cornflower blue

By Pam & Gary Baker

In the vibrant Marina da Horta on Portugal’s island of Faial you will find the largest maritime painting collection in the world. The walls around the marina display a rainbow of brightly colored paintings from nearly every ship that’s visited there over the last half a century. Cornflower Blue, the predominant color in many of the paintings, seems to marry the color of the sky and the sea into one.

This collection, inspired by a legend, is well known among sailors and visitors to the welldecorated marina. According to the Marina’s legend, sailors whose ships dock at Horta must leave a painting of their boat on the breakwater so their ship can arrive safely at its next destination. However, some ships who failed to leave one have fallen victim to the curse, suffering shipwrecks and other nautical disasters.

The main harbor of the Azores, Horta’s colorful marina is the fourth most visited marina in the world and the place where most yachts stop when crossing the North Atlantic. Since the early 18th century, the town’s harbor has served as an anchorage for whaling ships, clippers, and yachts. Now nearly 1,500 boats visit each year.

No one knows when or how the tradition of leaving behind colorful calling cards on Horta’s harbor piers and walls started. But the paintings can be traced back at least fifty years.

New paintings are painted over old paintings. The images depict mermaids, whales, puffins, yacht names, and captions. Like colorful pictures in children’s story books, the paintings number in the hundreds. Each, however, serves to ward off potential shipwrecks and assure safe passage to a ship’s next destination.

Photos (Top-bottom): Paganini II; Old and new paintings; Paintings faded and chipped from weather; Faded paintings; Rapa visited Faial five times; Painting of clowns from 1997; Young girl prepares to paint her family's log