18. Horta, the Azores

Dan Andersson
Dec 30, 2025
5 min read

From the log:

Day 23, 97 miles

18th July, 2025

And, finally, we are in Horta. Thrown the hook. Waited for dawn to not have to negotiate a busy harbour in the dark. Going to customs. Buying fags. Going to sleep. When I wake, a million things to do.

The Azores are a little collection of islands pretty much in the middle of the North Atlantic. 2,000 nautical miles from New York. 900 from Lisbon. For sailors they are an important staging post, no matter if you are going east or west.

After 22 days at sea they are mythical in my mind.

First morning and first impressions

There's nine islands in total. Population some 230,000. Faial, where i am, is some 15,000 souls. It's just a spec in the North Atlantic. With a late start, a lunch in the middle, you would drive around it in a day, never losing sight of the sea.

Horta, a place for sailors.

Island life is different. Reading a sailors forum, a comment grabbed my attention. A sailor from the Orkneys, now resident in the Azores.. He loved the living on islands. He called it "island-life". Hard to define, but it has to do with people being different. Maybe it's the different scale, less people, less anonymity, more connection. Maybe people realise that they have to rub along and get along. (which I comment about re Bermuda in this article: https://www.svbeyond.com/post/13-crossing-the-atlantic-1-3-bermuda-repairs)

Maybe it creates a different pace, slower, more connected to the seasons.

But he also said that winters in Orkneys are long and cold, which gets really old. So he moved his boat and his life to the Azores. Same island life, same island culture, but pleasant summers and mild winters. Humid so the islands are green. Small green gems in the middle of the sea.

Sailors coming in to Horta invariably make a pilgrimage to Peter Cafe Sport. https://www.petercafesport.com/en/ Established in 1918, at the end of World War I, it could speak or whisper tales of espionage, naval logistics, ships sunk and seamen saved and captured. The same for World War II, even more important strategically to neutralise the threat of the German U-boats.

With all of this history it is not surprising that private sailors started to frequent the cafe. They weren't called sailors or yachtsmen back then but referred to as 'adventurers'. And many would leave a memento on the wall or ceiling to become a part of the Horta landmark's history.

Interior of Peter Cafe Sport. What's not to love?

And then the repairs. I have to move the clutch on the mizzen mast to avoid chafe. If you look at it from the top, the clutch was at about 7 o'clock which resulted in the parrels of the sail rubbing against the halyard. I had to shift it around and forward to 2 o'clock, kind of a dead corner, where no matter the set of the sail the halyard is out of harms way. Having had some chafe issues, and with my challenge of getting up the mast on my own, this was non-negotiable.

I employed a local firm (https://www.midatlanticyachtservices.com/ MAYS). Fantastic guys, try really hard, honest and reasonably priced (at least compared with UK/USA). An epoxy base, a steel plate, glassed in and hardware refitted. Strong and workman like. I can fettle it in and make it pretty later.

Relocating clutches and leads on masts.

Then there was the drama with the rudder. I had to refit new wires from the steering wheel that lead back to quadrant that controls the rudder. When I say "I" I mean João of MAYS. He also dealt with some wear of the bronze pins on the turning blocks that lead the wires their circuitous route aft. And of course we had to get the new autopilot fitted.

Having organised the work I had a few days of exploring the island. Rented a car and drove around. It reminded me of Cornwall, UK. Green, rugged coast line, sheer vertical drops into the sea. Not a lot of people.

The Azores are peaks of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, the underwater mountain range that just crests the water in these nine islands and is volcanically active.

Chatgpt is confused about Iceland and the Med but not too shabby overall.

The North West corner of Faial is dominated by Capelinhos, the volcano that erupted in 1957. It forced some 2,000 people to evacuate and created a little tsunami of Azoreans seeking their fortunes in North America. Before that the corner was a whale fishing hub, important enough to justify the starting the build of a fairly epic lighthouse in 1894. In 1903 it was lit.

It's impressive. It survived a volcano erupting a stones throw away. Standing next to it and looking at the caldera, thinking about the fault lines that gave way to release magma and ash over some 13 months... That it survived is mind bending.

But then a lot of things are mind bending about that period from the 1850s to 1900. There was a lot going on. Everywhere, from Melbourne to Delhi, via Shanghai, Buenos Aires to Chicago, San Francisco and across all of North America and Europe, great new-classical buildings went up by the thousands. In a world that had some 1.5 billion people. I guess most of them were stone masons.

Plus civic works. Here, just a random selection of things that are a bit mind bending:

Crystal Palace — 1850 → 1851
Brooklyn Bridge — 1869 → 1883
Forth Bridge — 1882 → 1890
Eiffel Tower — 1887 → 1889
Manchester Ship Canal — 1887 → 1894
Tower Bridge — 1886 → 1894
Kiel Canal — 1887 → 1895
London Underground — 1884 → 1890
Statue of Liberty — 1875 → 1886
St Pancras Station — 1866 → 1876

With ludicrous speeds of builds. The Eiffel Tower, two years!?

Go around, pretty much wherever you live, and you have buildings like this. Everywhere, all over our world.

I am always struck by how horse and cart people created architectural master pieces built for the ages, while living in shacks themselves.

Weird.

I have questions...

Maybe they just wanted to leave a dent in the world. A statement that they were here.

Which is a deeply human thing. In a way, you could say, this blog is my version of that A breadcrumb for my sons, grandchildren, and their kids, that I was here.

On the wall in Horta, sailors have a tradition to leave a hand painted poster of their boat and journey. You can see it in the picture below if you tear your eye away from the volcanic island of Pico on the horizon. They get worn and chipped by time but it's fun to walk around and check them out. There is lots of cringeworthy adolescent wit on display, but also some that stop you in your tracks and make you wonder about the captain, crew and journey. In one image people have tried to capture their time, their boat, their country's flag, the why of their journey.

Deeply human.