Shelter Bay Marina: evening

       A second post of the day.        

       I am on the water, which I almost always would want to be, but had hoped that at this moment I would be on land.

        I still like the people here.

        Edwin was most apologetic when he came by this afternoon to tell me the haul out was not going to happen.  Everything went wrong with the travel lift today.  I understand and accept.  I have learned over the decades that sometimes I have to detune myself and here I am trying.  Another day doesn’t matter until I run out of days, and if I do on the last passage, I will have fulfilled my own precept as included on the Wit page of the main site:  go out, going forward.

       Not expecting that to happen, I strive to be patient, though as in a poem I have noted that the word has two meanings, neither of which is natural for me.

       Not wanting to miss someone coming by the boat to tell me they were ready to haul us out, I went without lunch today.  As when I waited a few afternoons ago for DHL, there is never going to be a failure because I am not where I might be.

        My routine here is to shower around 5 PM and on my way back to GANNET buy a can of cold tonic from the mini-mart, make a gin/rum/tequila and tonic with a slice of lime that I drink on deck at sunset, listening to music.  Tonight’s Bach was the Sixth Cello Suite performed by Pablo Casals.  Tonight’s drink was tequila and tonic.  I am now on my second, having come below where I ate a dinner of Santa Fe Rice and Chicken at Central.  And I will go onto a third.

       I need Bach these days.  And tequila or gin or rum.  

       My limited Laphroaig is too valuable to touch.

Shelter Bay Marina: mañana

        At 9:45 I walked to the boat yard and was told GANNET’s haul out would  be delayed until around 1:00 PM and that someone would come to the boat to let me know when they were ready for us.

        I returned to GANNET and continued reading THE PATH BETWEEN THE SEAS.  

        1:00 PM passed

        At 2:30 I finished the book and walked to the boat yard where I was told we would be hauled “in about a half an hour” and that someone would come to the boat to let me know when they were ready.

        At 3:15 I was excited to hear a knock on the hull until I was told they can’t haul us today.

        I am now told they will haul GANNET at 8 AM tomorrow.

Shelter Bay Marina: hope

        The cradle is under construction and GANNET is scheduled to be hauled from the water at 10 a.m. tomorrow morning.

        Is it possible she will be in the Pacific Ocean next week?

Shelter Bay Marina: do as I do

        Yesterday DHL said my tiller pilots, whose delivery they fouled up Monday, would arrive “by the end of day.”  When they had not arrived by 3:30 in the afternoon when the marina office closes, I found a folding chair and sat outside the office, reading and checking periodically for updates from DHL, until sunset at 6 PM. 

        When I checked again first thing this morning, delivery was unknown.  By 10:00 the package was out for delivery.  Just after 1:00 it arrived.  I was overjoyed, until I found only one ST2000 in the box.  I ordered two.  

        Online again I find that the other tiller pilot is “delayed in Customs”.  They are identical.  Why one is delayed I do not know.  Still I do have one.

————

        Last night I discovered that the small inverter I used to charge my MacBook and iPad was not working.  I have two spares and dug one out of the waterproof box inside a waterproof bag in which it is stored.  It didn’t work either, so I concluded the problem was in the wiring, which is quite simple.

        However, this morning Agusto picked me up at 8 a.m. to drive into Colon to buy $540 of material for the cradle.  We were supposed to do this yesterday morning, but he didn’t show up until late afternoon.  Three hours round trip.  So I couldn’t go over the wiring until after I returned at 11.

        To get to the ship’s batteries, two Group 24 Lifeline AGMs, stowed beneath the v-berth, I had to untie and remove several bags.  When I did, the problem was obvious.  The head of one of the battery terminal bolts had completely corroded away, along with end fittings on two wires.  Fortunately I had the necessary spares and charging has resumed.

        Perhaps with the material purchase and scheduled delivery later today, action will begin.

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        I tried to upload a six minute video shot at 1080p to YouTube but cancelled when the estimated time remaining to upload was given as three hours.

        As I have mentioned before, I’ll upload when I can, but have no idea when that will be.  Probably not until I’m back in Evanston.

