Visiting New York

One of the benefits of cruising is that you can afford to travel. Wisdom is currently in the Azores, and to not overstay our visas, we had to return to the United States by plane while she is being repainted. While back in the States, we took advantage of our proximity to New York City for a little city exploration.

Maddie’s brother lives in New York, so we also got to visit with him! Having a local show you around is always better than wandering around aimlessly. He took us through cool murals and interesting parks as we visited the key sights and experiences that make a trip to New York complete.

It sure is a different world than the one Maddie and I are used to. Instead of clouds obscuring the sun, it’s the tall peaks of buildings that reach up into the sky. Small streets in tiny ports that we anchor near are a far cry from the busy streets of this city.

All the hustle and bustle is fun for us to visit, but we do enjoy the peace and tranquility that we get when we are at the boat. Being in a busy city sure does make you appreciate the solitude of the open ocean even more.

Thomas, the Tomato Plant

Ocean passage making is hard on land based plants, but this hardy tomato plant seems to have made the journey!

Thomas, our tomato plant, was first sprouted in Florida, and has since made the long journey across the Atlantic and over to the Azores.

He started off life with lush green leaves that begged for sun, but with sun exposure also came salt spray. As Thomas grew, so did the concentration of salt crystals in his dirt, until the level in his pot became too harsh for him to thrive.

Leaves started turning brown and his branches became blunted, but Thomas kept trying to fruit. Eventually, little flowers formed and it seems that all his energy went into sustaining them. The remaining leaves withered away as the green tomatoes began to turn red.

Thomas is currently a dried up stick which produced a handful of tomatoes in his lifetime. We plan to make some changes for Thomas II, such as a blocked out container, and to get the plant thriving before we head out to sea.

Steel Squarerigger

While visiting New York City, we stumbled upon this old square rigger. Unlike the wooden tall ships that we have encountered over the years, this one was built out of steel!

Steel boats hare their distinct advantages, being a very strong but also thin material to build the hull. You can see that over the years though, corrosion has played a role in the stem and cutwater of this ship. The pitted appearance of the old steel tells of its age like the patina that forms on a bronze port light. It’s not shiny, but its age displays its beauty.

At first glance, I didn’t really notice the pitted nature of the steel plates, but then when compared to the new smooth steel plates that have mended the hull, the story of time becomes evident and powerful.

Cut-in Waterline

Cut-in waterlines are a truly useful tool. Their primary purpose is to permanently scribe the waterline of a yacht into the topsides, that way it can not be erased or lost. Aside from this purpose, it also serves a few other wonderful services as well.

The most famous is the ability it affords you to paint your bottom without masking off the top. The bristles will simply fall into the groove and stop there. This allows you to simply paint up to the cut in waterline with ease and care without accidentally getting bottom paint on your topsides.

Taping off your waterline might not sound like a big ordeal, but when you are painting in a tidal grid, time is a very important item and one that is very limited.

As the tide is going out, you will begin scrubbing and scraping, then you have to chip off any loose paint, followed by fairing in any rough edges. This is a lot of work and adding one more step of taping off the waterline is not usually appreciated.

Having a cut in waterline allows you to simply start painting after the bottom is clean. The edge is there and unmistakable.

The second advantage of a cut in waterline is it makes it easy to see where your waterline is supposed to be, even if you raised the bottom paint as your cruising home becomes overweight. The cut in line will never move, and you can gauge how over loaded you are by how far under the water the line is.

The last and probably least thought of advantage of this scribed line on your hull is the ability to record and protect your waterline information, no matter what your yacht goes through.

We are repainting our topsides, and the bottom edge of the topside paint will go all the way down into the bottom paint area. The worker wanted to know how far into the bottom paint to sand, and the answer was easy to give and hard to forget: “Down to the cut in waterline”.

Now I could leave the country while the boat was sanded without worrying about where the worker was sanding. Best of all, when we repaint the bottom, I know how far above the cut in waterline to raise the boot stripe.

Having a cut in waterline boasts many advantages, ones that are typically only thought of as the moment they are needed arises. If you have one, enjoy it, and if you don’t have one but do have spare time to kill, consider adding it to your cruising yacht.

Taping Off for Spraying

With the topsides sanded away, it is time to mask off the areas that are not going to be sprayed. In the United States, this would typically occur inside a tent, where everything is covered in plastic.

In the Azores, regulations are severely more relaxed.

Newspaper taped to the waterline seems to be sufficient for the local workers, and no tent required, even when painting next to a dark blue yacht.

Yes, with some pages of the local newspaper, we are ready to be sprayed with primer. When I asked about the boat next to us, his reply was simple yet honest: “We wait for a day with no wind".

It is refreshing to step outside of the United States where people are so hung up on every little detail that they forget about reality and practicality. The cost to have work done in the Azores is approximately 1/10th of what the cost is in the United States. This may be because of the lower cost of doing business thanks to the relaxed restrictions. They don’t need tents, tarps, or collectors, they simply wait for the weather to cooperate and take it from there.

The painter doesn’t want to get paint on the next yacht, so he is extra careful to make sure that his over spray doesn’t travel in that direction. Believing in a workers skill allows them to work without all this red tape that we have in the states.