“You see that boat with the sails up? Don’t anchor near him; he’s crazy!” This was shouted at us from a small power yacht as we tacked up into the diminutive Portobelo bay, weaving in and out among the anchored boats while we selected a good place to settle.

We had noticed the boat with the sails up; it stood out with both the main and mizzen fully hoisted and we had already discussed ourselves dry of all possible explanations as to why this might be since he was clearly at anchor. We weren’t actually in any danger of anchoring near him anyway since we had chosen the quieter, northern side of the bay near the ruined fort but I guess the excitement spawned by recent events had everyone in the bay anxious and excitable. We wrote off Mr. Warning Man as just another cruiser zealot stricken with that annoying habit of needing to disperse advice to whoever is within earshot.

There were around 40 boats anchored in the Portobelo bay, which is to say, big city time after the deserted bend of the Rio Chagres we enjoyed the past few days. Smack in the middle of the bay was a 150-foot private power yacht, “Triton,” complete with fleet of matching white kayaks, a pair of lime-green jet skis, a red helicopter seated on a small landing pad aft of the bridge, and a handful of pert uniformed crew. After we ate dinner, we sat in the cockpit finishing a bottle of wine and enjoying the quiet night and full moon.

Around 7:30pm or so, someone’s voice came on the VHF cruiser hailing channel, “Attention the fleet, attention the fleet: The Frenchman is on the move!” Well, this was certainly an odd announcement. Frenchman? It didn’t take long for a chorus of clarification to ring out over the VHF, echoed around the bay from as the boats turned their radio volumes way up so they could go out on deck to watch. “Attention the fleet! Attention the fleet!” (A phrase that always amuses me although I have to admit, with 40 boats in one anchorage, ‘fleet’ is somewhat apt.) “The crazy man with the sails up has weighed anchor and is sailing through the anchorage!” (Now we figure out what’s going on—this is the guy the power boat was warning us about.) “Everyone, I suggest standing watch to see what he does because he already set two boats on fire.” (He what?!) Panache, one of the boats evidently set on fire seizes this opportunity to pipe up, “Yes, he is, um, mentally unstable and set my boat on fire yesterday.” (Whoa.) “Twice!”

By now we are passing the binoculars around and have the hand-held VHF turned on as well so we can eavesdrop on conversations taken off-channel. We can see that the boat with the sails up is moving through the anchorage at a speed of maybe one knot, sometimes less than that—there is very little wind this evening. Behind his sailboat by about two boat-lengths trail a couple of dinghies from very long painters. There is a blizzard of VHF static and chatter and as we scan the anchorage, everyone on a boat is standing out on deck watching the Frenchman with their binoculars. It’s all very exciting.

The Frenchman emerges from the southern cluster of boats and points his sailboat slowly for the north side, towards Triton. A clear voice rings out from the hand-held, “Large Power Yacht Anchored in Portobelo, Large Power Yacht Anchored in Portobelo, please be advised that there is a mentally unstable man headed in your direction!” A flurry of clarification follows: “I think they are called Triton.” “I think they monitor 16.” Then an audible click as every single boat in the anchorage changes their VHF channel to 16 to eavesdrop. Triton is successfully hailed. “Thank you very much Captain, we are on top of the situation,” comes the crisp reply. It now looks like the Frenchman is going to ram the big yacht. At a full 1 knot of speed. We can hear him shouting obscenities in French and sometimes English: “Ahss-hull!” We can see uniformed crewmembers running up and down stairs on Triton.

A minute or so later, he actually does ram the yacht. We hear intensified shouting and two flare-gun or small pistol shots. We see the boat pushed off the yacht and it slowly moves away from Triton as the yelling continues. There is more VHF activity and Panache is back on to commiserate, “Power Yacht Triton, Power Yacht Triton, this is the Good Sailing Ship Panache!” the tight British accent with a palpable note of hurt and indignation continues, “I’ll have you know I too was attacked by this vessel; that man aboard is totally out of his head—I mean to say he is unstable and can act unpredictably. He set my own vessel afire with gasoline not two days ago. I suggest keeping someone on watch at all times with him around!” Again the cool voice, “Thank you Captain, we’ve, uh, come to the same conclusion and I believe we have the situation under control.” Panache continues, “Well, I thank you for the words of encouragement and keep me posted as to that boat’s whereabouts, will you.” (As if Panache of all people wasn’t out on deck with the rest of us planted behind a pair of binoculars.)

