Last night’s weather report from Herb contained more bad news for us. He’s still predicting near gale force winds from the afternoon of Monday (today) through Tuesday and maybe Wednesday. We listened to the communications betweeen Herb and other boats in our area and one in particular was very interested. A boat about 60 miles behind us named Leo Cat (not sure of the spelling) told Herb they would be diverting to Flores, rather than their original destination of Horta in order to avoid the worst of the bad weather.
We did some quick checking and figured we could also get into Flores before the heavy winds and we fairly quickly made the decision and changed course. Later, on the radio net with other boats that we’ve been travelling near, we were able to get another boat to read from a cruising guide the description of Flores and its anchorages. The anchorage sounded well protected from the anticipated westerly winds and the description of the island made it sound well worth spending a day or two at, even if it wasn’t somewhat out of necessity.
This morning, we’re in the time zone of the Azores and Greenwhich, England: UTC . Herb’s broadcast this evening and all the VHF net broadcasts are now even later. Herb will be at 8:00pm local time and the ad hoc VHF net we’ve been participating in most night will be at 10:00pm! Time to suggest an earlier start time for that.
Tni made corn muffins with some blueberries thrown in that were left over from some other source. Very tasty.
The island of Flores was first spotted at about 1:00pm by Jeff and everyone rushed into the cockpit to take a look. Not much to see yet, just a dim outline mixed in with the clouds, but everyone is might excited at the prospect of stepping onto solid land.
Unfortunately, its looking like we won’t get there until after 5:00pm and may not be able to clear customs today, which would technically mean we shouldn’t leave the boat today. We’ll see.
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