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        I thank Rob for a link to an article about the value of push-ups.

        I don’t ever recall advising that you do as I do.  But perhaps you should.

Shelter Bay Marina: wasted

        Not me.  The day.  And I don’t have enough days left to waste one.

        I realized that once the mast is down, I will find it difficult if not impossible to fit the Torqeedo and steer to the travel lift dock, so I told Steve, the rigger, that we will not lower the mast tomorrow, but at the travel lift dock or when out of the water.  He raised his eyebrows at the last, which causes me some concern.  GANNET’s mast was lowered without difficulty when she was out of the water before being trailered to San Diego.

        I then walked toward the boat yard office and came across Edwin coming toward me with another owner.  I asked when he plans to haul GANNET and was told “when the materials to build the cradle arrive.”  I was not told when that might be.

        This afternoon I received an email from DHL that they had tried to deliver my tiller pilot order from Amazon but that “I was not at home.”  What?

        I took my laptop with this message in it to the marina office where a young woman whose name I do not know, but has always been extremely helpful, called DHL and seemed to establish that their driver had shown up at the marina office but said the package was for a yacht whose name was other than GANNET.  Perhaps he couldn’t read it.  I don’t know.  Whatever he said, the women in the office said that no such yacht was there.  Hopefully this has been sorted out.  Another delivery attempt is to be made tomorrow.

        So I spent the day reading THE PATH BETWEEN THE SEAS.

        I know I wrote this yesterday.  I feel it even more strongly today.  And will try to resist writing it again tomorrow.  The thing I have always disliked about Panama is that my life is no longer under my own control here.  It isn’t in the canal.  It isn’t going overland.  I can only wait until others do their jobs.

        And one of those jobs will be to sort out the jammed furling gear.

        If I ever get out of here, I will never come back.

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        My Bach this evening was The Orchestral Suites, subtitled “To a Young Prince.”  Thank you, Johann.  I don’t get called ‘young’ much any more.  In fact men I consider old call me ‘sir’.  It happened on the dock a few days ago, causing me to laugh and reconsider my obviously false image of myself.

Shelter Bay Marina: waiting; a human error; part 3

   

        7 pm.  Tequila with a slice of lime at hand.  Eva Cassidy singing, “I know you by heart”.  Earlier I was sitting on deck listening to the 1955 Glenn Gould GOLDBERG VARIATIONS and a man walking along the dock said, “Beautiful music.”  It is.

        I did more mast lowering preparation  this morning.  Disconnecting the wires that run to the masthead tricolor and the steaming light.  ‘Steaming light’ and GANNET don’t seem to go together.  I removed the split rings from the shroud turnbuckles and tied a line between the stern corner pulpits to support the mast when it is lowered.  There isn’t anything more for me to do except wait for others to do their work.  That is what I most dislike about Panama:  my life and my boat are no longer in my control, either in the canal or trucking across.  I will be so glad when GANNET is in the Pacific Ocean with her mast up and I don’t need anything from any body and can just deal with the sea.

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        It is a common human failing to postulate  personal failings into universal principles.  You can’t do something, so no one can.   This is not usually true.

        Three examples.

        I don’t read much about sailing any more and when I do, I often find younger sailors reinventing the wheel, thinking they are solving problems that I solved and wrote about decades ago.

         One of these, written by a self-styled ‘expert’ stated that you can’t row an inflatable dinghy.  

         I have rowed Avon Redstarts for forty years.  Carol learned to row a Redstart.  She might need some refresher practice, but she could again.

         Gin has become trendy.  I feel about trendy drinkers as true Christians probably feel about those who only go to church at Christmas and Easter.

      I recently read that no one drinks gin straight.  Gin is for cocktails.  At this moment I would love an ice cold martini, but in the absence of that impossibility, on GANNET I usually drink air temperature gin straight.

         A reader sent me a link to an online sailing forum in which someone wrote that Moore 24s have impossibly small interiors in which no one can move around much less live.

         I sometimes get tired of ignorance.

