Its been a tradition for many decades for yachts arriving in Horta to paint their boas’ names on the sea wall.   That tradition has expanded to beyond the original wall, now there are thousands of names painted along the old wall, newer walls, walkways along the marina, on benches, around corners, everywhere! It’s the biggest mass of folk art I’ve ever heard of! Comparable to the Berlin Wall in size, but in much more positive spirit! These paintings are about celebration of arrival! Some are painted quite well, some not, some are big, some tiny. some highly elaborate, some very simple. Most from Europe, but many from the US, Canada, South America, South Africa, Asia, everywhere!!

I added our boat’s name on our first day here. We staked out a good spot and cleaned scraped, primed and painted.  It’s 4 ft high, 3 ft wide, and it’s a rendering of our boat sailing,  with horizon line one third down from the top. In the bottom 2 thirds, I letter “Tenacity” in gold leaf, with a black outline and dark blue shadow. It is good. I received at least 50 requests to have my picture taken, 30 or more thumbs up, the word “Beautiful” in more languages than I can identify, one guy said  “if there were a competition, you’d win”, dozens of other sailors dropped by to tell their sea stories, and one family from South Africa hung around long enough for the daughter Mari to become my biggest fan, (when she sees me she runs up and hugs me) and her mom Hendi is my new running partner.

It was a god day.

But on a sad note, our Most Wonderful Crew Member John had to leave yesterday to return to real life, family and work. We will miss him a lot. He was truly a blessing to have on this trip.  Such a good spirit, always a good attitude, an excellent partner to Robert in problem solving, a great story teller, weather predictor, star identifier and all around great guy. We were lucky that he could take so much time away from his life to join us. I hope our adventure was as much fun for him as it was for us.

SO now it’s just Robert and I. We have some potential crew in the works, but we want to hang for a bit to enjoy the Azores. We heard a local say “Europe doesn’t get any better than right here!”  So while we are soaking in the European flavor, enjoying local wines for a buck a bottle (yes that’s right!) and trying to learn Portuguese, we will also try to learn how to add photos to this blog. I tried earlier today and lost the whole entry. Have no idea what happened, just “poof” gone.  I wonder if they have computer geeks here!