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Sailing Backwards and Bending Over Before The Universe

13 June 2012 | Panama
Capitan
5/1/12 – 6/1/12: Sailing Backwards and Bending Over Before The Universe: In these days it was hard to find a potato chip bag on my boat, but as my buddies from L.A. had been on it for a while this empty Lay’s bag was flying in the air peacefully in the cockpit at the cabin door while the vicious thunderstorm was hauling over us with repeated lightning strikes all around and as 35 knot wind was tipping the overpowered sail configuration over. One guy with slightly white-trashed sunglasses was desperately lifting the mainsail at the mast with clearly entangled cables hanging out from the winch chamber. The other guy looking also at me was tightening the mainsail with a diving boot entangled around the winch underneath the rope next to the flying potato chip bag. I was cracking up at the helm so loud that I could not talk at all.

Well, going a little backwards, we continued the Darien river trip with the hostel crew after the log fest. After we pulled back from Rio Tuira due to logs we entered Rio Sabana and made it to an indigenous village all the way in the end. The difference between the rivers was like night and day. Sabana had clear and deep waters, lots of width and I and New Caledonian older dude had our special plan to gain the respect of Indians and take something valuable to the oldest village guys. I had digged out some brand new fishing hooks and he got some Polynesian t-shirt to give away.
The two oldest guys half smaller than me were showing around the places and telling the history of the tribe how they had to move down from the mountains for food to the river and that fishing was keeping them alive. They were very friendly and offered to organize a traditional dinner with all the costumes and rain dances. Unfortunately the tide did not allow us to stay that deep up the river and both of the boat’s (Ira’s and mine) had some outboard issues limiting the range to go back up.
We timed the exit from the river again with the tides. This happened to be 3am so it was slightly tricky with dozens of fishing pangas everywhere with barely no lights. The two thunderstorms early in the morning hours did not bother us too much. I was able to avoid them based on the radar information. We spent another night at the Perlas and returned happy and tired with new stories to celebrate a bit of the trip.