Five minutes later, Triton pulled anchor and steamed out of the harbor and out of sight. The Frenchman weaved unsteadily off and finally ran aground on the south side of the harbor, where he stayed for the next half hour. “I believe the Crazy Man is aground!” “Good riddance!” Then people felt the need to fill in with gory details. “Is that black guy still on the boat with him?” (We found it very weird and somewhat disturbing that the Frenchman’s local friend is always referred to as “that black guy,” as nearly everyone here is black except for the gringo tourists.) “Well, they may have had a falling out after the black guy pushed him overboard.” (What the hell?! This was just getting weirder.)

At last, the Frenchman towed himself off the rocks with his own dinghy, pulled the sailboat back to where he started, and dropped his anchor. The VHF fell quiet with only a few peeps now and again from those unable to get their word in earlier: “Someone should cut his dinghy loose and then maybe he would be less of a problem.” “We ought to set HIM alight!” “No, what he needs, is someone with a gun to just take him out. It’s the only answer as far as I’m concerned.” I’m actually a little surprised at the viciousness of the radio chatter, but I guess I’m new to these parts.

The next morning we woke at dawn to find a solitary dinghy floating free in the bay; someone from one of the other boats went over to retrieve it and discovered it did in fact belong to the Frenchman. Not wanting to attract unwanted attention but unwilling to let a dinghy just drift off to sea, he tied it to a nearby wreck and split. Later that day, “the black guy” fetched the dinghy and brought it back. The Frenchman’s boat is now silent and I never see anyone out on deck ever, I just notice that sometimes the dinghy is gone or that it is back, or that his mainsail has come down—although never the mizzen. The boat hasn’t moved since.

The Crazy Frenchman of Portobelo. Note that he is actually out on deck this time—a first—putting his mainsail back up. In addition to his national and Panamanian courtesy flags, he is also flying the flags for ‘Q’ (or the Quarantine flag), ‘N,’ and ‘C,’ which is probably code for “En garde! For tonight I strike!” At any rate, we’ll keep our radios on.

ADDENDUM

And strike he did. Around 4am this morning when the roosters and birds were just starting to make noise, I woke up to a radio blip thinking I heard the word ‘fire,’ so we popped out of the cabin to check things out. Across the anchorage, the nearest boat to the Frenchman was in flames. Major flames. A police car sat on shore with the lights flashing but as far as we could see, no other action was being taken. The Frenchman’s boat loomed nearby in the darkness, main and mizzen fluttering but otherwise silent. The victim was an uninhabited boat and so a nearby boater dinghied over with a bucket to put the flames out. Once the fire was out, the police left and no action was taken, as no action against the Frenchman has ever been taken thus far. Panama’s jurisdiction happily ends at the shoreline where crazy Frenchmen are concerned and the French embassy has also expressed little interest in rectifying the matter. As with Panache and Triton, there was no provocation whatsoever for the attacks and unfortunately, this boat is a total loss with the entire cabin inside burned and the decks spongy.

FURTHER DEVELOPMENTS It turns out that the boat was owned by an Italian expat (the rumor mill turns…) and the severity of the attack finally forced a little action. The Navy came and removed the Frenchman (yelling and screaming) from his boat just about an hour ago.

It was now 1pm. Our lock time at Gatun was 4pm. As I’ve mentioned before, Gatun Lake is a critical step when crossing the canal in the Pacific to Caribbean direction; this is because if you are late and miss your lock time, you are charged a bleedin’ fortune ($830, which is more than it costs to make the entire transit) and have to spend the night in the lake on a mooring. Of course, spending the night in the lake is really cool but having to pay so much to do so is ridiculous. The passage is 30 miles from Pedro Miguel to Gatun Locks and we were having a hard time going 8 knots with the weight, wind, and current (even in Gatun lake there was a little current). Not to mention that George was terrified of our outboard and refused to let us go anywhere near full throttle. The possibility of being rescheduled later for the Gatun Locks was out of the question because there was a chemical ship lined up (they transit the locks solo) and they don’t let the small boats go north any later than 6pm or so.

