HaraldS
New member
Hi Steffen,
The trip out to the Azores is definitely worthwhile; our whole family enjoyed it a lot. On to your questions:
Q1: Maps. Crossing to the Azores you don't need much other than maybe a north Atlantic map to draw your progress and for the fun of knowing where all the sea mountains and abysses are. For the Archipelago of the Azores there are various charts.
First is an IMRAY CHART E1 Arquipelago dos Açores 1:759,000 this is quite small scale and covers the whole group, it has the most important harbors as insets. This is probably the minimum, definitely fine for just a stop in Horta, like many boats do, but not so good for exploring all the islands.
Next best is to take 3 charts that are each covering the western, middle and eastern group of the Azores. These usually also have extra large scale plans in them. These are available as Portuguese charts, BA charts and German charts. They seem quite similar in what they cover.
I ended up with the German set which is:
Chart D 823 Azoren Ostgruppe 1:150,000
Chart D 822 Azoren Mittelgruppe 1:175,000
Chart D 821 Azoren Westgruppe 1:100,000
The next level at around 1:30,000 - 1: 50,000 have some selected parts, like the channel between Faial and Pico, Eastern Approaches to Terceira and so on. Finally there are more detail plans than in the insets above, mostly around 1:10,000. So you could get at least 10 more charts.
I used C-map NT+ of the latest updates and it contains all these charts, usually from Portuguese source. Mine is: M-AF-C202.03 25 March 2002
For the last two years I have moved to use electronic charts for gunk holing and all the detail there is, and have enough paper to assure the safety of the boat.
All charts warn anyway that you may have some surprises in the Azores, since there is ongoing volcanic activity that could raise some sea mountain. I found that all harbor plans are quite detailed, but for the rest you will have to work it out yourself. Good news is that most islands are steep to and there are hardly any off lying dangers.
Most islands now have new marinas that are very cheap (€8/day for a 15m boat), so that most boats go from marina to marina. I enjoy anchoring out somewhere so we did both. If you do the later, even the best charts are limited in what they can offer, but good enough to make a guess. We found two nice places that way, one of them really fantastic at the almost inaccessible island of Sao Jorge.
The mentioned C-Map, also contains all of Madeira, the Canaries and some of the African West Coast. And also the most detailed charts of the Selvagem Islands that I was able to find.
Q2: I bought the paper charts first, like a year before, and waited with the C-map until the last minute. That brought a new problem, since they switched to the new NT+ cartridges at that time, which not only made trading cartridges for new areas less attractive, but also required a last second effort from Simrad to swap the reader in the plotter in order to work with the new ones. That was a surprise, since I tried them on my cheap Excalibur spare plotter and on my Laptop USB reader a month before I left and didn't expect that. So, you see I have 2 backups for the electronics, but still it would have been a pity to not have the big and daylight readable plotter. I could not speak highly enough of the effort that Najad and Simrad mounted to help. But that is a whole other story.
So back to planning, of course it is half the fun and a nice thing to do in the winter. I used the books I mentioned, Atlantic weather pilot charts and the paper charts.
Q3: We left from Lawrence Cove, a little marina on Bere Island, which is in Bantry Bay, just a touch north of Mizzen Head or Fastnet Rock. That way we had the most westing to start with. I was very concerned not being able to lay course to the Azores, given the prevailing winds. For that reason I had a backup plan and all charts and books, for heading down to Finistere and Bayona and then down the Portuguese coast. Unlike myself, you will probably be coming from the English south coast, and I would still recommend to make it all the way to Cork, before heading for the Azores. Also our first destination was Horta, which is in the middle group of islands. We ruled out heading for the western group, right from the beginning. Course from Mizzen Head to Horta is about 230, which is pretty much SW. If you look at the pilot charts, June and July are the most benign months, showing one storm in each month on the first half of the path. This year there have been more. Also the predominant wind direction is SW-NW.
Q4: We left Bantry Bay, bound for Horta on June 29th. Our visit to Ireland had been a bit spoiled by several depressions, which also slowed us down further north, so that we had to rush down from Inishbofin to Bantry Bay, skipping a lot of places that I would have liked to see. After that rush, we planned to stay a few more days in southern Ireland, but then the next system approached and it looked like we wouldn’t be able to leave for another week if we waited any longer. So we set off and we had only gone 50 miles when the Irish Coast Guard sent out the next gale warning.
Q5: Crossing to Horta took exactly 7, days and 3 hours. It is 1280 miles. The first three and a half days were awful. We could steer no better than 190 and the wind was between 25 and 35 knots most of the time. We were still going quite fast, but always close-hauled and the standard of living didn’t find general approval.
The first day was probably the fastest, we left Bantry Bay at 1100 and by midnight we had done 101 miles. The next daily runs were: 165, 166, 145, 173, 174, 161, 122. On day 4 the wind veered to NW and we could head straight for our destination. The last two days we had to motor-sail as the winds got very light near the Azores, which is to be expected, and if you still have a seaway going, the only way to generate enough wind to have the sails flog, is to add some engine power.
