Scally and her crew were at sea for twenty eight days, crossing the Atlantic from Fernando de Noronha islands, off the north east coast of Brazil in the South Atlantic, across the equator into the North Atlantic and arriving safely in the port of Horta on the island of Faial in the Azores in June 1982.
My sabbatical recreation of this trip (not by sea for obvious reasons) visiting all our ports of call, brought me to Horta in 2026. I remembered it clearly, much more clearly than St Helena, Salvador or Fernando de Noronha.
Faial is the most beautiful island, extremely well upkept, clean and tidy, with tiny villages and small colourful houses mostly overlooking the ocean and other islands of the Azores. It’s very green and lush, with many hills and valleys and the bright pink azaleas were in full bloom everywhere. The sun was shining and it was a pleasant twenty degrees with very little wind. The Açoreanos are calm and quiet, quite different to the mainland Portuguese. They are exceptionally friendly and welcoming, like most Portuguese, and open to all my enquiries of what the bay looked like in 1982, what the island was like, how it had changed, and why I was there.
Like St Helena and Fernando de Noronha, the sea is omnipresent, shining and bright, and, calm. The sun was sprinkling its rays on the surface and I needed my hat and sunglasses. I decided on a whim to hire a car and go and find the places we had visited in 1982. Caldeira, the volcano crater; and o Vulcão, the moonscape unlived in area of the island which was created in the fifties out of a volcano eruption. The island is easy to navigate. It’s not very large, and the roads are in extremely good condition, and there are not many cars.
It was a truly beautiful day. I was surrounded by memories of having stood in those places at the age of sixteen, and standing there now. Pure beauty and nature everywhere you look. Whether across the sea to the islands of Pico and São Jorge; or at the stunning rock pools created on the ocean shore at the Vulcão, which a young family was swimming in when I arrived; to the lovely, multi-coloured houses along the way; to the happy waving villagers; to the town of Horta. I very much hope to be back one day.
Dates: March 2026
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