The Power of Nature

The Azores were formed when massive volcanoes rose up from the abysmal plain and pierced the surface of the ocean. They were born out of fire in the middle of the ocean, but now they are lush and covered with fresh water. 

All the vegetation and animals that were here when the first explorers stepped foot on these rocky cliffs in the ocean had arrived either by air or by sea. Sea birds would stop here to nest as the islands were devoid of predators, and any animals that were present had arrived by raft at some point since the creation of these islands. The vegetation also arrived on these islands by ways of sheer improbability, but yet they were green and lush when the first explorers arrived.

What I find most incredible is the collection of fresh water that is present on these islands. The ocean is a world of salt, and these tiny islands are oasis of fresh water in abundance! These waterfalls flow from never ending lakes and rivers, and just pour their fresh contents right out into the salty sea beyond the beaches. 

Life on this planet is very resilient, and it will find its way to every last point of habitable land possible!  

A Simpler Time, Now

We often feel like the olden days were a simpler time. The world seems more complicated as the features that were supposed to make our lives easier seem to have made our lives a chaotic cacophony! Technology that was supposed to make life flow more seamlessly always needs attention and allows us to pack so much into our day that we can’t seem to spare any time. When these “conveniences” fail us, we then are inundated with stress as we try to sort out the technical issue while still maintaining our insane self-imposed schedule. Why isn’t the simpler time now? 

We don’t have radar, we don’t have electronic autopilots, or watermakers, or bow thrusters, or most any gadget that they try to shove down your throat at a boat show. Instead, we have a simple setup of sails and a hull. We carry a lot of water and collect the rain that falls from the sky. We eat foods that are easy to keep, and we eat them before they go bad. We plan our day based on what feels right and what seems easy enough, instead of following a set schedule that we created long before we knew what we were getting ourselves into. We went back to that simpler time of sailing, and found ourselves in this simpler time of land. 

Here, a farmer sits on a seat as he milks his cow by hand. Behind him is a splendid waterfall and lush foliage over the foreboding cliff. No milking machine, no hormones, no complicated setups. He has a cow, the cow eats the grass in the field, and he milks the cow.  

Life doesn’t have to be complicated, and the simpler time can be now. Uncomplicate your life so that you can begin living it! 

Hiking in Flores

Flores, in the Azores, has gorgeous sceneries and a vast network of trails that you can venture around. The landscape reminds me of a mix between Jurassic Park and Lord of the Rings. Everything is lush and green, but the ferns make it feel a little Cretaceous. The islands range in age from 8,120,000 years old (Santa Maria) to 270,000 years old (Pico) , but the landscape could easily make you feel as if you were 100,000,000 years ago, when flowering plants were really beginning to diversify!

The landscape seems like a goats playground, everything is vertical and rocky with very little mud around, as all the dirt is carefully held in roots, while the red mud-looking surface is actually red volcanic rock! Hiking here is fun for a while, but then you get tired! Up and down, then through a stream and up again! If only there was an easier way to see these natural splendors without all that walking? 

There is! Most of the long trails flank the roads of the island. You can easily drive to the gorgeous landmark, see its beauty and then hike a little on the trail that would have gotten you there. 

Maddie and I did this a lot! Some of the trails are rediculously long and would take up your whole day, just to see one magnificent waterfall. For example, one trail is 7km long, one way! It usually takes people 3.5 hours going (it’s uphill) and 2.5 hours to return (it’s downhill). This means that 6 hours of your day have been consumed to see this one trail which, honestly doesn’t take you to that beautiful of a place! If you had hiked that trail, you would not have had time to see the other waterfalls on the island that day.

If hiking is your thing, you will probably be able to hike all the trails on the island in a week. If hiking is not your thing, or you are not in the greatest of shape, then it will take much longer than a week to hike all of it! This is where driving to the end comes into play, you hop out of the car and hike the last bit to the beautiful waterfall, then off you go to the next spot! This might feel like cheating, but most of the waterfalls are about 500 meters away from the end of the road, so you will still hike about a kilometer for each feature.  

Take your time and explore the Azores at your own pace. If you want to hike, you certainly will find yourself in a playground. If you don’t fancy yourself a hiker, you can still see the wonderful views with the aid of your vehicle (and a little walking). 

The Power of Earth

This massive rock formation shows how two different tectonic plates interacted with each other. 

The vertical striatiions are caused by one plate, while the top portion of rock is caused by a different plate. Looking at these rocks is a great way to see how the earth beneath your feet came to be, and it tells you how they interacted with each other.

Sedimentary rock forms by many layers of deposition occurring over a long period of time. The end result is a rock that will have striations that correspond to the different layers that were laid down over the eons. The thing with sedimentary rock is it is always laid down horizontally. To generate these vertical lines, the entire rock formation had to be turned on its side! 

