Whaling Museum

Ship: Johann Smidt
Date: 30.03.2026
Position: Port of Horta
Nautical position: 38’09,4 N, 030’08,4 W
Etmal: 0

Today everybody had to be awake and in the mess at 8 o’clock because the girls were finally changing beds and everyone else had to do green plan. We were all trying to get finished quickly, but sixteen people can’t just change beds in about half an hour, so many girls swapped beds after lunch.

As I mentioned we only had an hour and a half to sort out the beds. That was because the Expi group had planned to go to an old whaling factory, which had been turned into a museum about the history of whaling in the Azores.

We were delayed a bit by some people who needed a bit more time. We walked along a calm street to the museum. I personally imagined that the museum would be bigger. It was a small building with two stories and a gallery. You could see a lot of the machinery which was used when they were processing the spermwhales on the ground floor, but there weren’t many explanations about how they were operated.

There were harpoons and special spears that the whalers used and a short video showing how whales were spotted, caught and brought to the factory.

On the gallery there was a photograph exhibition but only in Portuguese with a QR code for the English translation which we of course couldn’t scan. I’m guessing it was about protecting animals or the environment. The second floor was the most interesting to me.

In the middle of the room hung a skeleton of a sperm whale and on the wall, next to more photos of the mysterious exhibition was a giant picture of a spermwhale where you could see all the organs. Sadly there was not much more and we decided as a group to go back earlier so the girls could finish swapping beds.

For lunch we had red peppers filled with minced meat and rice for the meat eaters and rice peppers feta and cream for the veggies. That’s when I finally noticed that the teachers weren’t aboard, but since we had a lot to do, it wasn’t very noticeable.

At half past one we had an all hands to go to the other dock for fuel and Cecily, our student captain, had her first chance to lead a maneuver. When we were finished, Nepomuk led the maneuver back to our original dock. After we cleared the deck we had FSL and no dinner aboard. We are planning to leave the Azores on Wednesday morning.

Grüße:

Ellena: Hallo an Mama und Papa, ich hoffe, die Mail ist angekommen. An Alex, geniess‘ die Osterferien. Das war jetzt mein letzter Tagesbericht.