The trip out to the Azores is definitely worthwhile; our whole family enjoyed it a lot. On to your questions:
Q1: Maps. Crossing to the Azores you don't need much other than maybe a north Atlantic map to draw your progress and for the fun of knowing where all the sea mountains and abysses are. For the Archipelago of the Azores there are various charts.
First is an IMRAY CHART E1 Arquipelago dos Açores 1:759,000 this is quite small scale and covers the whole group, it has the most important harbors as insets. This is probably the minimum, definitely fine for just a stop in Horta, like many boats do, but not so good for exploring all the islands.
Next best is to take 3 charts that are each covering the western, middle and eastern group of the Azores. These usually also have extra large scale plans in them. These are available as Portuguese charts, BA charts and German charts. They seem quite similar in what they cover.
I ended up with the German set which is:
Chart D 823 Azoren Ostgruppe 1:150,000
Chart D 822 Azoren Mittelgruppe 1:175,000
Chart D 821 Azoren Westgruppe 1:100,000
The next level at around 1:30,000 - 1: 50,000 have some selected parts, like the channel between Faial and Pico, Eastern Approaches to Terceira and so on. Finally there are more detail plans than in the insets above, mostly around 1:10,000. So you could get at least 10 more charts.
I used C-map NT+ of the latest updates and it contains all these charts, usually from Portuguese source. Mine is: M-AF-C202.03 25 March 2002
For the last two years I have moved to use electronic charts for gunk holing and all the detail there is, and have enough paper to assure the safety of the boat.
All charts warn anyway that you may have some surprises in the Azores, since there is ongoing volcanic activity that could raise some sea mountain. I found that all harbor plans are quite detailed, but for the rest you will have to work it out yourself. Good news is that most islands are steep to and there are hardly any off lying dangers.
Most islands now have new marinas that are very cheap (€8/day for a 15m boat), so that most boats go from marina to marina. I enjoy anchoring out somewhere so we did both. If you do the later, even the best charts are limited in what they can offer, but good enough to make a guess. We found two nice places that way, one of them really fantastic at the almost inaccessible island of Sao Jorge.
The mentioned C-Map, also contains all of Madeira, the Canaries and some of the African West Coast. And also the most detailed charts of the Selvagem Islands that I was able to find.
Q2: I bought the paper charts first, like a year before, and waited with the C-map until the last minute. That brought a new problem, since they switched to the new NT+ cartridges at that time, which not only made trading cartridges for new areas less attractive, but also required a last second effort from Simrad to swap the reader in the plotter in order to work with the new ones. That was a surprise, since I tried them on my cheap Excalibur spare plotter and on my Laptop USB reader a month before I left and didn't expect that. So, you see I have 2 backups for the electronics, but still it would have been a pity to not have the big and daylight readable plotter. I could not speak highly enough of the effort that Najad and Simrad mounted to help. But that is a whole other story.
So back to planning, of course it is half the fun and a nice thing to do in the winter. I used the books I mentioned, Atlantic weather pilot charts and the paper charts.
Q3: We left from Lawrence Cove, a little marina on Bere Island, which is in Bantry Bay, just a touch north of Mizzen Head or Fastnet Rock. That way we had the most westing to start with. I was very concerned not being able to lay course to the Azores, given the prevailing winds. For that reason I had a backup plan and all charts and books, for heading down to Finistere and Bayona and then down the Portuguese coast. Unlike myself, you will probably be coming from the English south coast, and I would still recommend to make it all the way to Cork, before heading for the Azores. Also our first destination was Horta, which is in the middle group of islands. We ruled out heading for the western group, right from the beginning. Course from Mizzen Head to Horta is about 230, which is pretty much SW. If you look at the pilot charts, June and July are the most benign months, showing one storm in each month on the first half of the path. This year there have been more. Also the predominant wind direction is SW-NW.
Q4: We left Bantry Bay, bound for Horta on June 29th. Our visit to Ireland had been a bit spoiled by several depressions, which also slowed us down further north, so that we had to rush down from Inishbofin to Bantry Bay, skipping a lot of places that I would have liked to see. After that rush, we planned to stay a few more days in southern Ireland, but then the next system approached and it looked like we wouldn’t be able to leave for another week if we waited any longer. So we set off and we had only gone 50 miles when the Irish Coast Guard sent out the next gale warning.
Q5: Crossing to Horta took exactly 7, days and 3 hours. It is 1280 miles. The first three and a half days were awful. We could steer no better than 190 and the wind was between 25 and 35 knots most of the time. We were still going quite fast, but always close-hauled and the standard of living didn’t find general approval.
The first day was probably the fastest, we left Bantry Bay at 1100 and by midnight we had done 101 miles. The next daily runs were: 165, 166, 145, 173, 174, 161, 122. On day 4 the wind veered to NW and we could head straight for our destination. The last two days we had to motor-sail as the winds got very light near the Azores, which is to be expected, and if you still have a seaway going, the only way to generate enough wind to have the sails flog, is to add some engine power.
