Nautical Tortoise: Adrift in the Pacific from Panama to Polynesia: Å to Oz, #2

By Martin Edge

'Nautical Tortoise' is about my passage, aboard someone else's deeply flawed 38ft boat, from Caribbean Panama to the Marquesas Islands of French Polynesia. It's the second volume in a three-part series describing my snail's-pace efforts to sail from northern Norway to Australia. The series is entitled, optimistically, 'Å to Oz'.

It's the sequel to 'Sail's Pace', in which I progressed, infinitesimally slowly, from Norway to Panama. Neither volume could be described as a gripping, nail-biting adventure yarn. You will not come away from this book marvelling at the ability of the human spirit to survive against seemingly insurmountable odds. You're more likely to marvel at the author's ability to moan about everything.

The odds were, in fact, eminently surmountable. There's not a single shipwreck, cyclone or pirate attack. Though I sailed through the very waters which inspired Melville to write 'Moby Dick', there are no savage attacks by enraged sperm whales. Not even by mildly peeved porpoises or disgruntled dolphins.

You may, on the other hand, possibly gain some insight into the sort of idiots to be found floating around the world in wee boats. With a bit of luck you might think, 'bloody hell, if he can do it, anyone can'.

There are some good bits though, about the odd wildlife of the Galápagos and the stunning landscapes of the Marquesas. Tiny specks in the world's largest ocean which are themselves like whole continents in miniature.

There really is a free bottle of rum to be had, by the way. If you know where to look. Three bottles, in fact. But I wouldn't buy this book simply for the prospect of the free booze. Unless you're already in French Polynesia and at a loose end.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Martin Edge
• Release date: Jun 20, 2023
• ISBN: 9798223633242

Book preview

Preface: Carry On Pacific

I returned from home Panama in 2015, at the end of ‘Sail’s Pace’. I’d just escaped the clutches of Skippy, the demented Australian skipper. I spent the next three weeks twitching nervously, as I lay in a darkened room, listening to recorded whale sounds and soothing, ambient white noise. But gradually both the twitching, and the memory of Skippy, began to fade. I reassured myself that at least I’d never come across the old bugger again. I repaired over to the west coast of Scotland, for a summer sailing my Vancouver 27, ‘Zophiel’ around, in a very unadventurous manner.

Come the autumn, the mental scars had faded sufficiently that I could contemplate my trip with the Skipster. I began to think about his next victims. What species of non-sailing youth might the dottled old geriatric trick into joining him to cross the Pacific? How would someone who had never before been aboard a yacht cope, with being alone in the middle of an ocean, with a skipper in the early stages of dementia?

I took the extraordinary step of goggling for Skippy’s three daughters, all in their thirties. I knew that he wouldn’t listen to me, but perhaps he could be influenced by one of them. I found contact details for a daughter and emailed her. I explained, carefully that, whilst Skippy could do what he liked to himself, I thought he should be encouraged not to put other people’s lives in danger. I outlined, as tactfully as possible, the evidence that he wasn’t really capable of navigation. I pointed out that I had been forced to take over from him in that department. I suggested that he might be encouraged to sail with at least two other people. That they should be experienced and knowledgeable enough to sail the boat, should he take a funny turn or fall overboard. I was at pains to emphasise that it was the crew I was worried for, not Skippy.

I got a predictably Australian response. Something like ‘she’ll be right mate. Dad’ll just do what he wants’. I gave up.

Soon I began to consider the next phase of my A to Oz odyssey. Or possibly ozyssey. There must be other skippers in need of crew to cross the Pacific. All of them, I reasoned, can’t be as loopy as Skippy. Or indeed as skoopy as Lippy. So I registered with a couple of free websites, on which yachties, bumming around the world, advertise for crew. I scanned the available boats.

At first it wasn’t encouraging. It seemed that I was of the wrong age, the wrong sex and had the wrong number of mammary glands, to be useful as crew. At least according to many of the elderly, libidinous lotharios, who’d advertised on the websites. Reading the ads, I could almost hear Sid James’ lascivious cackle, or Leslie Phillips’ saying ‘ding dong’, suggestively.

A typical advert for crew might read something like:

‘Attractive, tanned octogenarian, with an active libido but no particular maritime skills, requires a female crew aged 18 to 30 to sail to tropical paradises for prolonged periods. No previous experience or clothing necessary. Cooking and cleaning skills essential. Acquiescence to authority and willingness to obey the most outlandish of commands, without question, an advantage. Must supply photo’.

