermals and full waterproofs – a bit of a shock after all the hot weather sailing. We tried out our repaired fishing gear and managed to catch a very nice Tuna. This provided very nice Tuna steaks for dinner and a Tuna risotto for lunch.

We had the usual celebrations on arriving in Kinsale and John left the boat on Friday morning. We plan to leave Kinsale on Sunday 4th and make our way back to Scotland, probably into the Clyde, arriving there early the following week.

PW Update 18/06

After a week in Horta partying and chilling out we cruised to Terceira, in the Azores, and berthed in Angra, a lovely old town. We spent 3 days there then travelled to San Miguel and we have been here for a week.

We leave tomorrow (19th) for Kinsale, Ireland and we expect to take about 10 days. We will really start to feel we are back when we get there. I think the Satellite phone is working again, so we hope to give updates for the Web as we go along.