GoneSailing Loon's Lace EPISODE 9 Arquipélago dos Açores Praia da Vitória

Praia da Vitória, Terceira – Azores
March-June 2022

Praia da Vitória

We traded Ontario’s March weather for the very early spring in the Azores. Our apartment turned out to be better than expected, warm, comfortable and quiet, a nice view of the courthouse park and fountain across the street. The neighbourhood roosters kept us company and entertained, a bank, cafe, farmacia and grocery store made life easy. Down the hill, downtown, along Rua Jesus and the Passeio Dos Poetas to Marina Praia, we’ve worked almost 6 weeks to get Loon uncovered and ready to launch. Our sail plan this season is to make the 1200 mile passage to Cork in South Ireland.

A long list of “to do” boat stuff, but not as long as last year when we prepared to cross to the Azores, from Lewisporte, Newfoundland. Jayne has designed and built a new “watch keepers” shelter for the cockpit, I built an engine room storage box, they both needed to be assembled and installed, 230 wiring updates, and sand to remove from Loons every crevice. Jose and Manuel waxed and repaired some damaged fibreglass, perfectly matching the hull colour and Najad red boot stripe.

We’ve traded our small apartment for a smaller floating one, the work goes on, a new winch, line clutches, the fridge and salon lights stopped working. I climbed the mast to retrieve the main halyard and install our wind instruments.

We splashed out on some galley updates, induction cooker, pots & pans, a new mocha pot. Jayne loves to cook and we have guests coming for dinner tomorrow.

Praia is quiet and relaxing, there was a concert last night, Guitar Terra and Fado singing tomorrow, just a short walk up Rua Jesus…