But I reasoned that these chancers, living out their lives in a 1970s ‘Carry-On’ film, were unlikely to be sane and able navigators anyway. Someone who was prepared to take on a bloke in his late fifties, with a decent amount of snailing experience, might anyway be more capable of sailing a boat across an ocean.

I answered a couple of ads. The first was to a Kiwi bloke with a big Beneteau, currently in the Caribbean and heading for Panama. I was a tad dubious about the fact that he was charging a flat weekly ‘fee’, for folk to crew for him. Quite a large one as well. As I explained in relation to crossing the Atlantic, I don’t begrudge the money. But there is perhaps something slightly dodgy about people who are trying to get others to pay for their massive, five-year holiday, and the boat they are enjoying it on. Quite apart from the fact that their insurance is probably voided, by taking on paying guests.

I never got to find out whether this bloke was a decent skipper or not. Fortunately, I discovered that he was not a decent human being, long before I committed to joining him aboard. Answering my message, he suggested that I follow him on Arsebook, to keep track of what he was doing. I duly did so.

What he was doing was spreading racist, white supremacist propaganda. His very first Arsebook post, after I ‘befriended’ him, was a link to a deeply racist Australian website. This organisation was campaigning to have all Muslims deported from Australia. This included second, third, fourth, whatever generation, Australian citizens. Going back as far as most white Bruces and Sheilas can trace their ancestors getting off the boat from Blighty. They were also keen on the idea of using nuclear weapons against large swathes of the Middle East. Though deeply racist against everywhere in Asia, they nevertheless quoted, with approval, the example of Japan. It was claimed, with no basis in fact, that Japan had decided to deport its Muslim population.

I had forgotten how much racism there is in Oz. Also, how profoundly some of them can lack the ability to detect irony. The irony of this nation of immigrants, stridently campaigning against the immigration of bloody foreigners. The irony of invading a country and supplanting its people and their cultures, then complaining that your culture is being supplanted by foreigners. I hoped fervently that the Kiwi bloke would be deported from a succession of Pacific islands, for being a foreigner. It was with a sense of relief that I sent him the following rude message:

‘Woah... narrow escape! I see on Facebook that you have recently been ‘sharing’ really nasty, bigoted, extreme right-wing material. I can only assume that you have some sympathies with these appalling and, in one case, genocidal views. Since I don’t have a penchant for either nuclear war or racism, it goes without saying that I don’t want to be trapped in a confined space with you for months.

Perhaps, while you are waiting for the end of the hurricane season, you should get an education on Islam and on the lives of Islamic people. You should also be aware that all that crap about Japan outlawing Islam is simply wrong in every detail. Just Google it.

It’s often amusing when antipodeans with no sense of irony want to ‘Keep Oceania European’, but in the current political climate, trying to turn Australia against Muslim refugees seems rather more sinister.

If I am being unfair and you don’t agree with the views you are propagating I apologise, but if you share things on Facebook without comment, it’s natural to conclude that they are your views. I suggest you share your Facebook profile with all prospective crew so that they are aware what they would be dealing with’.

To which his reply was ‘I didn’t realise you were so sensitive Martin’. Well, yes. It takes someone of rare, delicate sensitivity to object to racism and genocide. If only the Jews hadn’t been so sensitive to the Holocaust in the 1940s. Too much sensitivity, that’s the problem with people these days!

I continued scanning the websites. This one looked more hopeful. An Irish bloke, in a thirty-eight footer, which he described as ‘the perfect ocean cruiser’. He had crew as far as Panama, but then needed people to go through the canal and on to the Galápagos, French Polynesia and, eventually, Oz.

He was sailing in the eastern Caribbean at the time and, replying to my first message, asked me for tips and information on the trip across to Panama. I was able to send him some of the reams and reams of shite I’d sent Skippy, the year before. This information was now tempered by first hand knowledge, having traversed the route aboard the rust-bucket ‘Spatula’.

A quick Google revealed the skipper to be the owner of a factory in the west of Ireland, making disposable plastic items. I’m tempted to say he produced miniaturised shillelaghs and plastic shamrocks for the tackier end of Dublin’s tourist market. Yes, why not? In for a penny in for a pound. I imagined this to be quite a lucrative market and judged that he was likely to remain solvent, at least for the next few months.

