Blue, everything is blue. Light blue where the sun beams penetrate the surface a few meters above me to dark, almost black blue when I look down. Out of sight but down there, at about 1000 meters, is the sea floor. The next coast 12 nautical miles away. Here I am, in the middle of a giant ocean, breathing a bit nervous through my regulator which makes me sound like Darth Vader. The air I’m exhaling ascends forming little bubbles which look like silver marbles. Starring into the infinity in front of my I can’t see nothing. Or maybe yes? Did I just see a shadow of something about 25 meters in front of me or was it just my imagination playing tricks on me?

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There’s a fantastic ambient in the road. People on the sidewalk, on the terraces of their houses and some have even climbed on top of the roofs. Small stalls are selling beer and tapas, young men with a basket in each hand walking the street up and down offering with loud voices the sweets they are carrying. The windows and balconies are decorated with colourful carpets. Some houses have barricaded their entrances and fences with thick wooden boards and behind them you can see sitting ladies with umbrellas to protect themselves from the sun and men with hats. Children, teenagers, adults… Everybody is out and watching to a point somewhere down the road. Read the rest of this entry »

The border of the road we are driving uphill is skirted by giant bushes of hortensias and beautiful trees. Every time the dense vegetation permits our gaze wanders over gently curved hills, covered by green fields and the blue sea in the background. After a little while we arrive at a viewpoint overlooking a paradise on its own. We are looking at what thousands of years ago was a huge fire spiting crater of a volcano, but today is maybe one of the most idyllic places on earth. The walls of the crater are covered by a beautiful green forest and in its centre are two tranquil lakes. One with blue, the other with green waters. Legend has it that once Read the rest of this entry »

We are anchoring in a nice little bay with withe sand enclosed by hills with green bushes and trees which are standing so close together and whose branches are so fine and crocked that from a distance they seem like a giant broccoli. Our plan for this morning is to take the dinghy in order to get some bread and vegetables in the nearby village of Bahia de Praia. Even it is Sunday today we hope to find a shop which is open in the morning. As we arrive on the beach of Bahia there is already some entertainment going on. A group of children is dancing to rhythm given by a instructor in front of the only building on the beach. Some people are taking a bath while others walking the beach up and down. I do enter into a bar in the building and I meet a couple which came for a visit over from São Miguel. They tell me that there is a shop further up the hill but without a car it would be a 20 to 30 minutes walk. We start walking on the main road Read the rest of this entry »

This is one of the most important sayings I have learned during this crossing from Lanzarote to the Azores. Low pressure and high pressure systems are the main responsible forces in creating wind. The atmosphere tends to equalize those pressure differences and for this reason air is flowing from the high pressure areas towards the centre of the low pressure systems. The result is the wind blowing into the sails of our vessel and so moving it over the surface of the ocean towards our destination in the middle of the North Atlantic Ocean. But this wind also pushes our little boat into a constant angle Read the rest of this entry »