sailing to azores

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Balticfly

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Any tips? I will be singlehanding a basic boat. What equipment? How long will it take? Best route? And any other help please
 
Depending on where you start from it's about 1000M or a bit less, divide that by you known average speed and you should have an idea of how long. Radar and AIS with a reasonably loud alarm would be useful for when you encounter the fishing fleets.
There are 3 routes: The inshore which will mean coast hopping and take a long time then the two offshore routes one outside the continental shelf and one that crosses it and is more or less the direct route.
A few spare cans of diesel could also come in useful.
 
Balticfly said:
Any tips? I will be singlehanding a basic boat. What equipment? How long will it take? Best route? And any other help please
Click to expand...

AIS is an absolute essential for single handing or short handing. Fit a transponder not just a receiver. It’s only fair to other vessels. I used a QUARK and was very pleased with it (and the price). I ran the AIS through a chartplotter in the cockpit and Fire Tablet on the charttable. I did almost everything through the tablet. I recommend that system. Whatever route you take expect two or three days of flat calm. The rest of the time you should have a good sailing breeze. The best major harbours (but not the only ones) are at Ponta Delgada and Horta and these islands are big enough and beautiful enough to make a car hire for a few days worthwhile. They also have chandlers and various repair people.

You can get more about my experience sailing from Portugal and back on my own this summer (2018) from:
LesWeatheritt.com
 
There's a Jester Azores Challenge every couple of years or so, from Plymouth. The guys who are part of that gently eccentric community of 'do it themselfers' sail an eclectic range of small boats and have lots of appropriate experience to tap into. But an organisation it is not. Think 'herding cats'....

You may be blessed with fine weather... or you may not. A couple of years ago saw a large Atlantic depression form up and sit tight squarely between the Western Channel and the Azores. Participants had a reported '17 gales in 19 days'. All sorts of routes - north, south and direct - were tried in vain attempts to avoid this ill-behaved disturbance.

You will get plenty of food for thought by viewing the several YouTube videos....
 
Depends whether you do one hop or more. I've seen a mention of heading West to about 10 0r 11 long and then striking SW for Santa Maria. Keeps you away from busiest shipping I think, and also well off continental shelf. Met a couple in Tercira who'd day hopped down Biscay coast then struck out from Vigo.Could keep going down Portuguese coast to Lisbon or whatever and then reach across....uses Portuguese Trades. I crossed Biscay and had unpleasant experience of getting mixed up in shipping lane off Finisterre at night in a blow....AIS did help up to a point.
The Azores are one of my favourite island groups; I visited 4 and Terceira was my favourite; they have bull fights in the streets but tease it with coloured umbrellas.
I'm sure better travelled members have more info
 
Terceira is lovely.

As others have said, have an AIS, and a radar if you can (it will let you get some sleep). Also, an EPIRB, a liferaft, and a satphone with Falmouth CG programmed into it. The satphone will also allow you to get weather GRIBs.

Take spare fuel (a couple of 20l cans).
 
There are several YouTube films on the trip. This is a good start.


It is a trip I am planning in a few years.
 
Decent self steering if you can but if it's a small boat with a tiller then a spare tillerpilot is very cheap - just make sure you have two separate leads from the battery so you have full redundancy.

Personally if you can't afford it then AIS and radar are very optional as you probably won't hit anything and probably won't be hit and that's the way it's been done for many decades - once you are away from shore. For battery consumption and expense I'd avoid a fridge too although I wouldn't live without one on a boat myself. Cheap solar panels and a controller if you can afford it and are doing this long term - otherwise far cheaper and simpler to stack up with a lot of jerry cans, maybe 10 x 20l depending on your initial tank size, and ensure you have a good way to fill your tank in rough weather - I use a squeezee ball primed siphon from ebay.

And otherwise it's non-perishable food after the first few days - some easy to cook, some much nicer but deliberately more complex as that will pass the time. Lots of basic tools and spares and a bit of practice.

Personal safety equipment - is there any point at all in a lifejacket or harnessing up if you'd only be dragged alongside the boat or be left watching it sail away?
 
I've been giving the fridge some though! This is the first boat I've owned with a fridge and I am experimenting with how long stuff can keep frozen then cool in it without the use of power. To date I've had things last five days. Everything goes on the fridge frozen, milk, bread the works (stuff can be quickly thawed out if placed in a bucket of salt water as long as it is well sealed - soggy bread is no fun at all). I have a once a day opening routine and back fill with insulating material. Does anybody else to this?
 
Sandy said:
I've been giving the fridge some though! This is the first boat I've owned with a fridge and I am experimenting with how long stuff can keep frozen then cool in it without the use of power. To date I've had things last five days. Everything goes on the fridge frozen, milk, bread the works (stuff can be quickly thawed out if placed in a bucket of salt water as long as it is well sealed - soggy bread is no fun at all). I have a once a day opening routine and back fill with insulating material. Does anybody else to this?
Click to expand...

We don't get the option to freeze stuff or refrigerate it in advance so when we start a cruise we try to buy a couple of big bags of ice to start cooling down the 50l or whatever of drinks and to avoid heating the actual perishable stuff we've just bought. Never refrigerated or frozen bread.