Rock may seem rather hard and unwieldy, but it is rather flexible, you just have to zoom out quite a bit. Instead of focusing on a single stone, it is best to focus on the entire plate itself. Just how a block of wood is rather hard to bend, if that same type of wood were on a long board, you could cause it to bend! As two tectonic plates are pushed together, the forces on them will cause the edges of the plates to flex in various ways. Either both edges will go up and form mountains, or one edge will go up while the other edge is forced under the top plate. The top plate will then flex upwards, and in extreme circumstances, will flex all the way until the striations in the rock are vertical! 

That explains the bottom portion, but what about the top piece? If the top plate got pushed upwards to create the vertical lines, how did the other rock get ontop of it? 

The Earth’s history is written in the rocks you see right before your eyes like a book; all you need to do is sit down and read it. The vertically striated rock did climb up and over another plate to cause the sedimentary lines to become vertical, but no one said anything about what happened before that time. The other rock on top is telling us that long before the vertical edge turned up, it was previously under another piece of rock. As it rotated and turned upwards, it pushed the rock that was on top of it already upwards and high into the sky, creating this massive mountain structure where you have vertical lines with garbled stone above it. 

Synthetic Rigging After Crossing an Ocean

Synthetic rigging is still something new to the majority of sailors. In most sailors minds, Standing is Steel and Running is Rope. The thought of putting rope where the steel goes baffles them and they instantly revolt in freight at the idea! 

Well, synthetic rigging actually works, and the system I invented, where the standing rigging can be tensioned by using deadeyes on a large yacht has just taken the ultimate test: an ocean crossing! 

In 2014, I wanted to switch to synthetic standing rigging, but I wanted to use deadeyes instead of turnbuckles. At the time, I hadn’t really given rigging much thought and I fell into the “standing is steel” category. I contacted Colligo Marine, because they were the largest fabricator of synthetic standing rigging and I felt that they would be able to do it best, since I was not planning on making my own rigging at the time. I was shocked when Frank told me “it can’t be done with deadeyes, you can’t get enough tension in the stays for a boat larger than 30 feet.” I thought this was preposterous, as tall ships were much larger than 30 feet and used deadeyes.

And so began my studies into rigging. Along the way, I figured out why he felt it couldn’t be done on a modern Bermuda Rigged yacht, and subsequently, I figured out how it could be done.

There were two major holdups for deadeyes, first the challenge of creating a Mobious Brummel Grommet (or rope loop) and the second challenge of how to create enough tension in the stays to support the stresses of a modern rig. 

The Mobious Brummel Grommet took a bit of thought and then the idea came to me one night! Achieving the tension in the stay was a bit more complicated in my mind, until I invented a new knot that would make it all possible: the Shroud Frapping Knot. 

With a new splice and a new knot invented, I was finally able to create a method to setup and tension synthetic standing rigging on a modern yacht! Now it was time to test it out.  Fabrication began in the winter of 2014, and installation of the stays began in the spring of 2015.

The first major test was a month long sail through the Chesapeake Bay and out in the Atlantic off the coast of North Carolina. This test proved to be a success, and we knew that the rigging would work. Not only was it able to be set up, it was also able to hold its tension over a long period of time. This means that once setup and settled in, it would be as reliable as steel rigging.

Sailing the Chesapeake Bay is picturesque, but we wanted to go farther, and test the rigging even further. In 2017, we began cruising full time and putting our synthetic rigging through tests in all sorts of conditions. We cruised coastally down the East Coast of the United States, from Maryland to Florida, and then across the Gulf Stream to the Bahamas.

Once in the Bahamas, we gave the rigging a thorough inspection, only to discover that it is doing fine, three years after it was installed, there were no signs of damage to the stays.

We cruised around the Bahamas for about a month while we waited for a weather window to open for us to cross the Atlantic Ocean and set sail for the Azores! This would be the longest and most punishing test we could do for the rigging. Ocean sailing puts a whole new level of stress on your rigging, as it is under load for weeks on end! There is no safe harbor to wait out foul weather, and there is no rescue that will come to your aide should something break. It is a true acid test, as any weak points in a system will be stressed past the point of failure, and will then reveal themselves.

We were excited to set out and cross the ocean with a rigging system that had never been tested like this before. Every mile we sailed was another mile on these new knots and splices! 

The Atlantic Crossing took 21 days from Florida to Bermuda (due to a lack of wind) and 24 days from Bermuda to the Azores. This test was a true test of the rigging, as sails were flying in all weather conditions. We have an electric motor instead of the diesel, so we relied fully on the rigging to get us there! 

Upon arriving in the Azores, it was time to inspect the rigging once more and see how it faired. The verdict: Just fine! 

All the stays look identical to the way they looked at year 1, with slight fuzz present where the lazy sheet sometimes rubs the shrouds until we can move it away to prevent any further chafe. Where there is no contact with the lazy sheet, the stays are still smooth and perfect. We no longer think about the rigging as we sail, as now it is a rock solid and dependable part of the boat! We focus on the weather, navigation, and setting the sails instead of wondering if the mast is in column (because it always is). 

Our synthetic rigging that is tensioned with deadeyes has been standing and working well since 2015, and has carried us over 6000 miles, including an ocean crossing. If you have any doubts about the strength or reliability of synthetic rigging, look at our path and put your fears to rest.