I began to form my argument when/if I had to dispute a late fee. As I saw things, even if we did motor at 8.5 knots, in three hours we would only make it 25.5 miles and we would still miss our scheduled time.

Then George got a call saying that the ship with whom we were to transit the locks was already at Gatun Locks waiting and they were bumping his transit time up to around 3pm. Now there was absolutely no way we could make it. We were released from our nail biting and the threat of having to pay the late fee vanished; George told us with a sigh of relief to just motor at a comfortable pace, which, in his opinion, was about 3 knots—if he could hear the outboard at all, he got antsy. I found his whole motor issue amusing since I can’t imagine the advisors ever get to look at whatever passes for a motor in most sailboats—they are almost always all inboards; they just have to take the word of the captain and what they can’t see they seem to trust. And here was our outboard right out in the open where it could be examined and it was clear that the motor was brand new (shiny).

[Totally out-of-order shot of one of the mules. These are used to steady and keep the large ships centered in the locks.]

[Another completely random ‘art’ shot.]

We settled in at a comfortable pace and I went to the galley to make lunch for everyone (with Jan’s help). My exciting chopped salad idea was shot apart when it was clear that with the wind, it would be impossible to deal with anything that must be balanced upon a delicate utensil from plate to mouth so we just made sandwiches and passed around bags of chips (also difficult in the wind but with the benefit of not being saucy). I still find bits of chips jammed in crevices in the cockpit and elsewhere. The boat shimmied around through the Culebra Cut where the wind funneled down in terrific gusts and we were rocked by the wakes of car carriers and other oversized traffic. Finally we made it to the lake proper and decided we needed to up our speed whether George felt it proper or not since we were all getting bored of motoring and we wanted to make the Banana Cut before dark, which is a nifty little detour off the main canal where you passed close among the many lake islands and could often see sloths, birds, etc. At one point, when we were sheltered by a bend in the lake and the wind and waves were not as strong, George looked down at his GPS and was astounded to see that we were going 6.9 knots (we were at 3/4 throttle). After that he stopped giving us a hard time about the outboard.

[Wildlife watching in the Banana Cut.]

We got to the mooring at long last after a full five hours of motoring and it was heavenly to turn the damned thing off. It did fine, by the way, and we calculated that we had burned six gallons of gasoline in the past twelve hours of near-constant use. As soon as we were tied up, I cracked open a bottle of champagne and we stood around the mooring daintily sipping from a variety of frilly glassware, feeling grungy and exhausted.

[Ben gets ready to lasso a mooring.]

The pilot boat came and picked George up. “Will we have you tomorrow?” we asked. But no, it is almost entirely unlikely that you would get the same advisor twice in a row. Besides George lived in Panama City, not Colon, and he had the next day off to boot. Before he left, he gave a brief tutorial to the line handlers about how we needed to be extra careful with the lines when going down the locks and to be sure never to tie them off once the water starts to fall; he seemed genuinely concerned for our little boat. Once the Pilot boat was out of sight and after a perfunctory check for crocodiles, we launched ourselves overboard for a much-needed bath.

[Our mooring buddies.]

Everyone sipped wine and chatted in the cockpit while I commandeered the galley and made dinner: risotto with gorgonzola and pistachios with a salad made from genuine romaine lettuce (the first I’ve had in about a zillion years because Rey Supermercado actually had some in stock that didn’t look entirely pathetic) with a balsamic vinaigrette. Very tasty, if I do say so myself. While dinner was underway, the southbound sailboats transiting the canal showed up and arranged themselves at the mooring buoys. The boat next to us had a couple of kids who spent an inordinate amount of time hopping in circles around the buoy. After dinner we set about transforming Time Machine into a cozy hotel with beds for six people (basically, Joshua and I slept on the trampoline and hoped it wouldn’t rain). Miraculously, almost all our guests brought their own pillows (we only have two on the boat) and so I didn’t need to spring that one on them at the last minute. It did rain that night, but only a few drops.

[Ben applying sunscreen, or else gleefully plotting the takeover of the world.]

On the third morning of our canal transit, we were all up at the crack of dawn when our neighboring boat started their engines in anticipation of an early arrival of their advisor for the day and gagged us all on their diesel fumes. We convinced them to shut it off until you actually see the whites of the pilot boat’s eyes and they felt this was a convincing argument. We were able to drink our coffee in peace. By 7:30, all three Pacific-bound boats were off for their Gatun Lake run. Our pilot boat arrived around 10:30.