         It is proven that a tall, 6’1”/1.85 cm, old man can live on a Moore 24 continuously for at least seven months and live well, making ocean voyages, writing superior prose, listening to beautiful music, reading great books,  and drinking from time to time 10 year Laphroaig from a crystal glass.

        So I sip tequila—I have only a third of a bottle of Laphroaig on board and unless I find more in Panama City will save it for San Diego.  There can be no other end of voyage, end of the second part of my life, drink.  And I wait until I regain my freedom from others.

        I don’t know what my future brings, other than death, but I do know that I will never  return to Panama.  I hate—not too strong a word--my dependence on others here.

         The alternatives are the Northwest Passage and Cape Horn.

         The Northwest Passage is cold, though decreasingly so, but it is all coastal, and I am pelagic.

        Cape Horn is at the heart of my life.  But I don’t think that in anything but exceptional conditions GANNET could round it east to west.  Off the Bahamas a couple of weeks ago I couldn’t tack GANNET in less than 180º.  She just doesn’t have the weight.  10’/3 meter waves stopped her dead, and the waves off Cape Horn are often much higher.

        The other way, west to east, is possible on GANNET and would be interesting.  

        I don’t think it will happen.
        I would first have to sail to New Zealand and once there, I would certainly keep GANNET in the Bay of Islands for the two years foreign vessels are now permitted.  That would take me into my 80s.  And if the Hilton Head condo problems are ever resolved, I may become an Atlantic Ocean sailor.  Of the oceans, I think of the Pacific and the Southern as home waters, though I once wrote that the world is my home waters and I agree with the ancients that there is only Ocean.

        So I wait.

        When I was on deck earlier, two hawks were circling high overhead, light wind created ripples on the water, stars begin to appear, and a gibbous moon.

        I love being on the water.

————

        The image is a screen shot of a site that measures ocean passages.

        As you can see the shortest distance from Balboa, Panama, on the Pacific side of the isthmus, to San Diego is 2844 nautical miles which at 4 knots made good would take almost 30 days,  Much of the passage will be light winds and in head winds.  We will have to sail far more than 2844 miles and I doubt we will make four knots good.

        With patience we will free ourselves of others and the land and get on with it.

       

Shelter Bay Marina: lowered

        At 7 a.m. I was on deck to lower the jib before the wind came up.  I need not have bothered.  The jib did not come down and the wind has not come up.

        I unfurled the jib, let go the halyard clutch and went forward to tug down on the luff.  It came 6” and jammed.  I could neither go up or down.  After a few expletives, I stepped onto the dock to have a better angle and looked up.  I can’t see the problem.  I surmise that the top swivel on the furling gear is somehow jammed on the foil.  Presumably we can lower the mast with the jib in place and sort it out at deck level.

        I retired to the Great Cabin and finished my air temperature instant coffee—I haven’t been bothering to heat the water these last few mornings—and my breakfast, which was a combination of oatmeal and a local meusli.  I did not find oatmeal at the supermarket.  I prefer plain uncooked oatmeal, but the combination is satisfactory.

        Returning to the deck, detaching the boom vang, lowering the boom, and removing the mainsail went better than I expected.  I was able to flake the sail into a compact enough bundle that I could slide it through the companionway without having to remove the full battens.  Then forward, then aft onto the starboard pipe berth where it fits nicely on top of the Avon dinghy. The boom and boom vang are also stowed there and the carbon fiber bow sprit is on the starboard side of the v-berth.

        While I was working, Steve, a South African who works with the boat yard as a rigger, came by and we have tentatively scheduled to lower the mast on Tuesday.

        Also while I was working a man came off one of the nearby catamarans, stopped and asked incredulously, “You are living on that?” 

Shelter Bay Marina: iPad GPS; videos; two quotes from Theodore Roosevelt

        Three readers have emailed a solution to my buying the wrong iPad.  I thank Tom, Rudi, and Wayne for informing me of a GPS device that links to iPads via Bluetooth.  Here is the link.  I will buy a Bad  Elf when I can.

