Santa Maria
Our sail from Ponta Delgada to Santa Maria began in the late morning, and we didn’t make it into the marina before the lone attendant had left. But I’d used my OCC contacts via email, and they’d spoken with him and arranged to let us use the hammerhead dock position. That was fortunate, as it was the only slot left available for us. One of the finger piers that the books had led us to believe existed had, in fact, been wiped out in a recent winter storm that had waves crashing over the breakwater.
We had a tasty dinner ashore at the marina restaurant, as we were hungry and didn’t want to attempt the long walk up the cliffs without knowing if the restaurants were open.
The next morning, we had breakfast aboard and then walked up the hill to the town proper. It only has one main street and is quite picturesque. But almost everything was closed this Sunday – even the churches looked lonely and abandoned.
After we returned from our walk around town, we had a celebratory liquid lunch. Then we spray-painted Cyrilla on the concrete walls of the docks. This time, with Miika’s help, the results looked much more presentable than our meagre efforts in Horta. There was a lot more real estate available for our tagging as well.
Departure
We wanted to make the most of the next day in Ponta Delgada and chose to depart the docks at around 22:00 and sail the 60NM back overnight. It was as close to windstill on the ocean as could be. This meant that we had to motor the whole way. Lincoln and I shared the late night watches while Miika got to sleep.