[GEORGE!]

As the pilot boat rounded up to the buoy, where they picked up and dropped off advisors, none other than George stepped out of the cabin, a sheepish grin on his face. “GEORGE!” went the general cry. He did not explain how or why but yes, he was back and would be guiding us the rest of the way to the Caribbean. I got the impression by his mild embarrassment and avoidance of questions that he had volunteered out of concern for our boat; unnecessary I thought, but sweet all the same.

[Heading for the Gatun Locks.]

We were underway within thirty minutes and everyone sat around getting ready and passing the sunscreen; we had a vague transit time set for 3pm (good lord) but George felt that a side tie (tied alongside the wall) would be the best transit option and there just happened to be a spot in front of an 800-foot container ship we could snag; this would bump our transit time up by several hours as well. Canal transit clerks automatically mark the “NO” option for side tying all sailing vessels after once a sailboat rolled in the turbulence and got rigging tangled against the wall. We’re so wide and we don’t roll so this would not be a concern (we tried to explain this initially to the admeasure—the person who inspects and measures each boat that wants to transit the canal) but he wouldn’t even look up from his paperwork to look at our boat. George produced a side-tie waiver for us to sign and we were moved up in schedule.

I was back on the stern with my pet outboard and we were advised to slip in front of the gigantic ship, tie alongside the wall while the first lock filled back up with water (this creates significant current sometimes), then we would be in place ahead of the ship and wouldn’t have to dodge propwash from the tugs to enter the lock. “Basically,” Joshua shouted back to me, “this is going to be hairy.”

[The ship being pushed into place.]

I untied the outboard to have steerage and we motored up to the wall outside the lock to tie up. I kept the motor in reverse and pointed the propeller at the wall to keep our ass in line when the current started. We looked back at the water churned up by the tugs and what looked like a mere 50 feet of clearance between them and the canal wall that we would have had to get through had we not gone in ahead while the lock filled; THAT, would have been hairy.

[Typically, there was a lot of standing around with hands on hips going on aboard the Time Machine once the excitement waned.]

Once the lock was ready for us and the doors opened, we untied and motored to the very front of the lock. Joshua steered until we got almost into position and then I steered us back and forth as if we were parallel parking. The lines were made taught on the port side and that was that. We stood around in the blazing sun waiting as the mules pulled the container ship into place. In a 1000-foot lock, an 800-foot ship feels really close and really big. Once in place we were almost looking straight up at their bow.

[Honkin’ big ship.]

The side tie situation went incredibly smooth for us. Basically, only two line handlers were needed to let out line as we sank down and the rest of the bunch just stood around looking at the wall, which was covered in black slime and artifacts of ancient canal accidents. I sat on the stern taking photos: port side, starboard side, behind at the ginormous ship, off. Repeat thirty seconds later. Consequently we have about a million almost identical photos of pretty boring stuff. Once we were down and the doors open, the lines were thrown off and I steered us out into the middle of the lock where Joshua could take over steering until we got up into position for the next lock.

[Gary on wall detail.]

[The typical standing around wall scene.]

We repeated this three times without incident and at last the doors opened to the Caribbean where we motored out of the lock for the last time, waving goodbye at the Gatun line guys and the crew clustered at the bow of the ship behind us.

[Posers.]

The first morning of our canal transit (Feb. 25th), we were up and running around the boat at 5am, en route to Balboa by 6:30, had Jan and Richard from Slipaway as well as Cousin Tito aboard by 7:30 (Ben, just in from ice-floes-on-the-lake Chicago was also aboard), and were motoring around in circles waiting for the pilot boat by 8. Then they called us and told us that we were going to be cancelled. The lady at the bank who received our payment for the canal transit two weeks before had apparently gone on vacation and forgotten to turn in the correct form to wherever it was she needed to turn it in; rumor had it that there were three boats cancelled that day in addition to ours. Defeated for the time being, we anchored off Balboa and I fed our poor crew a consolation breakfast before dropping them all back off for another day (hopefully).

