Ponta Delgada and Three More Sea Days…
Zuiderdam ran quickly East South East the 100 or so sea miles from Horta to Ponta Delgada arriving off the harbor around sunset. The wind was approaching 60 knots as we entered the harbor, a fairly narrow entry with a strong sea wall to keep out the raging Atlantic.
Thus began the delicate dance of trying to get Zuiderdam to her berth, starting with turning her around to back into our assigned dock. This started about the time we sat down to watch our evening entertainment in the Vista Theater at 8pm. We could feel and hear our bow thrusters working hard throughout the 45 minute show. We were still about 50 yards off the dock with two tugs pushing hard against our starboard side when we reached topside after the show ended. We watched for the next 15 or 20 minutes as we inched our way closer to the dock on our port side, finally getting close enough for lines to be sent to the dock and pull her in the last few feet. Our Captain, Pilot, and Tug boat crew really earned their money in our Ponta Delgada docking!
First impressions of Ponta Delgada at dark were mixed - seemed a lot less “quaint” than Horta. Another cruise ship, Aida (a German cruise company) was docked and a small “expedition” class cruise ship “Serenissima” was next to us on the same pier. Waking up the next morning and being able to see Ponta Delgada was a pleasant surprise - period white and black architecture, at least 6 churches in sight, and a fort 1/2 mile away to our left down the seaside walkway. Green hillsides were in evidence behind the downtown area and on the plateau above the fort, we could see the end of the island’s runway. One of lasting impressions of the Azores in April will be beautiful green hillsides, reminiscent of similar scenes in the Emerald Island.
We got off the ship about 9:30 or so, short easy walk off the ship to leave the port area, setting out to do some sightseeing. Turns out, most stores don’t open until 10am so we walked around for a bit to kill some time and found out an important lesson. In the Azores - or more accurately, Ponta Delgada, the drivers are so polite that as soon as you look like you are going to cross in a crosswalk, they stop immediately. This is not Naples, Italy to be sure — we love Napoli and having lived there, know how you have to cross the street because Napolitani drivers will never stop for pedestrians, they just drive around you as you fearlessly proceed without stopping across the street.
Over the next hour, we walked along graffiti free, scrupulously clean cobblestone streets, a very nice morning stroll, finding in turn a pharmacy for some cough remedies, and later on, a super market for soft tissue. Prices in both were reasonable and folks in both stores understood our questions and helped us get what we needed. We checked out a Mexican restaurant - ouch, prices were expensive - essentially 12.90 Euros - $14 for a burrito; $25 for Fajitas. We walked far enough along to reach the fort which is a pretty typical fortification - 3 Euro entrance fee to enter the military maritime museum, but across from a beautiful, tree-lined plaza centered on a bandstand that appears to be a civic center kind of area. Having walked around for about 90 minutes, happily impressed with our first impression of Ponta Delgada, we headed back to Zuiderdam to take Aunt Sarah to lunch.
After lunch, we took Aunt Sarah ashore to give her a chance to see some of what we’d seen earlier. This time though, we set course to the city market (Mercado) to see what we might see. The Mercado was a little bit up the hill from our dock, but a very gentle and unchallenging grade. We asked directions once since the tourist map we had didn’t do a very good job with street names. After getting properly on course, we didn’t know we’d reached the Mercado until a delicious cheese smell wafted out of a nondescript white door. Was so focused on walking forward, I wasn’t paying attention to the store’s entrance, fortunately, my nose grabbed my attention. Walking inside, we could see three walls of local wine and a long cooler counter of delicious looking cheese wheels. Have to love a market you enter through a cheese and wine store… Once into the market proper, we could see fresh fruit and produce in the covered, 50 yard by 50 yard market area - since it was now about 1pm or so, many of the vendors were starting to pack things up. One price that stands out was 2 euros for a 10 kilogram sack of potatoes - so prices seemed pretty reasonable all told. Another thing that stood out was that locally grown items were designated as “regional” produce - and looking at the variety of what’s available, the green fields of the Azores are clearly productive. The fish market was already closed but the meat market was still open — fresh meat and sausage looked great. Once again, regionally grown meat was advertised for sale in the market so it seems the Azorians can avail themselves of local produce from farm and field. I didn’t do a comparison between products notated as “regional” and similar products without the regional designation so can’t say if there is a substantial price differential one way or the other.
