After being at sea for nearly a month, you make landfall on the tiny island of Faial, in the 4th busiest marina in the world: Horta.
you have grown accustomed to the fact that day in and day out, you will be alone. Now you are surrounded by people and boats who have all also made this journey across the seas.
Space is a premium in this tiny marina, so the marina staff has come up with a great solution to the limited docking space and limitless boat traffic: stacking.
We arrived at the end of the season, so the Marina was “empty” according to the staff. The boats were only stacked two deep. During the early summer when everyone is crossing, they stack boats up to four deep and along every surface that a boat can be tied up along. Our world changed from solitude to society, and we were suddenly surrounded by sailors who share a similar passion, a passion for adventure!
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We have been living here since August, but that whole time we were preoccupied with the Refit projects on our boat. We never stopped to look at where we were. We never appreciated living “here”.
Now that the projects are almost finished, we raised our heads from the bilge and looked at where we are. We sat on the top of a mountain and watched the sunset over the town. We relaxed. This is a hydrofoil but it looks like a space ship! The black oval is actually just black paint. The bottom part of the bow is actually a glass bottom which is raised out of the water when moving fast enough. This giant fluffy ball of softness lives in our friends house. He is a cat. He is a big cat. He is a very soft cat. One must wonder what such s creature thinks about. Does he know how soft he is? Is he comfortable sitting there like that simply because he carries around a padded cushion on his body? Does he know he is a cat?
On our long list of stuff we need to take care of before we get splashed is to repaint our deck. Maddie spent two full days sanding the deck and grinding away at any little cracks. I followed behind her filling the imperfections with filler putty. Then we would sand again and fill again, then sand again and again and again.
It felt like it would never end!
And then it finished! We got the deck fixed enough that we were happy with it. Yes, there are still a few spots that aren’t perfect, and we could fix them with about two more weeks of work. The truth is, we want to get back to the adventures and “good enough” is good enough. We painted primer over the whole deck with the thought that we would fix the spots that still look bad and stood out.
Primer is less of a “final step” and more of a “final check”. Sure, you can spot the areas that had work done when you highlight them with a rainbow of filler colors! But can you still see any imperfections when it is all the same color? Grey primer gives a great opportunity to check your work. If you see a problem in grey, it will still be there in the final color. This is a great time to fix any remaining issues before progressing to the paint.
If it looks good, the next step is the topside paint in the color of your choice! After that is done, you can resume your life at sea l, living out all the adventures on boats that you have been dreaming of. Next time the minor details of a boat project get you down, take a step back and re-evaluate the situation. If perfecting the surface that will be covered with non-skid is your goal in life, then enjoy your life’s dream! Of cruising is your goal, then slap some non-skid over that surface and get out there! Adventures await! I would never dream of referring to myself as a carpenter. To me, a carpenter is an artist that creates beauty out of wood. A few strokes with their magical saw (wand) and POOF: Gorgeous furniture.
No, I am not a carpenter, but merely the lowly undeserving level of woodworker. I can work in wood and create things. That is about it. I find wood to be easier to gravel with than fiberglass. You start with a product before you that brings its own strengths and properties. Fiberglass seems like black magic where you throw a soft cloth and a wet goop together to create a solid structure! I prefer wood. Mechanical fasteners present the results faster than waiting for resins to cure, and the structure comes to life before your eyes. Best of all, and my favorite part, is when you oil the wood to bring out the grain. The hidden patterns in the blonde wood, where winter and summer rings all blend together in the blah ness of the woods face spring to life! The light and dark rings are accentuated and run among the surface of the board with fanciful patterns. Once the oil has been soaked in and the wood seems happy, the ast step is to apply spar varnish. Real varnish. The kind that is made out of tree resins that are dissolved in oils. The kind of stuff that is made from trees for the specific purpose of being put back into trees once they have been processed into furniture. The kind that belongs in wood. I know the head will never see the light of day, its only access to the outside will be through a tiny hatch in the cabintop which lets air into this small room in the boat. While it will never be outside in this beautiful world we are traveling, it will get to travel this beautiful world. Every time I need to use the head, I will get to look at the structure that we made from trees grown in the Azores, and built in Terceira, our home for a year. |
AuthorI am not really a writer just a guy who is having an adventure on a boat. Archives
March 2020
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Adventures on Boats |