Before we left Horta it is a sailing tradition to leave a painting on the wall of the marina, many say it is bad luck not to leave one. So with paint in hand a Devon flag was painted with our names and boat name for all to see.

The provisions were again stowed and weather reports studied it was time to leave and travel the last 1200 miles to the UK. It was a slow start with quite light winds as we left the islands behind, a few dolphins came by to play in the bow wave. The wind settled to a good sailing breeze and we were making a fair speed comfortable and nice sailing. On day three we had a close encounter with a rather large whale it was about 10 foot or so off the starboard side, we watched it for quite a while as it dived down and would resurface on the other side of the boat each time getting a bit further away. It was lovely to watch one of the great creatures in there natural environment but a bit close to our little boat at times.
On day 5 we encountered our first sight of fog in a few years quite glad we have the AIS so we can see where the big ships and fishing vessels are and the direction they are travelling as well as their speed. The rest of the trip was good sailing lots of grey cloudy days and more fog then we saw land the Isles of Scilly on the horizon but we had planned to sail by as there was a low pressure system on the way which would bring strong winds we wanted to be in Falmouth long before that arrived. After 14 days at sea we arrived a Falmouth and tied to a visiting buoy by mid morning. Or plan was to spend a few days here then head up to Plymouth where we will spend the winter or a bit longer.
We are now tucked up in the Mayflower marina in Plymouth enjoying the wet and windy British summer.