As I type this, I am sitting in the relative comfort of a small, cramped regional jet flying out of Panama for what I suspect will be the last time for quite a while. That I feel comfortable in this narrow, cramped aluminum tube is a testament to how uncomfortable I have been for the last year while trying to fix our poor sailboat on the edge of the jungle in Caribbean Panama. I have been bested by this schizophrenic little isthmus of a country. Schizophrenic, because the Pacific side is the first world glitz of Panama City, a mini NYC complete with skyscrapers, high end shopping centers where purses cost more than my first [and actually, current] car, and some of the finest restaurants around. The Caribbean side, however, has the City of Colon, an impoverished berg forgotten and ignored by the Panamanian Government. The last significant municipal project there involved some repainting done just prior to the death of President Calvin Coolidge. I am not kidding when I say that the City is used by Hollywood to double as the slums of Port au Prince, Haiti. A city where daytime muggings are de regeur.) I say I have been bested by Panama because I am flying out without having been able to repair our beloved Third Wish after the villain and all around piece of shit Roy Bravo caused our boat, along with our cruising dreams to be dashed against the rocks one night, a year ago, in 30 knots of wind near Colon.

It is hard to overstate how difficult it is to complete significant repairs on a boat wrecked in Colon. A project such as ours required: (1) the ability to obtain the necessary parts; (2) a skilled workforce; (3) a workforce with a reasonable work ethic; and (4) weather conditions which allow you to do the work necessary to complete the project. Undertaking a project such as the repair of Third Wish without one of these necessary attributes is mind-numbingly difficult. Doing it without any of this quartet of prerequisites is simply impossible. Here are just of few examples of what I encountered at the jungle's edge:
--One of the guys who was supposed to be working on the hull spent most of his time sitting on a stump under the boat watching the world go by. While I support watching the world go by, I cannot use insurance company funds to start a "watch the world go by foundation" which would financially support people who want to get paid for this. I wished him well and had him taken off our project. He now sits under someone else's boat.

--You ran out of what!?!?--The boat was being repaired in a boat yard, i.e. a place whose raison d'etra is to repair boats, the majority of which are made of fiberglass. One day I came down the ladder while I was trying to remove a fuel tank (by myself) and noticed that no one was working on the hull. The guys were there, they just were not working. I asked why. They told me that the boat yard had run out of the filters for the mandatory protective masks. This seemed shocking to me, given that the singular purpose of the boat yard is to repair fiberglass boats, and much of that work requires the worker to wear protective masks. It took days before the filters arrived, significantly delaying the project.

--My kingdom for a sander-- Before new fiberglasss can be applied, damaged fiberglass has to be ground off. Grinding fiberglass requires an electric sander. One day, I noticed only one of the guys on the grinding team was working. I asked what happened: "The sander broke." "Bummer" said I. So I went to the yard office to get them another sander. Turns out, the yard only has a couple of electric sanders. I was told I had 2 choices: (1) the yard could requisition another sander, but it would take a while; or (2) I could front one of the workers the $200 necessary to buy another sander in town and have the yard credit me that money in a future bill. To keep things moving I chose the latter. It nevertheless took 2 additional days for someone to find the right type of sander.

"Jesus' car broke"-- While grinding out old fiberglass takes only a little skill, reapplying new glass correctly takes a bunch. There were only a couple guys in the yard with this skill set. They guy assigned to my project was Jesus. (I naturally thought this was a good omen as I heard he was not only an adept carpenter, and thus knew his way around tools, but also pretty well connected.) One day in May, Jesus did not show up. (If it was April, I obviously would have been much more concerned.) I asked around, and no one knew where he was. He did not show up the next day either. This was very unlike Jesus. He has a strong work ethic and takes great pride in his work (which, by the way is excellent). "Where is Jesus?" I asked again. "No se" again was the response. This went on for a full week. When he finally resurfaced, I asked what happened. It turns out his car broke, and no one in Colon could figure out how to fix it. Another week lost.

Time to build an ark-- Mid-April brought the beginning of the rainy season in Caribbean Panama. I live in a coastal desert, so I don't know rain...or at least didn't. Never in my life have I seen so much rain. Rain so thick you can't see across the street. This blinding rain occurs, with increasing frequency as summer wears on, until it is raining virtually all day, every day. When this happens, understandably, all work has to stop. By the middle of May, very little was able to be done due to the weather.

I finally had to give up until the rainy season was over. Nothing was getting done, and because we needed a least two 48 hour periods of dry weather for the next stage of the project, nothing was going to move forward until the rains stops in late December. So, in mid-July I closed up the boat, had it moved into the long term storage yard and, exhausted, dirty, and defeated, I went home to Carolyn, Gilligan and Huntington Beach, California. I also booked a return ticket for mid-December to get work going again.