In answer to my queries, he told me that his normal complement of crew, including him and his wife, was four. That sounded a good number, for what was the longest ocean crossing in any conventional circumnavigation. The boat was, apparently, a fantastically equipped, nearly new cruiser, carefully designed for long, tropical passages. Perfect. I signed up.

One day, from the comfort of home, I followed his AIS transmitter on the ‘Marine Traffic’ website, as he approached Panama. He was sailing straight for the large city of Colón, without bothering with the beautiful islands of Guna Yala. Ominously, about two miles from the large entrance to Colón’s huge, protected shipping harbour, the boat stopped. It then described three full circles, a few hundred yards across. What was the reason for this strange behaviour? Presumably the skipper wasn’t just an eccentric idiot, was he?

I did wonder, a bit, what the rest of the substantial crew were doing, when I received a long list of things that I had to transport out to Panama, in my bag. They included a series of tools and spare parts, such as a large ‘clamp’ meter for some dubious, cheapo kind of towed electricity generator. But my heart sank slightly when I saw one of the parts on the list. It was a large chunk of lead/glass alloy. This weighed almost as much as my total luggage allowance. Yes, of course, he had fantastic, invaluable, top of the range Hydrovane self-steering system. A large part of this had, inevitably, spontaneously shattered.

I girded my loins, bought a fork-lift truck to transport the luggage and, on February 16th 2016, hopped on a plane to Panama.

Part 1:        Cross Incontinents

Chapter 1: The Greenhouse Effect

The déjà vu began at Heathrow airport and continued almost indefinitely. I had a five hour wait for a connection at Heathrow, where the nice girlie at check-in gave me two boarding cards. These were for the flights from Heathrow and then from Frankfurt. She couldn’t give me one for the last leg, from the Dominican Republic to Panama. She explained that, though the system wasn’t sophisticated enough to provide me with a boarding card, I could rest assured that my bag would certainly, definitely, go right through to Panama, without me doing anything. I pretended to believe her, as a slight sinking feeling hit me and I thought ‘here we go again’.

In Frankfurt they were able to give me the third boarding card. Again they assured me that the bag would wing its way to Panama. But, in Santo Domingo, a listless, bored laddie at the transit desk sent four or five of us away, with a wave of his hand and a terse command in Spanish. The only one of us who spoke Spanish explained that we had to go through immigration, for some reason.

The wifey at the immigration door disagreed and told me; just me; to go back to transit. Worried for my luggage, I protested and was, eventually, allowed through immigration. There was no sign of any luggage to or from anywhere. Eventually I saw an English girlie, who’d got off the same plane as me, staggering under the weight of all her luggage. I asked where she’d got it.

I wandered down a dusty, darkened corridor and around a few deserted corners. And there it was, my huge bag, complete with lead/glass alloy Hydrovane parts. It was lying about, by itself, in a corner. Though it was clearly marked with the destination ‘Panama’ it was, equally clearly, going nowhere. A small shiver passed up my spine at the thought of what I might have done, had I not forced my way through a reluctant immigration department.

I suspect the problem was, like so many in life, to do with Trumpland. People arriving at the Dominican Republic are deemed to be either a) staying there on holiday or b) in transit to Trumpland. These two options cover such a high proportion of the passengers, that any other scenario is barely even conceived to be possible. The Santo Domingo departures board had flights to all over Trumpland and, inexplicably, the small Lincolnshire market town of Boston. The airport was pleasant enough, apart from its total lack of organisation, with a laid back, rustic, third-worldy sort of feel. But how all the monoglot Merkins managed, with a tannoy system exclusively delivering announcements in Spanish, is a mystery.

Happily, on my way through full check-in again, I remembered to stash all my duty-free booze in my hold luggage.

Panama City airport seemed to be dedicated almost exclusively to transit passengers. In this case those wanting to transfer to flights in South America. One girlie I spoke to was off to Quito to muck out trekking ponies, for zero wages, for a few months. Each to their own. The assumption was very definitely that you were just passing through Panama in transit. So much so that there appeared to be no signs to the exit, at all. Only to other departure gates.

At immigration I had my fingerprints forcibly taken, before being allowed to enter the country. I was reminded of the irony of Panama being so frequently described as a laid back, demilitarised, peaceable country. I daresay my fingerprints are now in a filing cabinet at Trump Towers. I must remember to wear gloves next time I’m breaking into CIA headquarters.

