IMAGE – various images

For ocean sailors the island of Faial and its port, Horta, is one of the great destinations – a historical nautical crossroad .

Horta is famous among yachties for two things. One is Peter’s Café Sport, for several decades the favourite watering hole for ocean sailors
The bar is full of an amazing collection of nautical knick-knacks on the walls and ceiling and because of the 100 year anniversary the atmosphere is full of fun.

Upstairs is a museum devoted to scrimshaw, the art of decorating ivory from whales’ teeth and the tusks of narwhal.

The second thing for which Horta is famous is the tradition that every visiting yacht must leave a picture on the sea wall, or bad luck will surely follow. Nautical graffiti it is not – some of the paintings are true works of art

I am not artistic at all artistic but we knew that we had to follow the tradition. So we came up with a simple design, and set about finding a site. This is not easy, but tradition allows over-painting of really old works of art and so we found our spot and went to work.

The Harbour and small town has a lot of charm and history – whaling being the main theme. We have enjoyed our stay here in Horta – but its time to move on again.

We will commence our final ocean passage on 7th July – back to the UK, its been a long, long time since we left in 1999 – its been a wonderful adventure indeed.