Visited Pico Wednesday

We (the crews from Saeta, Aphrodite, and Ventura, plus us) took the ferry to Madalena on Pico Island on Wednesday. It took two rental cars to hold all nine of us to tour the island. Although we intended to meet for lunch, the cars failed to connect at the first rendezvous on Pico mountain, so we didn't all gather again until time for the last ferry back to Horta. It was a fun day, and there will be photos. Saeta did a blog entry about the trip, and it includes some photos too. Pico is lovely, but still not as beautiful as Flores.

Yesterday we managed to post another page of photos. It's another one that loads slowly. This time it's of some of the paintings that cruisers have done on the walls around here. There's a link to it on our home page under "Recent Updates." Today we don’t have Internet unless we want to pay for it. All of the free hotspots are having problems.

We had thought that we would be leaving here tomorrow, but the weather looks better for Monday according to David’s (Ventura) weather guy. We plan to sail with the original mini-rally group that was organized in Fort Lauderdale, at least until we turn off for France while they continue on to England.

Also, we're still waiting for our mail, which we had shipped to us immediately when we arrived here on June 30th. It includes the renewal of our boat documentation. The forwarding service screwed up and sent it Priority Mail instead of Express Mail, but Mid Atlantic Yacht Services tells us it takes two or three weeks to receive mail here, even if it’s sent by Express Mail. Had we known, we might have asked tougher questions about their recommendation to use USPS Express Mail instead of Fed Ex or DHL. Nevertheless, the mail forwarding service has screwed up both of the last two shipments, and we're changing services. St. Brendan’s Isle, the service most cruisers seem to use, now offers the same kind of scanning and online viewing of mail that our current service does. Plus they’re sailors, former cruisers, themselves, so the service should be much better.