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        I am not a videographer, but in an effort to express my experience and at the request of others, I take videos.  I very seldom take still images any more, both because being a cyclops I don’t see as much as I used to and because I seldom do see anything on passages that I have not already photographed in the past four years.  Above is one I did take on the way from Hilton Head.

        I have given some thought to videoing on GANNET and have reached a conclusion and a solution.

        The conclusion and solution are that GANNET’s motion is so quick that cameras have to be mounted before hand and set up so they only have to be turned on when action begins.

        To that end I have placed a mount on the mast facing aft and one in the cabin on the companionway bulkhead facing forward.  Before I sail for San Diego I will also mount a GoPro on a bracket on the stern rail facing forward.  I will place a GoPro on the mast bracket.  And I will use another on a head band.  I will also shoot handheld with my Nikon AW1.

        I am a writer and believe in words, but we will see what I get in video on the way to San Diego.

        I shot more videos than usual on the passage from Hilton Head, including one of going to bare poles in the gale, and tried to vary the perspective.  The Internet here is inadequate to upload them.   A six minute video shot at 1080p showed that it would have taken three hours to upload to YouTube.

         I’ll upload them when I can, but that might not be until San Diego.

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        By chance I came across two excellent quotes from Theodore Roosevelt today.

        David sent me one for which I thank him.  I believe I have posted it here before, but it certainly deserves repetition:

        It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.

        And I decided to reread David McCullough’s masterfull, THE PATH BETWEEN THE SEAS, about the building of the Panama Canal.  I first read it before my first transit in 1985.  David McCullough is a fine writer and the story epic.  He prefaces it with these of Roosevelt’s words:

        Far better it is to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even though checkered by failure, than to take rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy much or suffer much, because they live in that gray twilight that knows not victory or defeat.

        Great joy.  Great despair.  But then of course I am mad.  Though I like to believe that Teddy would not have thought me so.

Shelter Bay Marina: trucking; among behemoths

        GANNET is going to do a portage.  Portages are honorable.  Chicago was founded on a portage.

        No yacht having come forward to offer to tow GANNET all the way through the canal, which it is not certain the canal authorities would have permitted, an agent obtained a quote for a professional tow of $6,000.  You may recall that GANNET only cost $9,000, though I have put multiples of that amount into her.  Probably on tiller pilots alone, of which more later.

        So Edwin of the boat yard here is making arrangements for the little boat to be trucked across.  The truck alone will cost $900.  There will be additional costs to lift GANNET from the water here and put her into the Pacific at Flamingo Marina, and to build a cradle on the truck for her.  I expect that it will all come to between $2,000 and $3,000.  The canal transit fee for a boat less than 50’ long is $800, but with additional expenses a transit usually ends up costing about $2,000.

        The portage will not take place for another one to two weeks, which has enabled me to order two more tiller pilots from Amazon, which of course delivers to Panama.  They did not have ST1000s in stock, so I bought ST2000s which are for bigger boats.  I doubt they will last any longer than the 1000s.  These things are like popcorn.  I can get by with just sheet to tiller steering, but I hope to be able to set the G2 asymmetrical in the Pacific and that requires a tiller pilot.

        With the enforced delay here, I will reprovison on this side.  I inventoried my lunches this morning and have 39, which is probably enough, but I will buy some more.  I already have freeze dry dinners.  And probably enough oatmeal and trail mix, though I will top them up.  I need juice and snacks and paper towels, etc. 

        Several of you have expressed hope that GANNET could cross Panama on her own bottom, even if not under her own power, with concern it will compromise her circumnavigation.  I fear that you haven’t been paying close enough attention.

        GANNET’s daily runs now add up to 26,680.  She has sailed farther than that and by the time she reaches San Diego, assuming she does, the total will be more than 30,000 miles.

        Above is a screen shot from iNavX of the Panama Canal.  The distance from the locks on the Caribbean side to entering the Pacific Ocean is about thirty miles.  Transiting from the Caribbean to the Pacific, a boat moves about twenty-five miles south and twenty miles east. 

        It is a matter of opinion as to whether those twenty to thirty miles by land compromise a voyage of more than 30,000 miles.  However I suggest that anyone who spends much time considering this should rethink their own lives first.  You need to find better things to do.

