Sailing Faith: The Long Way Home

The Dangling Goober

After floundering around in the Caribbean for a couple months, and continuing south to St. Vincent, Bequia, Tobago Cays, and Union Island, it’s time to move.

We’re finally free of Caribbean tourism.  We think about breaking up the passage to Panama with a stop, but the honeymoon memories Lorrie and I have of Aruba, nineteen years ago, don’t offer compelling reasons.  I recall the green space on Aruba being in low-lying areas, especially the drainage ditches along the roads where Heineken bottles proliferate.

There’s no warning until we’re downwind of Aruba enough to not turn back.   Then the wind starts blowing.  A lot of life comes without warning and that’s a good thing.  Too much warning might mean not moving at all.  Maybe that’s why some boats never leave the dock.

As the sun sets, the wind builds to forty knots and holds all night and through the day.
The seas are big.  I have no way of telling how big a wave is, with the exception that my eyes, when I stand in the cockpit, are eight feet above the water line.  If a wave goes above the horizon, I know it’s over eight feet.  On this passage, I can only guess we’re in waves around thirty feet.  They are over eight feet.

I can’t shake the word knockdown from my head.  From the little knowledge I have, a knockdown can occur when a boat is parallel to the waves.  Faith isn’t.  The breeze and the seas are following.  It doesn’t help that this weather develops as dusk deepens.  Sleep blankets those who are able to with security; my own sleep, when I’m able, is like that of a nervous cat.

Before dawn on the second morning, the wind tapers to ten knots, eliminating the pressure against our sails that held us in balance.  Now the high seas are tossing us like a cork.  Faith’s radar displays an echo in the distance.  Later, the ship is in a different position.  I finally make a visual sighting on the ship in yet another position in the colorless light before the sun rises.  I go to the mast to fiddle with the sails and when I return to the cockpit, Lorrie tells me that a ship is hailing us.  I contact the calm voice of someone who hasn’t been thrown around like we have for thirty-six hours.  “This is the aircraft carrier USS Enterprise, and we cannot determine your intentions.  We changed our course three times, and request that you now change yours to maintain a five-mile separation.”

He’s right; we are sailing all over the place.  I agree to maintain our separation as best I can.  I think it’s pretty cool, though, that our little boat can make an aircraft carrier work around us as much as it did.  (It would be fun to see that in the movies sometime.)

Following six days at sea, we arrive in the north facing bay of Puerto Obaldia, Panama, and anchor in four foot swells.  While preparing to go to Customs, six men pointing to official patches on their shoulders paddle a canoe out to us.  They board Faith to look around.  We use few words of each other’s language, but determine four things: 1) the transom will be fumigated for something, 2) the police will board us soon, 3) after the police visit, we are to go to immigration, and 4) after that, we must go to another office.
We use papers and pencils and pictures and gestures to communicate.

The police, thirteen men and one dog, board Faith.  Their covered launch scratches through Faith’s finish while they board us, and Duke scratches through the varnish on Emily’s floor while he sniffs it.  Both Customs and the police are interested in where we came from.  They ask several times, “Did you go to Columbia?” whose border is less than a mile away.

We say, “No,” every time.

The scratches aside, they’re all friendly in a professional way and appreciate the chance in this sleepy village to conduct official business.  We enjoy the experience too.

We take two trips in the dinghy to get to shore in the rough water, with Emily and Amanda greeted by a man wearing a machine gun on our first trip.  When I return with Lorrie and Greggii, one Customs officer escorts us past other soldiers in the streets to the police station where a young woman completes some paperwork.  While we sit in silence, she occasionally aims her eyes at us without moving her head in a blank look that betrays nothing.  After a five-minute hour, she hands us a piece of paper.  We’re then escorted to the immigration office.

Lorrie, Emily, Amanda, and Greggii abandon me to walk to a lonely playground.

The immigration official clears us in and points me to another office for our cruising permit.  On the way back to Faith, a man waves us over to sign a document that I believe has something to do with the fumigating, or turtles, or our first born.  Language is a slight barrier.

Everyone says, “Welcome to Panama!” I ask about the soldiers to learn we’re in a war zone.  I don’t know what war it is, but they take it serious.  One soldier suggests, not because of the war zone stuff, but for a calm anchorage, that we move an hour away, to Puerto Perme.  That anchorage is in a lagoon near the Kuna Yali – an indigenous population – village of Anachucuna.

At Puerto Perme, two ten-year-old boys bring us bananas, lemons, and a sugar cane.  They speak as much English as we do Kuna.  We show them our atlas – where we started, where we’ve been, and how we got here.  They ask how to say things in English, and we learn a little Spanish and Kuna.

Beaching the dinghy in the village, we’re greeted by a hundred children under ten years old.  After several misspoken or misunderstood requests, we’re taken to the Sila – village principal – for permission to anchor and visit.

The dwellings have thatched roofs, cane or bamboo walls, and dirt floors.  The store is stocked with rice, soaps, fabrics, and other necessities, most in bulk without the packaging we’ve been taught to pay extra for in America.

