Week 10 - Flores Island, Azores
🌎 Round the World Week 10
👋🏼 We left New York last week, and are now heading across the Atlantic Ocean towards Spain 🇪🇸(as voted for by you guys)! We boated from the Easternmost point of Long Island, at the Montauk Lighthouse Museum. The lighthouse was built in 1796, construction having been authorised by the President, George Washington 4 years earlier. It was occupied during WWII by the US Army as part of the Eastern Coastal Defence Shield. Automated in 1987, the lighthouse is still used as a navigation aid today.
🌊 It’s 5700km from New York to Spain across the Ocean, and we’d probably be going faster than our average speed here, as the prevailing summer wind will be giving us a nice tailwind 💨, blowing from the South West. Our distance this week takes to a small Portuguese Island a couple of thousand kilometres off the coast of Portugal 🇵🇹. Flores Island is part of the ‘Azores,’ an archipelago (group or chain of Islands) of nine volcanic islands in the Macronesia region of the North Atlantic Ocean. The nine islands have a population of about 250,000, with farming and fishing being the main industries 🚜 🎣.
💣 In recent history, the Azores came to international attention in 2003 (I think you were all born then!) as Tony Blair met the US, Spanish and Portuguese heads of state at a summit just a few days before the start of the war in Iraq.
👨👩👦 On Flores Island, there are only 4000 people. They’re most likely to live in Santa Cruz das Flores, at the north of the island. Translated literally as Holy Cross of the Flowers, the village was first noted in history as a settlement in 1548. Influence from the Gulf Stream means the climate is very mild all year round with lows never dropping below freezing (no frost!) and never higher than 31 degrees celcius.
🌧 It does rain there on average 239 days of the year, when compared to Reading where it apparently rains on 164 days of each year, although I’m sure it has already rained on that many days here this year…
📷 Nice pano here: https://goo.gl/maps/z6BYDEqxTCe2yude8
It’s 24km around Flores, and would take about 5 hours to walk it’s circumference. If you wanted to fly there from Heathrow, it’ll cost you just over £400. As most things are imported by air, it’s not only expensive to visit, but expensive to stay and live as well.
🐋 Whaling was an important means of supporting the economy on the Azores. Now banned, the whaling factory is now a museum, with a slightly worrying model of a Sperm whale chopped in half outside…
Well done for training for so long at home! It’s 70 days since we started our round the world tour, and it’s drawing to a close. Next week will be a bumper European update of some of RUBC’s favourite rowing destinations!
Graphics courtesy of Jess Lewis : madebyjess.co.uk
We’re keeping track of every mile and every heartbeat on Strava, and the team participate in frequent group calls to keep communicating and laughing.
Keep up to date with our social media accounts to keep track of our journey.