        Of opinions, only one actually matters to me.

        I repeat a story about Abraham Lincoln presiding at a Cabinet meeting, during which an issue came to a vote.  Everyone present voted, “Nay”, except Lincoln who voted “Aye” and then said, “The Ayes have it.”

        I don’t believe that whether Webb Chiles has circumnavigated five times or six is of much importance.

        If GANNET and I reach San Diego, I will say that I have circumnavigated six times.  The “Aye’s” have it.

————

        Because of her shallow draft GANNET is on the catamaran dock surrounded by behemoths, all cookie cutter equipped, big inflatables with big outboards on stern davits, cockpits like patios, some with flowers in window boxes, Biminis, thick power cords, and lots and lots of stuff.

        In the panoramic view, the marina buildings are on the left.  The red roofs to the right are an abandoned development.

Shelter Bay Marina, Panama: my mistake; stamped; Colon; sympathy

        Zane in New Zealand quickly caught my iPad mistake.  Not needing cellular for my iPad Pro, I ordered the WiFi only model.  It does not have GPS.  For another hundred dollars, the WiFi and Cellular model does have GPS.  Making a false assumption was a costly mistake.  

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        The young Customs official finally today was able to stamp my passport.  He is a nice enough young man, but this was the fifth or sixth time I’ve gone to his tiny office in the past few days and it is only a meaningless stamp.  

        One attraction of trucking GANNET across the isthmus is that I would not have to deal with the Canal officials.  Perhaps my experience is not typical, but the bureaucracy here seems more rigid than on my previous visits.

        I hope to get more information about the crossing later this afternoon.

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        This morning I stowed my washed clothes and organized the cabin.  Put the second Sportaseat on deck to dry, along with a few other cushions.  Carried my foul weather gear for a fresh water rinse in a shower and hung it on the boom to dry.  Telephoned the two Raymarine dealers and was told they have no ST1000+ tiller pilots.

        The marina is surprisingly busy.

        I give the staff here high marks.  They are friendly and helpful.

        As you can see from the above Yellowbrick tracking page screen shot, Shelter Bay is quite isolated, which is in most ways good.

        Almost everyone lives on the other side of the canal.  It is less than three miles in a straight line across the bay, but on potholed roads and a ferry crossing often an hour’s drive, part past shells of buildings that once housed US canal employees, part though jungle.  But the real jungle is Colon, long one of the most dangerous places in the world and only getting worse.  You do not walk in Colon even in broad daylight.  You taxi, as I did yesterday.  The crumbling town looked as I remembered with ten years added dilapidation.  To be born in Colon would be tragic.

———

        Several of you have expressed sympathy that the passage was hard.  While I appreciate the thought, I am quite possibly the person least deserving of sympathy on the planet.  I do what I do because I want to.  No other reason.  No phony claim I am raising money for charity, doing science, or trying to save the world.  And I better than anyone else know what I am getting into.

        I try to write about my experiences truly.  To as the late and unlamented Howard Cossel used to say, ‘Tell it like it is.’ 

        So the passage was hard.  I do hard.  That is part of my job description.  I even take pride in being able to do hard, though I would be glad if it were easy.  I would be glad if that Sunday gale out of Hilton Head were my last gale; but it probably won’t be.  Roger wrote that he checked Windy then and saw highest wind of 43 knots.  I thought it was in the 40ties.
        I wish sailing could be a controlled experiment and that I could simultaneously sail identical passages at different ages and learn if what I consider a hard passsage at 77 would have been a hard passage when I was 37 or 47.  I'll never know.  The ocean does not give senior discounts, and I would refuse one if offered.  So I'lll keep on keeping on.  That, too, is part of my job description.

        GANNET’s interior is dry and pretty well organized.  My wounds are healing.  Several times during the passage waves came from no where and suddenly slammed into GANNET, tossing me about even when wedged in.  I have multiple scabs on both forearms and one thigh.  You will no doubt be pleased to learn that my sore ass isn’t any longer. 

        Part 2 of the puzzle remains before us,