On our way back to the Playitas anchorage, where we had a lot of explaining to do, we passed a canal-bound US attack submarine whose paperwork was not misplaced by airheaded bank clerks.

On the second morning of our supposed canal transit, after having phoned the canal scheduling office repeatedly the previous day to confirm our transit (not that this made any difference the first time since we had then twice confirmed our transit and the scheduler had gone so far as to give us the name of our advisor as well as how we were to be configured inside the locks), we were up at 5am running around the boat. Cousin Tito had been able to get one workday off but with the rescheduling, two days off (in the event that we must stay overnight in Gatun Lake) was not possible and so we picked up Gary from “Sol Surfin,” who, as a warm body with a heartbeat, was happily recruited as our fourth line handler late the night before. Once more we were en route to Balboa to pick up Jan and Richard, and Joshua was on the VHF trying to reconfirm that we were indeed actually going to go through the canal this day, the 26th.

Success! Confirmation reconfirmed. We had a time and name, once more, of our advisor (“George”) and the pilot boat would come for us in one hour. We snagged a stray mooring at Balboa and had a shockingly similar breakfast to the one before. (Nobody complained.)

We were to go through with another sailboat, “Windrider,” who had rocketed down from San Diego over the past couple of months and was making a beeline to Florida where things would be more to their liking. They spoke zero Spanish and Joshua’s general impression from having chatted with them in the bank, canal office, dock, or wherever, was that they were somewhat clueless as to what was going on. In the world. They had actually hired an agent to line up their canal transit (not that it made any difference since they got bumped the previous day as well, and had to do all the bank/canal office/scheduling errands themselves) and they had four hired “professional” line handlers aboard.

At around 8:15 (right on time!), the pilot boat came and deposited George the Advisor onto our boat. We introduced ourselves and got him set up with a large mug of coffee (black, two sugars) while he started to poke around the outskirts of our boat. Joshua and I feigned nonchalance as we watched him stoop and finger our 3/4-inch lines and eye our wee little cleats (barely large enough to accommodate such a massive line but we were told over and over again that THOU SHALT HAVE 7/8-INCH LINES for the canal transit—a size that is dead-horse-flogging overkill for our little 3-ton boat). He wrapped the lines around the cleats and Joshua went to explain what we had set up in this regard.

The setup is as follows (here we have Richard the Line Handler demonstrating; you can vaguely see what is going on):

Joshua shackled large steel rings onto the chainplates at the extreme ends of the amas (the side thingies—pontoons) fore and aft and ran the lines through the rings down to the cleats located at the A-frames. The chainplates are extremely strong and would take the brunt of the force, the cleats would be used to lock off the ropes and work the lines, not as the main load-bearing component. Plus, with the cleats located more centrally, the line handlers would have a safer and more comfortable location to line-handle and would be less likely to fall overboard (not desirable). Joshua walked George through this and he seemed to think that the setup was good.

[George inspects the horses.]

Then he turned his attentions to our poor outboard. “Is this your only motor?” he asked. He eyed the outboard with incredible skepticism and leaned way out to try to see how many horses. Ironically, this is our new BIG outboard of fifteen bad ones and we had up until that point been feeling like hot shit. We explained that the boat was in fact very lightweight for a sailboat of its length and that fifteen horses was fully capable of pushing us. George furrowed his brow and gazed at the motor, then the boat, then the motor, and then the boat again. “How do you control it?” he asked. Um, well, that was why there were 6 of us aboard: one captain (“Skipper,” as George came to call Joshua), four line handlers, and one “engineer,” as George eventually named me—that is, after he was convinced, at least somewhat, that we weren’t all total nutballs and the motor did in fact move the boat. We chose to hold the interesting fact that we had come down from San Francisco with a mere 6 hp until later.