I was due to meet the skipper at the airport. As I’ve already mentioned, he was a small businessman from Ireland. About five foot six, in fact. We soon identified each other as crusty old yachtie types. Me blue-white and ghostly pale, after a northern winter. Him shrunken and done to a crackling by the tropical sun. He was a wee, slight figure. The only long thing about him was his slightly lugubrious face, which sort of continued, uninterrupted, into his extraordinarily sloping shoulders. I use the word ‘shoulders’ loosely. They were almost exactly the same diameter as his head. But he was a lively, active, jumpy sort of soul, obviously pleased with his current condition for a sixty year old shillelagh magnate. He was also, I suspect, an ex-alcoholic.

I can’t be sure about the truth of that last statement, but he had already told me that he didn’t touch a drop and was always cagey and unforthcoming on the reasons why. He seemed to hail from a background of good, old fashioned boozers. All his mates and family, apparently, drank like fish. So I suspect that he had previously had alcohol problems, which had led to an enforced tea-totalism. Fair enough. I know, by the way, that you’re not supposed to say ‘ex-alcoholic’, but sod it. If you don’t booze and haven’t got a problem with it, in my book you’re an ex-alcoholic.

Though defiantly and obviously Irish, from the west coast, the Captain had a terribly English sounding sort of name. Let’s call him Adrian. Surname... umm... how about Blightman. That’s a name, isn’t it? Adrian Blightman. We can call him Cap’n Bligh for short. That’s a nice, neutral nickname, with no particular negative connotations, isn’t it?

His missus was expected on a considerably later flight that afternoon, so we waited about, interminably, for her. Eventually she showed up, an hour or so late. Here’s a thing. If your flight is an hour late it’s obviously, self-evidently, not your fault. But most human beings will say, to the people who have been waiting for them, something like ‘sorry, have you been waiting long?’ The ‘sorry’ is not logical, but it’s culturally almost impossible to avoid. Mrs. Blightman; let’s call her Bridget, for her name was quintessentially Catholic; did not feel the need. She emerged, demanded that her bags be carried and seemed miffed to have to walk a few yards, to where the taxi waited. To me this said a little something about her character. Tiny alarm bells started ringing in the deepest recesses of my brain.

Taxi. Yes, of course a taxi. There’s public transport from Panama Airport, near the Pacific coast, to Colòn, on the Caribbean coast, where the boat was. But no self-respecting yachtie would contemplate the prospect of foreign public transport.  Navigating the oceans, in a small plastic bucket in a gale, is one thing. A bus in a foreign language, however, is a step too far. So it was a taxi for the hour and a half journey, to Shelter Bay Marina.

This is the only proper, posh, locked, gated marina, near the canal, which is deemed suitable for European and American yachts. I say Shelter Bay’s in Colòn. Actually it’s across the bay, a full half hour’s drive from Panama’s second city. Shelter Bay Marina is a standardised set of perfectly good pontoons, in a sanitised, white painted compound. It feels very much like an ex-pats’ conclave, designed to keep out the revolting locals. It sits at the foot of the western promontory of the large Manzanillo Bay. It’s on the seaward side of a ruined, decaying, American army barracks, which is rapidly being reclaimed by forest and mosquito-ridden swampy bits. The drive there involves traversing three or four miles of said uninhabited, swampy bits.

Once you’re in the marina there’s nowhere to go, unless you phone for a taxi. There’s a slightly depressingly colonial feel to the white buildings, with the wee minimart full of execrable American standard brand names. I don’t know the brands well enough to parody them. Probably stuff like Hershey Bars and cream soda or something. Next to the minimart is an outdoor terrace bar and sort of restaurant, where Trumptonites can get their favourite sorts of processed cheese sandwiches. They are charged only a few orders of magnitude more, for said sandwich, than a Panamanian would expect to pay for a slap-up meal for four.

The environment consists of an acre of sanitised, safe whiteness, with a hint of the tropical palm. The whole lot is securely hidden behind razor wire, turning its back on the decay beyond. Many old Euros and Trumptonians describe this as ‘paradise’. I would be more inclined to describe it as ‘a nightmare’. The sort of nightmare that Patrick McGoohan was always failing to escape from in ‘The Prisoner. A kind of prison for the posh.

