Boats that once hunted whales off the Portuguese Azores islands have been restored for sail and rowing races. The events are both colorful and lively.
Pico—one of nine Portuguese Azorean islands in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean that is dominated by a cone volcano—is about three times the size of the U.S. island of Nantucket, or 10% larger than the U.K. Isle of Wight.
‘Without these regattas, all these whale boats would be gone. But they are a healthy story of change and adaptation,’ Felipe Fernandes explained. Some eight whale boat regattas now take place annually off the shores of Pico and Faial. These include inter- and intra-island events broken into categories: male rowing, female rowing, mixed sailing and ‘mastery,’ where crews both row and sail—as whaling crews once did. At ‘Whalers Week’ in late August this year on Pico, some 400 persons participated.
Pedro Silva, who promotes sporting events for the local government explained how each boat requires 6,500 copper nails to be placed by hand by a team of two.Looking inside the front of one boat, we saw small images of saints mounted above horizontal tubes that once held harpoons.‘It must have the right diameter, and not taper too quickly,’ Fernandes said as he and his team drove into misty hills northwest of Lajes do Pico one morning.
‘If you want to see tall buildings and high-level construction, go to London. If you want to feel part of a community, come here. This is where we can be with our family. It is so quiet.’‘South of Pico island is a superhighway for cetaceans,’ Fernandes explained. ‘You can see dozens of species, including humpback and sperm whales during summer.’
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