Guppy is rounding the south side of Faial around 5 pm on the 13th of April. We’re being directed to a quarantine dock on which we need to stay until we can go for our covid testing and get the results which hopefully will be tomorrow. For now, we’ll make a nice dinner, take some rest, clean up and wash our salty clothing. The first day turns out beautiful, it’s warm and sunny and our young crew is scattered over the pier, waiting for our testing. We’re being brought to the testing station by a big coastguard rib – pretty cool 🙂

The rest of the day is spent on schoolwork and of course, everyone is happy that their phones have reception again… 

As promised, we receive our test results the next morning and are able to move Guppy into the marina and go ashore. We get a spot right in front of the Johann Smidt, a German school ship, and the previous Eendracht. Quite a cool and historic ship to be laying in front of. Of course, the two young crews are very happy to see new faces of their age and hang out together most of the day scattered over the two ships. Yesterday they spent most of the afternoon making dinner for everyone which they had planned to eat on the pier, but the weather has turned. The sunny warm weather made place for rain, wind, and a drop in temperature again. So now there are little groups of people all over both ships hiding from the rain, sharing stories, and playing games.  

While we are in Horta of course, we also need to make a dock painting which was started but then put on hold because of the rain so we’ll have to find some dry moments to continue. Yesterday we visited the famous Peter Cafe Sport which is also kind of a must-do when arriving here by boat. While we are there the owner comes up to me and offers to show us the museum which is upstairs and full of very old whale teeth with beautiful scrimshaws in it. There is a collection of whale teeth engraved with the faces of famous sailors that have visited the cafe, mostly man and he thought I should be part of it. Of course, making the scrimshaw is a lot of work and takes a long time but what an honor to be considered to be standing amongst names like Robin Knox Johnston, Bernard Moitessier, Sir Francis Chichester & Florence Arthaud.

Laura