It was hard to conceive of a greater contrast, in yachtie holiday terms, between the sanitised, white coated, lackey serviced world of Shelter Bay Marina, and the islands of Guna Yala, a few miles along the coast and a year away for me. Still, I wouldn’t be there for long.

And there was another nightmare in the offing. As we drove into the marina, practically the first thing I saw, teetering on some makeshift props, on the gravel of the marina’s yard, was a battered, knackered, rust coloured hulk. With blotchy, patched paintwork, ripped covers and algae choked lines trailing overboard, it was like a nuclear blast of déjà vu. Bloody Spatula was squatting on the hard, waiting patiently for either Skippy or a merciful death in the breaker’s yard. Clutching at straws, I took succour from the fact that she looked so abandoned and knackered, that nobody was likely to claim her. Adrian suggested that it looked like her skipper had ‘swallowed the anchor’. A good expression but one which conjured up a disturbing image. But why the fuck wasn’t she in the Pacific, in southern Ecuador?

We paid the taxi driver and I dragged my luggage away from Spatula, to the boat which would be my home for nearly three months.

The first thing I noticed as I approached the boat was that I could barely see it. It appeared to be completely enveloped in about half an acre of complicated tent structure. As I drew near I could detect that, beneath its integral marquee, lay a piece of German nautical engineering. Let’s call it a Spürious 38.

It is an odd fact that, though the Germen have a reputation for high quality, top of the range products in a lot of areas, this does not extend to boats. A Bavaria is the cheapest yacht you can buy and is no BMW. Hanses are not the nautical equivalent of a Mercedes. Spürious yachts are a particularly stark example of this curiosity.

Many years ago, an ambitious German bloke, with way more determination than knowledge or ability, had a vision. His name was Heinrich von Spür and he was driven by twin passions; gardening and caravanning. ‘Why not’, he thought, ‘combine these two activities in one fantastic, hybrid structure’. He would design a mobile, transparent caravan, which would double as both a greenhouse and a holiday home. Friends said he was mad. His wife left him and took the kids. But nothing could deter him. Neither bankruptcy nor general ridicule could stop him achieving his dream. As I say, this was a man of true vision. Gradually the mobile greenhouse took shape.

But he didn’t stop there. The truly radical, ground-breaking aspect of this horticultural caravan was that it would float. So he could cultivate mobile tomatoes, even in quite cool climates, in the middle of a boating lake. Ignoring the advice of friends, family and boat designers, and the simple principles of physics, he designed and built his dream.

He called it the ‘Spürious 38’. Undeterred by the fact that it was one of the worst boats ever built, he went into production and churned out several of these ill-conceived, hybrid, greenhouse/caravan/boats. Incredibly, he stuck a mast in the middle of the bloody things, then marketed them, not as canal houseboats or pedalos, but as cruising yachts.

He even went so far as to sail off in ‘Ulrika’, the very first Spürious 38 ever built. He had got as far as the west coast of Ireland before he realised his mistake. But all was not lost. In a small Irish town, he came across a plastic shamrock magnate, with more money than sense. He sold Ulrika to him for a staggering quarter of a million Euros. Heinrich returned to Germany, his pockets bulging with cash, and continued to market a number of Spürious yachts.

The Spürious 38 is a ridiculously beamy affair. It’s a top-heavy ‘boat’, with a large deck saloon. This is fully glazed on all four sides with large, fixed, unopenable windows. It is possible that, given an appropriate heating system, it might be used as comfortable holiday home, on completely flat waters, in cold, northern climes. Fine for sitting on a pontoon in the Baltic, in April, gazing out at the slowly melting ice. Or perhaps for growing tomatoes. An utter nightmare, however, anywhere in the tropics.

In fact the first Spürious I came across was its baby sister, a Spürious 31. This was on a pontoon in the Baltic. I was looking at it bow on, from quite a long way away. It was so beamy and top heavy, the deck saloon so high above the water, that I genuinely assumed it was something like a fifty footer. On wandering along the pontoon, I was amazed to find a wee, truncated, thirty one foot boat.

The large horticultural greenhouse atop Ulrika was the reason that, in Panama, she looked like a tented, Bedouin encampment. Makeshift marquees entirely enshrouded her. Faced with life threateningly hot conditions in the fixed, unopenable greenhouse, Adrian had commissioned a series of about ten, carefully cut canvas sheets. In harbour, on a pontoon, these could be painstakingly erected, all over the deck, in an attempt to keep out the sun. The process of doing this took about an hour. The problem was that, once erected, the tents effectively prohibited access to anywhere on deck. They clearly had to be removed; a process which also took about an hour; before putting to sea.