The children show us to a house where the Sila lies in a hammock.  He doesn’t get up, but asks, through an interpreter, our names, how we got here, and about our boat.  He motions us to sit, and we sit and look at each other uncomfortably until he gets up and motions us to follow.

It’s quite a parade, the Sila, the interpreter, the hundred children, and us, as we wind our way through the pedestrian streets and between the houses.

We arrive at the Sila’s house in a large porch with dirt for the floor.  The Sila’s age commands respect.  The interpreter, almost as old, spits a big rolling goober into the dust as he settles into his seat.  Moments later, while the Sila pontificates for the benefit of the assembled children, the interpreter tries to let go of another one but it hangs up on his lower lip, does a cartwheel off his chin, and lands half-on and half-off the seat of his chair between his legs.  He uses the straw of grass he was chewing on to try to flick it away, without success.  It just dangles.  Being the only non-white guy who speaks any English in the room, he knows all of the English speaking white folks are looking at him, and he knows we’re distracted by his dangling goober, so he moves his legs around on the chair to make the problem disappear.

While he struggles to regain his composure, several of the children who can’t fit inside the porch or get a spot outside of the screenless windows are climbing on the roof to look in from the ventilation holes.  Generally, roofs are not designed for humans, and this is especially true for thatched roofs.  One kid makes a rapid entry into the room from above along with several palm fronds that give way.  He isn’t hurt, but redirects the interpreter’s embarrassment to himself.

Now we can get down to business.

The Sila grumbles a few things, and then looks to the interpreter who holds up his hand, fingers and thumb spread and says, “Dollar.”  I give him a $5.00 bill and then he says what I think is, “No, All.” Leading me to believe it is $5.00 for each of us.

I give him another $20.00 and he gives me my $5.00 back and leaves.  Now I am getting confused.   We sit for a minor eternity with children pressing on our backs because they’re being pushed against us by the children behind them who also want to see the action.

We sit and stare at each other.  It’s hot, it’s crowded, it’s sweaty, and we don’t know what we’re waiting for.  At least one of the white guys in the room is growing uncomfortable.

After twenty minutes, the interpreter returns and hands me a $5.00 bill and a receipt for $15.00.  My guess is it took that long to find somebody to make change.  I don’t know what that transaction is for, but we have a receipt.

The Sila then waves his arms around in a broad gesture to indicate that the village is ours to roam, which we do with children following us at every point.

Five minutes later, Greggii falls down and comes to me with a small cut on his finger.  He’s crying and says that when he fell down, all the children laughed.  We learn much later that in many cultures, laughter is meant to offer comfort to somebody in an embarrassing or painful situation.  That knowledge came too late; it nearly killed me to not laugh at that dangling goober.

Women approach Lorrie, Emily, and Amanda to offer molas – beautifully colored blouses, or fabrics.  Our first experience in Panama is a refreshing break from the islands.

In the morning, we wake late.  Puerto Perme is full of uhus – dugout canoes – each with a father and his children fishing.  Vergilio de Leon Diaz, the most inquisitive of the boys that welcomed us yesterday, brings two of his three sisters, Bertalicia and Fidelecia, two and five years old; Vergilio De Leon is ten.

We invite them in for a movie and popcorn.  Scooby Doo.  After that, a man with six granddaughters comes, then three boys.  Amanda suggests we give them pictures of themselves.  We take and print photographs and cut them out for them, to great excitement.

After they leave, a man and his two young sons come to visit.  He stays until dark, and shares a list of words in Spanish and Kuna with Emily, Amanda, and me.  We give away several books and a pair of Greggii’s shorts.  Three boys join us for dinner.

We want to see more of the San Blas, but the weather doesn’t let us.  Our confidence has not yet developed sufficiently to enter the reefs in the eight-foot seas we’re encountering.  It’s one thing to bump into something slowly in calm water, but quite another to be thrown onto rocks or reefs by waves.  We sail overnight to Portobelo, twenty miles from the entrance to the Panama Canal.

Portobelo is an old Spanish port where men would carry Peruvian gold over the isthmus to ship to Spain.  We try to get information on the canal here, as it seems a nice place to wait, but are told only to bring Faith to Limon Bay or to the Panama Canal Yacht Club for assignment of a transit date.

Faith’s lines suggest movement.  The marina in Hampton gave us waves and tides, but keeping Faith at the dock felt like trying to hold a thoroughbred in the gate.  Faith possesses sufficient adrenaline to keep us all doped up, waiting for the start.  Waiting becomes a recurring frustration.  In Hampton, it was for the end of hurricane season; in Panama, to transit the canal, then we wait on the Pacific side for visas for French Polynesia; in the Galapagos, it’s the wait for fuel; in Malaysia, it’s the ten months’ wait to complete the forty-five day contract for work; and in Gran Canaria, it’s a wait for the end of hurricane season again, to make the Atlantic crossing.

What makes Panama so special is the people congregated here with plans similar to our own – plans to sail to the western horizons of the Pacific.

On arrival in Panama we know that we managed to leave the dock.