After another hour or so ashore, Aunt Sarah and I dodged a few rain showers to re-board Zuiderdam. Once back in our room, Valerie and I saw a phenomena which we will always remember in context of Ponta Delgada — the afternoon swim. First a bit of additional context…
The outdoor temperature was high 50’s - scattered clouds, winds in the harbor at 20+ knots, and two - three foot waves inside the seawall. I can’t imagine what the water temperature in the harbor was but doubt it touched 60 degrees. First, a guy in a wetsuit jumped into the water and swam about 400 yards before pulling himself out on the steps of a sea water filled swimming pool with water sloshing back and forth into the pool from the harbor. Geez - that doesn’t look fun - but at least he had a wetsuit on. For the next three hours, we watched men and women from 30’s to their 70’s walk down to a small harbor side building, doff their clothes, get into bathing suits and walk directly into the harbor water for brief swims. We froze our little tushies off just watching them - in some cases, folks spent more time getting undressed and redressed than they actually spent in the water - must be some kind of daily check off - 3 or 4 pm, head to harbor and take my daily polar bear plunge, carry on with remainder of my daily schedule.
Three earth shaking blasts of the ship’s whistle and we were away from the Ponta Delgado dock. It was way easier leaving the dock than getting there about 24 hours earlier mostly due to the fact we were just sailing directly away from the dock and out the harbor entrance. The Captain noted on our departure that the low pressure weather center was stronger to the east south east of Ponta Delgado so rather than taking the shorter direction, we were going to sail west around the island and from there head north. The seas were still pretty good sized but apparently not quite as bad so off we went to our next stop, Cherbourg, France.
On the way to Cherbourg, and in celebration of King’s Day (Birthday of the Dutch King) we wandered up to the Crows Nest Bar on deck 10, port side (left) forward for a great view of Zuiderdam rising and falling on the 20+ foot swells which were heading directly into. Fast forward two days… Heading directly into the waves is a way smoother ride (in most of the ship except the lower areas forward) than having them directly aft (behind you). Considering that the stabilizers keeping our ride smoothed out are like “wings” riding below the water, like wings in the air, the faster you move through the medium, the better the wings work. When the waves are coming from behind, they make your speed through the water, relative to the wing, less effective. Anyway, seeing those big waves coming at us was a cool view. Cooler still was seeing all the people pour into the Crows Nest to celebrate Kings Day — announce there are free drinks and everyone decided they aren’t going to bed at 9pm tonight…
Just so you don’t think Valerie and I were up there for the free drinks, we were drinking our new substitute for “Fireball” which isn’t available on Zuiderdam - “Damn”… Not even Jack Daniels “Fire” is available - so no cinnamon fix for us — we had to be satisfied (and we mostly were) with Jack Daniels “Honey”. A very nice drink to share and watch the people roll in like the tide. The soft pitch and roll that night rocked us softly to sleep and the beginning of our three day sea journey to Cherbourg.
Weather on all three sea days was gently deteriorating as our latitude went from the high 30’s (38) to the high 40’s (48.20N) — basically off the French coast at Brest — with the temperature dropping from the mid-60’s to the mid or low 50s with gray skies and intermittent rain. The other thing that has changed this afternoon (Sunday) is that we are now essentially in the southern end of the English Channel and there are ships ahead, abreast, and behind as this is one of the busiest shipping channels in the world. Directly out my window, I can see a tanker and a break bulk cargo ship (when I looked closer, I could see a third a few miles farther away) going south within a mile of our port side. The other weather observation this afternoon is the big ocean swells that have been pushing us along, are still there but the wind (from an Irish low to our Northwest) is now coming at us on the port side so there is a lot of confusion out there. The swells are behind us, the whitecaps are coming at our cabin with the net effect looking like the agitation cycle in your washing machine.
Predicted weather for our Cherbourg port call isn’t good - gale force winds and rain - hmmm, didn’t the Allied invasion get moved around for funky weather about 74 years ago? I guess we’re going to have a proper tour of Normandy tomorrow.