He had us drop the mooring and start an hour early for the motor up to the Miraflores entrance just in case our outboard couldn’t handle it. I took my place seated on the poop deck with my leg dangling over the stern and my hand on the control; Joshua directed me with hand signals since at the stern I couldn’t see much and could hear nothing but the motor. George kept wandering back and asking me what percentage throttle we were at. Now? How about now? He looked fairly chagrined at the scene but did not cancel us (he could call it off if he felt that our boat was not capable of getting through and he was such a stickler that we were almost worried that he might). We had of course put 8 knots down on the canal paperwork (8.5 actually, because, hell) and with 1/4 of the boat’s weight in humans aboard, a stiff 15-20 knots of wind gusting down the canal in our faces, and a couple of knots of current pouring out with the insane tides they have around here, we were going nowhere near 8 knots. More like 5 and the motor was at 75% throttle. I cranked the handle to full throttle to show him that the motor could in fact do more and George nearly had a heart attack, “NO! That’s okay! Don’t overdo it! We need that motor to get through the locks; don’t stress it too much! We don’t need to go fast right now.” He went back up to the cockpit where it was decidedly less exciting.

[My friend for the canal transit.]

[My position for the canal transit, from which I was not to move until we were past Pedro Miguel.]

When we got to the Miraflores entrance, we motored around in circles waiting for our lock buddies (Windrider and a pilot boat). At 11:30 we entered the locks. We were tied alongside Windrider who was tied alongside the pilot boat who was tied to the wall. Once secured, the linehandlers had nothing to do but hang around taking photos. I had to stay at my post on the poop deck in case something should go wrong and I had to control the boat with the outboard; I not only controlled the throttle but had untied the outboard to have full steering capability as well. But nothing went wrong even with the flood turbulence and when we reached the top of the lock, we untied, backed up and held our position while Windrider and the pilot boat untied and moved out ahead of us into the second lock. This was not as straightforward as it sounds, actually, and we were flung around with the force of the propwash and freaky currents swirling around in the locks as soon as they moved. There was much gesturing and shouting at the engineer, who bore it stoically and managed to keep the Time Machine from dashing up against the walls thankyouverymuch. Once the other boats were secured in the second lock, we motored up and tied alongside once more.

[Ben relays the message from Joshua; all systems looking good.]

Because the last undocking scene was a bit hairy, the advisors decided that once the lock was flooded and the doors opened, we would throw off Time Machine’s lines and crank the motor for all it was worth to get out of the locks ahead of the other boats. Unfortunately, Windrider’s “professional” line handlers just threw off our lines as soon as we reached the top of the lock even though the doors hadn’t even opened yet and when I saw this, I cranked the motor and steered us for the exit. Again, there was much shouting and gesturing at the engineer and I flipped the motor into hard reverse (we were right at the front of the lock to begin with and I couldn’t see what the doors were doing from my position on the stern). Then the doors opened and the swirling water spun us around sideways. Windrider and the pilot boat prudently chose this opportunity to untie and split. Meanwhile, we were sideways and heading at three knots for the back of the lock (current and major gusting wind); the line handlers were all clustered at the bow to push us off should we get too close to the wall but we managed to motor around back and forth until the bow was pointed once more for the Caribbean and we full throttled it out of the locks, waving and smiling at lock crew and cameras.

[Random lock scenery viewed from beneath; this is a crane.]

After a rapid motor across the tiny lake Miraflores, we had to mark time while waiting for the Pedro Miguel locks to be ready for us. Finally we entered, this time without the pilot boat and both of us center tied in the lock. This means that each sailboat was aligned singly in the lock with four lines to the walls on either side suspending it as the water rose. Our line handlers were going to earn their keep. As the water started swirling in, the boat lurched around a little but nothing out of the ordinary and the lines and handlers had everything under control. I had nothing to do but sit on the poop babysitting the idling motor and shout things at whoever was listening (nobody).

[Ben handling the lines.]

[More line-handling action from Jan.]

The lines were thrown down from the walls and pulled back up onto the boat and we motored out of the Pedro Miguel lock without incident. Finally I was relieved from motor duty and could join the rest of the crew in the cockpit where there was shade and audible conversation.

[I’ll get Part II up tomorrow!]

Portobelo, Panamá

We arrived in Portobelo just in time for the Fiesta de Congo y Diablos. Unfortunately, Ben had to catch a bus to Panama City before the festivities really got started. Ask us about the crazy frenchman.

Canal photos are coming, internet is sparse.

We made it to Colon in the Caribbean Sea. We got cancelled the first day and we were unable to make our Gatun lock time the next day (not our fault, naturally)… but basically, no major collisions, dismastings, or unintentional persons overboard and that’s what I call a successful canal crossing.

Details will follow once I sort through the many gigs of photos and video bits and pick out the winners.