There is a tradition in Horta amongst the sailors that visit that is as old as the port itself. The port area of Horta has large expanses of concrete sidewalks and benches around the area where the boats are tied up. When sailors stop here they always take time to leave a painting of some kind on the concrete indicating they were here. The paintings frequently have some theme to them and nearly always contain the boat name, crew members and the year of the visit. There are literally thousands of these paintings here and cover almost all of the open surfaces. Some of them are on the sidewalks, some on benches, some on top of benches, some on the sides of walls. You will find nearly every open space has at one time or another had a boat painting on it.
Walking around the area of the port is endlessly entertaining due to all of the different paintings. Of course with the passing of time paintings fade and new ones are created to fill the holes. It is fun to look for boats that you may recognize or even more fun to look for paintings you may have completed yourself on other visits.
In 2007 Charlie and I stopped in Horta on our way over to the Med. Of course we took the time to leave our mark in Horta. One of the first places I wanted to walk was to the old painting to see how it survived. Here are a couple of pictures, one from 2007 when we first painted the Meander painting and one from this year, 2011. Our old painting is the white one on the bench seat between us.
We are planning the Koinonia painting now and hope to get started on it soon.
