Our last stop: The Azores

Date: 05.04.2024
Position: Horta, Azores
Etmal: 0 nm
Total: 10496 nm
Ship: Regina Maris

On the Azores

We are now already here for 11 days on the island of Faial. Sadly our visit has been characterised by bad weather conditions. Storm, rain and very cold days. Therefore we took a lot of our time here to have workshops. One big topic of our workshops was communication, especially violent free communication.
Even though the workshops might have been interesting, nothing makes up for missing out on adventures like a bike tour here.

Besides the workshops we also had a lot of free shore leaves and a few days ago Johanna organised a Ralley for us that ran through the city. Our task was to find out who murdered „Pedro Silvero“, figuring this out led us to most of Hortas sights.

Currently

Right now most of us are sitting in the messroom. Some of us are ill and the other are exhausted from a tiring day. Because today we went on a hike. For one of just very few days, that we had alright weather (still with a lot of rain).

First we left our ship and went by bus. Our starting point was „Cabeco dos Trinta“ from there we walked through different terrains, that looked as if they were from different places from all over the world. One moment we walked trough a moist forest, and in the other we found ourselves on a dessert like hill.

For three to four hours we hiked from Cabeco dos Trinta over Cabeco do Fogo, Cabeco Verde to Cabeco do Canto and finally ended up at Farol da Ponta dos Capelinhos. There our bus picked us up again and took us for a little tour over the north of the island. Now that we’re back on Board we planned to finish the movie we started to watch yesterday and hope for a relaxed evening.

Some Traditions

Since this voyage is coming to an end the time on the Azores was also spend organising a lot. Especially Ocean College traditions have taken place here.

Our first priority was the bordbook. It’s a little book everyone gets, to collect all our daily reports, a lot of memories and facts about each person, it’s supposed to be a keep sake for our trip. For it we have written texts about every person on Bord and we filled other pages with questioners.

Secondly we designed our mural. Here in the port of Horta, every sailing boat paints a mural on the ground or on any free space, that can be found. It doesn’t matter what size or form it has. Of course we’ll also do so. We designed, what our mural is supposed to look like in the end, but with all of the rain that we had, it was really difficult to start painting. Nevertheless we already have our base layers done now.

Another tradition from Ocean College is for the students to write letters. In Costa Rica we have written letters to the students from last year (22/23), which then have been send to their homes. Here in Horta, we will leave letters for the students for next year (24/25). How?

A very special place of Horta is the „Peter Café Sport“. It is very traditional for sailors and people come and go from all around the world and leave little things of theirs. The Peter Cafe Sport is also known for that you can send and collect letters there. If they get them and they’re not being picked up they’ll keep them apparently forever. So you’re never too late to get your letters or packages.

Every student got a number in the beginning of our trip, therefore you just write to that number. And of course you also get the letter from that number from last year.

So after we all have written our letters to everyones number we’ll leave them at the Café for the next year to pick up.

Our last project we planned on the Azores, which I was very invested and involved in, was to design our own Hoodie. Therefore I painted a design which will hopefully work out to be worn on a Hoodie as soon as we arrive in Amsterdam.