Heinrich was not keen on human company, so had designed the 38 footer with only two beds. Because it’s basically a canal boat, he put the main, posh, skipper’s cabin, right in the forepeak. At night, the skipper’s head is about six inches from the forestay. Once again, this may be an acceptable arrangement for sitting on a pontoon. At anchor, however still the water, it’s likely to be a tad noisy in the bow. But at sea, crossing an ocean, it is the single worst configuration it would be possible to imagine.

The other berth; my accommodation for three months; is a quarter berth tucked under one side of the cockpit.

Perched high up in the centre of the boat is a huge dining table. This seems to be quite a common design feature on modern yachts. At home, most people don’t choose to fill their living rooms with a massive table, that snugly fits almost the entire room. Leaving just enough space, at either side, for narrow, upright seating. Most folk opt for more laid-back environs, with some comfortable seating. If they are lucky enough to have enough space, a dining table may figure somewhere.

But on many modern boats, old geezers will squeeze their portly bulks behind these gargantuan tables. They will sit, uncomfortably upright, on the little narrow seats, like those from an old-fashioned railway waiting room. They haul their burgeoning pot bellies over the beautifully turned teak fiddles on the table. As their beer gut oozes out over the fine marquetry work, they will say ‘eee, this is a proper little home from home. Look at the workmanship on that!’ Referring, should there be any doubt, to the marquetry, not the stomachs.

But I had never seen a table as large as the one on Ulrika. It filled most of the otherwise useable space in the cabin. The narrow seating, just wide enough to squeeze into, surrounded three sides of the table. In an inspired move, unequalled on any other boat I’ve been on, Heinrich had taken the decision to make the massive, expensively inlaid table fixed, unmoveable. So instead of a handy berth, for when you needed, say, four crew on board, there was a painfully uncomfortable seat, behind a largely pointless slab of wood.

As I observed all this, on first stepping aboard, I began to question Adrian’s assertion that the ‘normal complement of crew’ was four. Where were we all going to sleep? Would I prefer to discover that I had to share a bed with some smelly old geezer, or to sail three thousand miles with bugger-all crew? It was a conundrum.

The only practical aspect of the design that I could detect was that, instead of another berth, Heinrich had installed, under the massive, raised dining table, a sort of miniature garage. It was a tiny ‘workshop’, three feet high, with a mini-work bench, at which you could crouch. There were handy alcoves, filled with wee boxes of tools and other boys toys. I’d have applauded the idea of making a sort of man-shed on a boat, if most boats weren’t already, almost exclusively, entirely man-sheds.

Like all boat owners, and despite the blindingly obvious, catastrophic design failures, Adrian was unconditionally glowing in praise for every tiniest aspect of his boat. After all, somehow he had got the bloody thing here from Ireland. He had done so without sinking or dying, either of hyperthermia or hypothermia, and that was good enough for him. Yachties’ devotion to their own boats and inability to see their failings is, I suppose, a charming little foible, but nonetheless annoying.

I threw my bag on my bunk and stumbled out of the sweltering, un-survivable cabin, sweating profusely and gasping for air.

The first job was to dig out the lump of fragile lead and glass from my bag and fix the shattered bloody Hydrovane. With some difficulty we unbolted the whole apparatus and removed what was left of the offending bit. I’ve never known metal to shear like Hydrovane metal. The broken surfaces look like bits of clay flowerpot you’ve dropped on the floor, or a brick smashed apart with a sledgehammer.

As we struggled with the job, at one point I was consigned to the aft cabin, to find the transom and the hidden inner end of a bolt. As I lay in the bowels of the boat, a shiver suddenly went up my spine. My hackles rose. Through the thin fibreglass I heard a voice, with an Australian accent, which seemed somehow familiar. ‘Ah, g’day mate, bladdy Hydervane gone crook?’ Said the voice. I peered carefully out through a rear porthole. You’ve guessed, of course. It was fucking Skippy. The dottled old fool I’d left in Guna Yala the year before, in the secure and certain knowledge that I’d never see the bugger again.