But your method of starting and staying cool sounds ideal. I wouldn't worry too much about opening a few times as air has almost no thermal capacity compared to liquids and solids but keeping an insulating layer between openings makes sense if you have any doubt about the normal insulation. We run our fridge (engine run not 12v) for 2 x 30 minutes a day even in hot Med temperatures once everything is thoroughly cold (and one part of the fridge frozen). It takes a few days of running it much more often each day to reach that point.
 
We freeze all the bread at home and take what we need from the freezer, it keeps longer. Freezing UHT milk does sound silly but we are using it to keep the other stuff cool. The other thing we do is pre-pack everything in portion size chunks, e.g. 2 slices of bacon 2 sausages, while it is a pain sorting out food for a trip and uses a lot of plastic it allows us to cook exactly what we need.
 
Sandy said:
We freeze all the bread at home and take what we need from the freezer, it keeps longer. Freezing UHT milk does sound silly but we are using it to keep the other stuff cool. The other thing we do is pre-pack everything in portion size chunks, e.g. 2 slices of bacon 2 sausages, while it is a pain sorting out food for a trip and uses a lot of plastic it allows us to cook exactly what we need.
Click to expand...

Sounds sensible - alas home to our boat is via EasyJet or Ryanair
 
RupertW said:
Decent self steering if you can but if it's a small boat with a tiller then a spare tillerpilot is very cheap - just make sure you have two separate leads from the battery so you have full redundancy.

Personally if you can't afford it then AIS and radar are very optional as you probably won't hit anything and probably won't be hit and that's the way it's been done for many decades - once you are away from shore. For battery consumption and expense I'd avoid a fridge too although I wouldn't live without one on a boat myself. Cheap solar panels and a controller if you can afford it and are doing this long term - otherwise far cheaper and simpler to stack up with a lot of jerry cans, maybe 10 x 20l depending on your initial tank size, and ensure you have a good way to fill your tank in rough weather - I use a squeezee ball primed siphon from ebay.

And otherwise it's non-perishable food after the first few days - some easy to cook, some much nicer but deliberately more complex as that will pass the time. Lots of basic tools and spares and a bit of practice.

Personal safety equipment - is there any point at all in a lifejacket or harnessing up if you'd only be dragged alongside the boat or be left watching it sail away?
Click to expand...

What, is non-perishable food?
 
Sandy said:
We freeze all the bread at home and take what we need from the freezer, it keeps longer. Freezing UHT milk does sound silly but we are using it to keep the other stuff cool. The other thing we do is pre-pack everything in portion size chunks, e.g. 2 slices of bacon 2 sausages, while it is a pain sorting out food for a trip and uses a lot of plastic it allows us to cook exactly what we need.
Click to expand...

There has just been a Greg Wallace programme about bread & the 'expert' said that putting it in a fridge, made it go stale quicker, something to do with the gluten changing.
 
GHA said:
Have you done much single handing? What boat?


Best read is probably this one - http://sfbaysss.org/main/resources/
Click to expand...

Thanks for all these replies. This must be great info for all of us wanting to sail to the Azores.

My boat is an old steel Feltz (German not at all like a Bavaria!!) which I refitted in Poland and have now taken to Vigo. Some of that was quite long singlehanded passages but I crossed Biscay with a friend as crew. I’m not so bothered about fridge/not fridge. I have one but the wife won't be on board so the fridge will be turned off. I will be stocking in the old timers’ way like the Hiscocks – tins (non perishable food), vaseline on fresh eggs (slow to go off at sea), flour to bake bread. If I do crave the occasional beer I’m hoping it will have kept cool in the bilge.
Self steering? I have a home made vane and an autohelm, the former unreliable and the latter limited to compass courses and a bad draw on the batteries. Long keel makes her stable so I’m hoping I sail a course even if the vane won't work.
Rugged steel hull so I’m hoping that the flotsam and jetsam will bounce off and that the skeg protects the rudder and prop – that was scary stuff from saab96’s article!! – and have already discovered how much more sleep I get from having an AIS alarm.
I’ll take water in 5 gallon bottles but I hate seeing fuel (or much else bulky) stowed on deck so my one spare can will be in a locker. I’ll keep a close eye on my two main fuel tanks if I have to do a lot of motoring. I can motor for 200 plus miles on my tanks and if that isn’t enough I’ll sit and wait for a breeze. I’m not in a hurry to get off the ocean. A breeze always comes, doesn’t it?
Route? Being in Vigo means I’ve done a lot of the southing so I’m planning to sail direct to Sao Miguel and hope to carry the Portuguese Trades on the beam. Will I be lucky? I certainly don’t want 17 gales in 19 days. That has to be unusually unlucky (even by Jester standards!!) but I do know the weather has been changing in the last few years and there have been unusual summer storms around the Azores. Any experiences? Are the forecasts good out there?
And if I can't make Ponta Delgado, what about the shelter in Santa Maria harbour?
The San Francisco club link makes interesting reading so thanks, GHA. I’ll look over their stuff more slowly but I think it may be a case of “it’s sailing but not as we know it, Jim”. I don’t have the kind of boat that would win any of their races and I never hoist a spinny when alone!!
 
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