38°21.7’N 29°38.8’W
SOG (Speed over Ground): 6.8 knots (motoring)
Heading: 077
Distance to Horta: 49.2nm
Distance from Bermuda: 1,745nm
ETA (Horta): 6pm Saturday May 31
My 10pm shift was fairly uneventful. I spotted two other vessels on the radar, one barely moving relative to ourselves all through my shift. In fact I noticed it first as a light in the corner of my eye. It was very hard to see if I looked straight at it but it could be easily seen in periphery vision. At 7nm showed only occasionally on the radar.
At the start of my 6am shift the sun had not yet risen. The sky was overcast yet there was a narrow band of orange red sky right on the horizon. Right where it should be, there was the top of Pico poking over the horizon 80nm away. ìLand Ho.î As I watched over the next few minutes the top of Pico merged with the clouds. Half an hour later the sun appeared in that narrow gap. The gap was so narrow that only about a third of the sun could be seen between the horizon and cloud cover. Soon it was gone.
The boat we had been paralleling was now a mere 1nm away. We chatted on the radio and discovered they were also going from Bermuda to Horta and had left a day before us.
At time of writing Pico has disappeared completely into the haze and cloud. A new land sighting should be expected later today when hopefully we’ll also see Faial, the island on which the port of Horta resides. For now it’s time to rest up, catch up on some sleep in preparation of liberation and libation this evening.
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