Our sail to Santa Maria was a mixed bag. Once we’d rounded the washing machine of Ponta de Sao Lourenco, we had light winds to take us west along the north shore of Madeira and it slowly filled in to allow us to sail close hauled using either the Code 0 or Genoa but after 24 hours we were intermittently sailing/motor sailing – which continued for the following 3 days! In the end I think we had the engine on more than 50% of the time ☹

We arrived in Santa Maria on a Friday morning, to find out that even though we are fully vaccinated, they don’t recognize the CDC cards, so we had to have a PCR test and remain in quarantine on the boat until results were in (and negative). Fortunately, by Sunday morning we were good to go.

We were greeted in Santa Maria by OCC boat Asante – Siegfried and Gudrun – who we’d met in Horta, Faial in 2018 on the Azores Pursuit. They’ve stayed in the Azores ever since.

We also got to meet Peter Smith on Kiwi Roa. Peter is the designer of the Rocna Anchor – which for a long time was one of the leading anchors. Kiwi Roa is his design – an Aluminium exploration boat in which he’s traveled to all the extremes – including the North West Passage last year somewhat controversially since the Canadians had disallowed passage through the NWP during the pandemic.  Peter’s contention is that the NWP is International Waters which the Canadians cannot control. He’s been fined and will fight the case – and may likely prevail. He gets my vote!

Santa Maria is a very pleasant and green island and we were fortunate to be able to rent a car – a scarce commodity in the Azores these days – and spent a couple of days touring around. We did a nice ridge walk centered around the highest peak – Pico Alto – which happens to be the site of a 1989 Air disaster – where a plane crashed into the side of the mountain having been using the wrong barometric pressure – which indicates altitude. I think nearly 100 folk, mostly Italians died in the crash and there are a couple of monuments to mark the event.

Siegfried was very helpful to Laurie as he’s fluent in Portuguese and she and he went up to the government buildings in town to chase down the status of her citizenship application. Unfortunately, it tuns out that her previous celebrations were a little premature – she still has the final step of the process to complete before they’ll hand her a citizenship card (with which she can get a passport, etc). So once again she sits and waits!

We had originally planned to head to Sao Miguel after Santa Maria, but there’s a spike in infections there such that anyone travelling from Sao George will have to take PCR tests wherever they go next – so instead we opted for an overnight sail to Horta on Faial. We managed to sail the whole way – but I got horribly seasick – and couldn’t shake it for the longest time. Not a pretty sight!

We arrived in Horta and are anchored in the harbor – which turns out to be just as convenient as being ‘on the wall’ and a lot cooler!