I started preparing the next surf and dive trip to West Panama toward Costa Rica with couple of L.A. friends coming over in a few days. We had coordinates to surf spots and diving spots and some local guidance from friends working in dive and surf centers. The boat seemed to be solid after some regular maintenance on bunch of little things and wires and organizing everything more seaworthy for going around Punta Mala (a notoriously windy point with 5 knot currents).
We took off with the friends in the morning as tides and currents were more favorable, but right after the diesel run the motors shut down and we started sailing slowly right in front of Panama City. It took me a little while to figure out that filters were clogged up and there was no good diesel left in the tank. I called my Hungarian mechanic friend to speed up any additional issues; immediate answer in the phone with strong eastern European accent “I’m already packing up my tools” So we sailed back, anchored, after airing the systems changing some more filters we finally got the thing running and took off. The wind had built up to straight at nose 16 knots and raised a uncomfortable waves with current going the other way. We were not making much progress and decided to pull in around a long sand bar called Punta Chame for the night. One of the guys went surfing even I warned him about strong currents in this area. In 10 minutes he came back barely making it back to the boat due to the currents.
We continued to Punta Mala, the weather was nicer, hot and sunny and the wind was against us of course. After the sunset we got around the Punta Mala in a light wind. Then I took a rest and let the guys navigate to Playa Venao to get some sleep again. The boys excited to open the rum reserve on the way and I woke up in a concerned voice; “We passed the anchorage already, I don’t know where we are” Turned out that the island did pass us from a good distance and that all was great, but due to the rum trick the guys forgot to follow up the course and forgot where we were going. After a real loud arrival and all the sailing lines attached to wrong places and with seriously random knots and couple of small items missing from the deck we slept well and continued toward Santa Catalina.
My plan had been to do a straight shot 180 miles in 30 hours by using the currents and motor sailing. So far we had spent 48 hours and still had almost 100 miles to go. Currents and winds were constantly against us. We checked about 8 surf breaks on the way to Santa Catalina island, but there was not much happening. We had fun on the boat though. Mujero ( one of the guys new nick name) had succeeded to clog up the shitter with standard toilet paper ( big no no on boats ) and Mikko had taken an emergency dump on top of the other shit. So now we had the full load in there plus all the hoses full of the same stuff. Afraid of screwing things up even worse by opening the hoses and filled up all bilge and floors with the same shit we had postponed the project for couple of days. It did not get any better, the smell started to bother us and we constantly had to find creative ways to take our dumps every day.
After a really rainy thunder night 60 miles far away we finally got to surf neighborhood and launched boards at Punta Brava. The current was very strong again, but it felt doable with a board. That was almost doable; after 20 minutes constant battling against the current I was too tired to paddle in to a 8 ft. wave and decided to head back to the boat. 100 yards away the current got even stronger so I started to think options. After giving it another 10 minute shot paddling as hard as I could it seemed impossible to get back to the boat. I was yelling 200 yards backward of the boat to Mujero to through the dinghy rope over board. It did work out as the dinghy was coming real fast toward me and I got to hop on and get back.
The next surf break was the main one at the island. It was a nice wave but overcrowded as the land people had access to it. We found some neighboring surf breaks that didn’t have any crowds and dinghy was a perfect way to move along the nearby coast. The town was populated by some semi-annoying gringos who had built their houses for the surf and tranquility of the distant third world village. Other than that the atmosphere was very laid back, amazingly green and beautiful, full of wild life including sea snakes, jungle snakes, spiders and monkeys. At the surf lineup we had a teenage sea turtle hanging out with us.
After surfing couple of days we decided to head back to Panama as the flight schedule of the buddies was not forgiving.
In very light wind after 5 minutes of getting the anchor up the engine died. The filters were clogged up again and changing those got some air in the system. I made the decision to keep sailing toward Panama City where as the other option would have been to anchor and start fixing stuff without moving. So about an hour later changing filters and bleeding the system starter motor slowed down and started making a grinding sound. Shorting the system didn’t help and then the solenoid died. Also there was a fairly strong looking thunderstorm that seemed to head directly on us. We were between a large island and the main land in shallow waters where navigation was needed. Also after loosing the engine power and having already an emergency jibe in place after ripping my genoa and storm jibe in Costa Rica I new that loosing this sail would mean anchoring in strong currents in narrow channels with bunch of rocks on the coast and bottom with no access to any parts or mechanical tools.
The thunderstorm was travelling so quick that our light wind and low speed kept us just backside of the micro disturbance. But then we saw this massive thunderstorm in the horizon that filled up half of the sky and was coming over very quick. I started telling my guys this is that will happen and need to happen right now. It took them about 30 minutes to get their harnesses on. It was not a good sign. Right at that moment 25 knot wind raised up in couple of seconds, we still had the second reef on, needed the third. The autopilot was out of the game. Things needed to happen quickly. I gave the helm to Mujero while running to the mast dropped the reef. Mujeros first time helm experience was not very good help. We nearly got sideways to the gust with totally screwed sail configuration; the main sail was loose the both ways; topping lift and reefing flapping like crazy, at the same time the jibe was too tight. Yelling as loud as I could ( videos will follow ) “nyt lahtee” (=now hell breaks loose) and “lukko” (=lock ) repeatedly. Nobody had time to tie the harnesses. I was running straight from the mast to the helm with giant leaps while the boat had nearly 40 degree tilt just in time to save the front sail. I told the guys to tighten the mains topping lift, reefing and the sail itself at the same time when loosening the jibe and turning the boat back close to the wind eye.
Now you guys can read the first chapter again to get the chronological order right.
So I was just laughing away and as the water was pouring so hard from the sky that the cockpit floor panels were floating around I decided to pour a small rum and coke for myself. The guys started laughing as well.
After we had sailed through the storm the wind died right at the sunset. We were still able to float around one knot toward a point of a big island on starboard side at the river mouth hoping that the tide current out from a river system would take us out from there. We did get out after few hours and the first 5 hours were able to sail a bit and sometimes even more up to 6 knots. My nightshift started around midnight when the wind had died and we were sailing the aft to the direction we were going. As the rudder did little in less than 1.5 knot speeds including the current the guys had figured out that since the boat was moving backwards faster with sails totally screwed then they were happy to make this 1 to 1.5 knots backwards.
The next 72 hours was mostly floating around sometimes backwards sometimes forwards with sails all over the place. There was no way to make it to an anchorage without wind. Also the time pressure to make it to the flights among the others that the rum, food and water was low. The slowest 24 hour time period over the 12 years of sailing this boat was the second day; making 10 miles forward and probably 25 miles including sailing backwards.
At this point the shitting situation started to get hot and smelly. We decided to execute a sting operation in to the toilet so that each one had our own task to be able to breath outside after doing each one a dedicated thing. It was a great success. Cleared out toilet where we all needed to get immediately. Mujero felt so bad of his shitpaper clog up that he ended up cleaning and painting the whole thing like new. My toilet has never smelt better, it was like flowers and nature’s best combined.
Also as we didn’t have anything to do we started creating creative ways to crank up the motor. One great idea was to use an impact drill to crank it directly from crankshaft bolt. Another one was to fix the starter motor, but finally when we had it taken off and in pieces the best idea seemed to be to pour it full of rum, slap it back together and hope the best. So we gave up.
In the last night of these three we were all tired, there was absolutely no wind so we decided to take the sails down and sleep 3 miles off the coast drifting backwards 1.5 knots toward also the coast and breaking waves. Every 15 to 30 minutes somebody got paranoid that ‘NOW IT IS PICKING UP’ and woke up everybody to raise the sails and 5 minutes later take them down again and get some more sleep. Finally somewhere around 3am a slight tiny little wind started blowing and also a weird crazy strong current started to push us directly in to a lighthouse point with rocks at 3 knots. I had to wake up a few times out of my shift to tell the guys it is all good cause the currents don’t go against the land like that so in 4 hours we made it around this rocky point very close and picked up good morning breeze to travel 6 knots toward Playa Venao to anchor and leave the boat and get the guys to their planes with a 6 hour taxi ride. There was some last moment panics when the wind died and came back again, but we made it to the anchorage and got the taxi and even made it to celebrate the 9 day trip to Panama City. The guys missed the famous 17 dollar haircut, but made it to their flights where as I had the starter motor with me and was about to get it fixed and return to take the boat back from 140 miles away from the City.
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