We left Horta this morning at 07:00, motored out into the outer harbor, pulled up the main and the 135%, and set our course to pass over the island of Pico. The sun is out, the clouds are rare. We soon switched to the genniker and cooked at 8kts till the peak of the volcano was off our beam. We soon ran out of wind and motored for a couple of hours. We saw a lot of whale backs and some spouts but no post card tails in the air. Once we cleared the end of Pico we picked up of WSW winds, brought the kite back up and we now headed E. As usual, we did some fast repair work on the main sheet traveller while bounceing around in the swell, opened up the starboard cam, shook out all the smashed ball bearings and redistributed the remaining 44 whole ones. Good news is that the toilet is working and the engine pushed us along at over 5 kts. We are all glad to be back out here, even if some of us seem to have momentarly forgotten how to sail. Our course is to continue E for another 100M and then curve NE about 50M before setting our couse ESE for Gibraltar. Got to go mess with the weather predictions xxxx p
