Watching Paint Dry

It’s an instant of clarity when I happen to experience the core of a metaphor, the sinews of a simile—when a figure of speech animates itself and dances on the stage. I find it happens more frequently in my sailing life than in my other life. This week, as Hazel’s spa time continues, I had dinner with my marine surveyor Theo and, amongst other things, we were talking about the pros and cons of installing a swivel between a yacht’s anchor and anchor chain. On one hand, reducing twist in a chain is helpful. On the other, the swivel and associated shackles and pins are just more complexity and more things to go wrong and—as we all know—the strength of any system is defined by “its weakest link.”

In regular life, when speaking of something boring, we say “it’s like watching paint dry” and that’s sort of our situation on Hazel James at the moment. In last Saturday’s post when I talked about life in the shipyard and on the hard, I thought we’d be ready to launch this week but that’s not the case. Yesterday, as my hands worked on Hazel and my mind wandered to the topics of this post, the first title that came to mind was “I’ve Been Hard for Three Weeks.” However, I went with “Watching Paint Dry” as I had a hunch that maybe…just maybe…it could be misconstrued by a very small minority of blog readers (I’m sure that’s other people and not you though).

On Thursday of this week, the yard workers finished most of Hazel’s bottom paint redo. An arduous task of a complete sanding of the hull below the waterline, applying two coats of reinforcing epoxy, one coat of primer, and finally two coats of antifouling paint. In addition, in a properly done bottom-paint job timing is critical. Each successive coat needs to be applied when the previous coat is “tacky” (i.e., set but not fully cured). This allows a strong chemical bond between the layers.

The only problem now is that on the hard Hazel’s hull is supported by eight blocks that look like angled sawhorses. The areas of the hull beneath the blocks are inaccessible so to complete the bottom painting the blocks need to be moved. But, before this can happen, the new antifouling needs to sit for a few days to fully harden so that the blocks when moved do not mar the paint. In short, this weekend we’re waiting for paint to dry and on Monday, the blocks will be moved and the process repeated for the stripes that are currently under the blocks and we should be ready to launch this coming Wednesday.

While the “like waiting for paint to dry” simile is somewhat apt, life aboard Hazel is anything but boring. At times, as I’m working away on preparing her for our upcoming transatlantic crossing, I wonder how in the world I would have gotten all of this work done without the three weeks we’ve been given in the yard on the hard. I’m sure we would have gotten by, but we wouldn’t be nearly as prepared.

Also, prior to this whole experience bottom paint was a bit of a mystery to me. Now I know more about it than I ever thought I would.

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Sometimes I’ll refer to our Mediterranean travels as an odyssey and compare ourselves to Homer’s Odysseus. And yes, some of the challenges that Odysseus faced—like the dangers of Scilla and Charybdis in the Strait of Messina—are modern-day challenges for us too. However, while Hazel and I haven’t had to deal with alluring Sirens or giant one-eyed Cyclops or bags of contrary winds, Odysseus never sailed outside the Mediterranean and thus never had to deal with orca encounters.

Whenever we make landfall (approach land) after a long offshore passage, as my phone picks up a cellular signal, messages start pouring in and I’m ambivalent (part happy and part sad) that the solitude is over. In July 2022 as Hazel and I approached mainland Portugal near the conclusion of our west-to-east Atlantic voyage, one of the messages that downloaded was from our dear friends Donna and Steve. Rather than a congratulatory message thought, it was a warning about orca “attacks” in the area in which I was sailing. My first reaction was, “Lord, these people way too much time on social media.” I surmised that they picked up on one highly exaggerated encounter that had gone viral. Then, a couple days later as I was walking around the Lisbon marina, I noticed posters describing the orcas recent and peculiar interest sailboat rudders. It included details of where to report encounters. At that point I suspected that I had surmised wrong.

Even if Odysseus had sailed outside the Mediterranean he might not have had these problems since its recent phenomenon. I believe 2022 was the first year it was noticed, and since then encounters have gotten more frequent around the Strait of Gibraltar and up the Portuguese and Spanish Atlantic-coasts.

I’ve got to tell you that it’s one thing when you read about these encounters de-personalized and from a distance, and it’s another when, over a tapas dinner, my yacht surveyor Theo mentions—somewhat offhandedly—that he had a three hour, middle of the night, “encounter” with a pod of four to six orcas while sailing Periwinkle, his Hazel-sized sailing boat. Prior to this discussion, I had always thought that the word-choice of “attack” versus “encounter” was somewhat academic. However, Theo was quick to point out that it was an “encounter” because, “If they had wanted to attack and sink my boat, they could have done so in five minutes.” Theo considers himself fortunate that he only lost part of his rudder.

Long story short, like commercial shipping traffic, cruise ships, and stray fishing nets, the orcas are something that Hazel and I need to concern ourselves with that had never crossed Odysseus’ mind. (I’m sure though that if Homer knew of orcas, he could have woven and excellent yarn about them.) Therefore, both Rhett and I have joined the orcas.pt website and Telegram group to understand where the roguish pods are hanging out and the best routing to minimize risk.

I chuckled when first perusing the orcas.pt site because when I worked as a consultant, about the only thing I needed to scrape by was a “heat map,” any kind of graphical view of good vs. bad or probability. Just show a heat map, talk confidently and wave your arms around, and people tend to think you know what your doing. I should have seen it coming that Rui who runs orcas.pt would have a heat map and that dead-red would lie directly in my ideal path from the Strait of Gibraltar to the Madeira Islands.

So, in a week or so when you see me sailing out of the Mediterranean on our satellite tracker you’ll likely see me hugging the Spanish coast until around the town of Cadiz, then sailing due west for 20-30 miles before arcing south and toward the Madeira Islands. It’s probably a couple more days of sailing but prudent given the conditions. It’s well known that orcas don’t like shallow water so I’ll doing my best to stick to the 20 meter depth contour (about 60 feet) when in the highest risk areas.

Leaving no stone unturned, I’ve burned all of my Shamu and Sea World tee shirts and Rhett is express mailing me Free Willy replacements.

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Meanwhile the town, people and professionals of Almerimar continue to be wonderful hosts to Hazel and me. I’ve got my favorite tapas restaurant and I’ve learned what “real” tapas is. In the US, it’s just small plates. In Spain, you order a drink (alcoholic or nonalcoholic) and you get a tapas included in the price of the drink. Order another drink, and you get another tapas. Sure, if you want to make a meal of it you can order additional tapas but the classic paring is with a drink.

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Stay tuned. As I said we’re hoping to launch on Wednesday and then will be looking for a good east wind to blow us the 130 or so miles to Gibraltar. We’ll probably call on the town of La Línea de la Conceptión, Spain (sister city to Gibraltar) and look for more east wind that coincides with a favorable tide to take us out of the Mediterranean and into the Atlantic. From there it’s a sharp right turn to skirt “orca alley” before pointing the bow towards Madeira.

While the prevailing wind here is from the west, we do get some east wind so I hope we’re not waiting too long before we can sail. I will alert everyone with a regular post (like this one) when we start sailing and will do daily micro-posts while underway that, as always, will be shown with our location on Hazel’s home page.

Fair winds and following seas.