Cap’n Bligh was currently fixing a shattered Hydrovane. Skippy had been stuck for a full eight days in port, the previous year, due to a shattered Hydrovane. Yet the pair of them launched into a long, enthusiastic conversation, about the wonders of the fantastic, perfectly designed, invaluable, never-bettered Hydrovane. Two boats away, on the other side of the pontoon, an English bloke, on a posh looking forty five foot yacht, heartily agreed. He was distracted from the conversation and recommenced cursing and swearing, as he wrestled with a repair on his boat’s stern. A shattered Hydrovane part.

What were the chances, I pondered, that literally the first fucking person I should see, after boarding Ulrika, would be bloody Skippy the Bush Loony? For the next couple of days I carefully padded about the marina, warily keeping a lookout for the emaciated, geriatric, dottled Aussie. After all, the last communication I’d had was to criticise him to his angelic daughters. Inevitably, after a couple of days, I sidled round a corner near the bog blocks and came face to face with him. I needn’t have worried. I think his memory was too shot to remember what any daughters might have said to him, or any previous contretemps we’d had. He did remember me however and the Face of Infinite Incredulity was, for once, a good laugh to see.

Chapter 2: Buzz Shiteyear

That evening we repaired to the only available nightspot, the overpriced marina terrace bar. Here I was introduced, enthusiastically, to the expert who was the going to crew for us, through the canal, and whose experience and professionalism would be invaluable in ensuring a smooth passage. Apparently, he had been through the canal on numerous occasions. He sailed across the Pacific routinely.

On further questioning, he seemed reluctant to reveal when, and under what circumstances, he had undertaken his Pacific passages. At one point he suggested that we would be able to pick up water at all the islands that lie between Panama and The Galápagos. It transpired that he was talking about Las Perlas. These are wee coastal islands, about 30 miles south east of Panama City. They are the haunt of day trippers. The Galápagos are nine hundred miles to the south west. That’s two North Seas and a Biscay. Bridget drank in the expert’s advice. ‘Oh, so there’s plenty of islands between Galápagos and the Marquesas then?’ asked Bridget. And the expert sort of agreed.

It’s a minimum three thousand mile passage, from Galápagos to Marquesas. It's famously the longest single gap between bits of land, in a standard circumnavigation. He confidently assured us, from his huge experience, that it was no more than two thousand miles and should take us about ten days. And I began to worry quite a lot.

Our expert was a slow talking, drawling, fifty-something ex-GI, from one of the more anachronistic, bigoted southern bits of Trumpland. He was a thickset Rambo-alike, who would probably describe himself as ‘solid’ as opposed to overweight. He sported a bandana, together with all the ridiculous airs of a cliché from a bloodthirsty American video game, involving a lot of guns and camouflage gear.

I was to find that his type was typical of Trumptonians in Panama. He had, apparently, first come to Panama as part of the invasion force, which removed General Noriega in 1989. The general was, you’ll remember, an American sponsored dictator, who had overstepped his remit and needed removing. Our man was still wearing his combat gear and going on about the ‘gawdamn Pan-u-main-yuns’. He made it clear that they, like many other ‘gawdamn crooked hispanics’, needed to be taught a gawdamn lesson by Uncle Sam.

But he; let’s just call him ‘Rambo’ and have done with it; had lived for years in this sanitised marina, with its white coated lackeys, safely behind the razor wire and searchlight towers. Moreover, he lived with his much younger Venezuelan girlfriend and their young son, who was inevitably called Zac. Her English was poor. I can only hope that it was too poor to understand all the racist bile he spouted, about the ‘gawdamn hispanics’. Of which she was, of course, one. It seemed that the deal was, in order to take advantage of his expertise, we would also have to take his non-sailing girlfriend and eight year old child through the canal.

As I mentioned in ‘Sail’s Pace’, the majority of people in Central America and the northern part of South America are clearly of indigenous descent. At least to a very large degree. Despite this, the Trumptonites persist in calling them all ‘hispanic’, or even ‘Latin’. They’ve clearly never met either a Spaniard or an ancient Roman.

Anyway, in the marina bar the conversation, which didn’t involve the Venezuelan wifey, hinged on the parlous state that the gawdamn Venezuelans had got their country into. This was because they had dared to challenge the right of the USA to dictate policy, throughout the Americas. All present were agreed that Venezuela was a much better place ten years earlier, before they had ideas above their station and tried to set their own policies for their country. Silly old hispanics should know better.

