When we reached Horta on the second leg of our electric sailboat circumnavigation, my partner James stayed on Cetacea and I rowed in alone. As the gap widened between me and the 1984 Baba 30 that we’d just spent 29 days sailing from Bermuda to the Azores, I knew we’d made the right decision converting to an electric motor. We’d pulled into Horta with 31% of our propulsion battery power remaining (71 generous amp-hours) after using the electric motor without compunction and to good effect, keeping our tacks to a minimum and our angle tight to our destination.
After clearing in and enjoying a fortnight on Faial, we finally sailed to the place we’d hoped to reach for well over two decades: Velas on São Jorge in the Azores. My maternal great-grandparents, Rosa and Antonio Azevedo, were from São Jorge. My grandpa was born in New York and nicknamed Spud when his three-year-old hands were put to work peeling potatoes so the family could get ahead. The US became home for the Azevedo family, but I felt drawn to cross
