We mentioned in an earlier post that it is a tradition for sailors in Horta to paint your boat name on the pier, to mark your visit to the Azores. It’s not a requirement, but even the chandlery shops will tell you that it’s bad luck not to do a painting – if you don’t paint, you are likely to return to the Azores sooner than you’d like, and under very poor circumstances.
We found a bare spot on the pier right beside where we were tied up, and painted our patch over the last few days of our visit. We were in a hardware store buying paint when another sailor offered us their leftovers instead – white, light blue, and black, so all we needed was a little bit of red. Perfect! Mike scrubbed the concrete clean, and then we put down a coat of grey bilge paint to give us a solid base (bilge paint is very hard-wearing, and is resistant to salt water, oils, and fuel). Two layers of white later, and we were ready to go.
In the end we decided to buy a darker blue paint, and then darkened it further by adding a little black – funny how ‘Innisfree Blue’ isn’t a recognized colour in the paint world! We had lots of leftover paint, and happily passed in on to a neighbouring boat. They said that they were going to get some green paint to go with it – and so we continue the never-ending, always changing, hand-me-down paint collection. I wonder if you could successfully keep it going through a whole season of sailors?!