The idea that America basically owns all of the Americas has been enshrined, for nearly two hundred years, in the ‘Monroe Doctrine’. Basically the idea of this old, but still extant bit of foreign policy, is that America has the right to dictate terms for the whole of the western hemisphere. It says that America can rule over all of the Americas. The European powers, in the olden days, had colonised most of the world. This wasn’t fair because the Americans should be allowed their colonies too. They were, after all, white people. The terrace bar of Shelter Bay Marina was very much a bastion of the Monroe Doctrine.

The next day was major, proper shopping. Shelter Bay Marina was the last pontoon we’d be able to tie to until Tahiti, 4000 nautical miles away as the crow flies. This is literally true and not one of my exaggerancies. Except in as much as a crow is most unlikely to make the journey unaided. At the Pacific end of the canal, the only pontoons are for local boats. Here the culture does not recognise the social and economic superiority of old superannuated yachties. In Panama you’re no longer a respected, retired bank manager, with a posh yacht and life membership of the Rotary Club. You’re a scruffy old gyppo, who hasn’t the decency to wear a tie, or the money to employ servants. It’s anchoring in the bay for you.

There are no moorings or pontoons in the Galápagos, or in the Marquesas. So, for the next four thousand miles, it’s the anchor to hold the boat and the dinghy to carry the shopping. By contrast, as I write this, in a ‘lockdown’ year, my boat is on an island near Gothenburg. There’s a wee archipelago of twenty or so islands, all around us. I’ve just worked out that there are twenty three guest harbours amongst the islands. That’s twenty three guest harbours, in fourteen square miles. They are all marinas open to the travelling public, with all mod cons. In the Pacific there are literally no marinas; none at all; in an area of fourteen million square miles.

So yes, it makes sense to do all the shopping in Colón. Panama’s second city has a reputation for violent crime and a murder rate almost four times that of even Trumpland, if you can imagine such a thing. So treading its mean streets tends to put the willies up your elderly, middle class yachtie. Nevertheless, in the marina office we arranged a taxi, for the forty minute trip to one of Colón’s largest and, apparently, least dangerous supermarkets.

When we arrived at the shop, we didn’t bother getting the driver to wait for us, despite his urging that this might be a good idea. We sent him on his way, because there were rumours of a free minibus, belonging to the supermarket. This would, it was said, give yachties, together with their tonnes of expensive shopping, a lift back to the marina. Apparently, according to various folk, this was the deal offered by the supermarket.

In the marina, someone had suggested that we might want to phone the shop beforehand, to ensure that that the minibus was available. Adrian unilaterally decided that this was unnecessary. This decision was mostly driven, I discovered later, by the fact that he was unable to speak or understand a word of Spanish. That was understandable, but he was also unable to communicate in anything except rapid, staccato English, littered with impenetrable colloquialisms. This made him more or less intelligible to most native English speakers; it is, after all, how most of us speak; but entirely useless for talking to ‘hispanic types’.

On the way into the large shop, I suggested that, perhaps, we should speak to a manager. Before we started shopping, we could establish whether a minibus was actually available, to transport our mountain of purchases. The suggestion was brushed aside impatiently. We proceeded to fill, to the brim and way beyond, five large supermarket trolleys, with enough food and liquids to last at least until Tahiti. Given the rumoured extreme expense of French Polynesia, there was arguably enough to last Cap’n Bligh until Oz, a good six months later. It pains me to say that most of the liquids were, I’m afraid, non-alcoholic.

Satisfied with our booty, we repaired to the checkout. If Colón was to live up to its reputation for violence and danger, now was the time for it to do so. There were only two checkouts and really a lot of shoppers. Had I found myself queueing behind us, with our thousands of items, I would have been sorely tempted to do us violence.

As we reached the front of the queue, I again suggested that now might be the time to check whether the minibus was available. My suggestion was met by a couple of incredulous looks from Cap’n and Mrs Bligh, together with a ‘well why the feck wouldn’t it be?’ The girl patiently rang through our literally thousands of items, which we stashed in cardboard boxes. We piled the boxes into even more trolleys. As we did so, a large queue of locals slowly built up behind us. I contemplated the reputed level of gun use in this apparently lawless town.

She showed us the display on the till, which read somewhere over six hundred dollars. Another sign of how in thrall to Trumpton