As I got closer to my mid-December departure date, I started to dread the idea of going back to Panama. Panama, as you can imagine, had become associated with nothing but loss for me. (Panama is where I lost my boat, the company of my wife [because there was no need for 2 people to suffer through the repair process], my mom, and a lot of what little self-confidence I had amassed as a cruising sailor. But I had a job to do and I was determined to see it through to completion.

The first step was to pack. I have learned to pack like a cruiser. Pair of shorts: check. 3 t-shirts: check. 5 pair of surf trunks: check. 0 socks: check. 3 suitcases full of expensive boat parts: check. Voila, packing complete! Ten minutes later (I am a habitually late, though efficient, packer) Carolyn drove me to LAX, and after a very sad good-bye, I truged to my flight. I will admit to being a bit distracted as I flew toward that sliver of land that divides the 2 great oceans. So distracted, that, upon arrival, I left my backpack in Panamanian customs, a fact that I did not realize until the end of a $30.00 cab ride to my hotel in Panama City (the plane got in way too late to get to Colon, on the other side of the Isthmus). I inventoried the contents of my pack in my head: passport, wallet, money, camera and all my lenses, computer, kindle, Ipod, and finally, about 20 charging cords. "OH FUCK" thinks I.

For those that know me, I can do panic! Its not my fault. Its genetics. I blame my great uncle's wife. For me, one of the manifestations of true FARBian panic is I lose any ability to speak a foreign language. Thankfully, the guys at the hotel know me and were able to interpret whatever I said, called the airport and asked them to look for and hold my backpack. My friends loaded me into the very expensive (a fact that I later learned) hotel van and got me to the airport. In my panic, I was a little fuzzy on where I was supposed to go, so I chose the Panamanian State police office near Customs. I ran into the office wild eyed and tried to explain to them that I had left my pack in Customs and it contained virtually everything I needed. The cop looked at me, sneered, and yelled in a very demeaning way: "en espanol." Remember, I was in a cold panic at the time, thinking I had possibly lost everything. Thankfully, some Spanish came back. Unfortunately, the only Spanish phrase that came back was "puta tu madre." Fortunately, my internal editor was not in my pack, so I had the good sense not to talk. Another nicer cop stepped in and thankfully saved me. He took me into the Customs area through a secret back door and located my pack. Crises averted!

The next day, I loaded my 3 suitcases full of boat parts into a cab and headed out to Colon, or what people in Panama City refer to as "Why the hell do you want to go there?" My trepidation about the potential condition of our boat worsened as we drove the 40 or so miles from the Pacific to the Atlantic. We pulled into the parking lot. I recognized her from afar. That, I thought, was a good omen. Sadly, not so much. Although she was in bad condition when I left, she was in substantially worse condition when I got back. The list of things that no longer worked was long, and included some of the only creature comforts that I had left onboard, like lights, the propane system, and the refrigerator. Moreover, the topsides had blistered badly in the crap that passes for weather in Panama. In fact, it was so wet mushrooms were literally growing on the binnacle. This newfound realization that the boat was actually deteriorating in the yard, when combined with the additional realization that I was now going to be living alone for God only knows how long in actually worse conditions than the year before catapulted me into a deep funk. (This funk stuff is kinda unlike me, and it startled my wife, who said she became really concerned when I expressed my dissatisfaction about how the yard was handling the project when I said: "I'm gonna burn this mutherfuckin place to the ground!") It became fairly clear to me that if I stayed the course, the work on the boat would never be done. It would simply be a continual 2 steps backwards for every one step forward. Thus, after several calls to my stateside support crew (thanks Carolyn, Dad, David and Sara, Mark, and Tommy) I decided on potential courses of action: (1) see if the Insurance company would total out the boat; or (2) see if the insurance company would help me move the boat to either the east or west coasts of the United States so that we could get the boat to a place where she could actually be fixed properly. Exercising a little "fuck this," I booked a flight home, just in time for that most Jewish of holidays, Christmas. (Notably, when I arrived home, Carolyn had decorated out little apartment with all the Christmas trimmings. I loved it!!!)

Soon after I got home I called our underwriter and broached both the "total-out" and "shipping" ideas. I was hoping to get a quick answer, so, to sweeten the pot, I offered to split the cost of shipping Third Wish back to the states. They got back to me 3 days later and asked that I present them with some quotes from boat shipping companies. (This is actually a thing. There are companies who do nothing but load private boats on freighters and haul them to various places around the world.) After several phone calls, the low bidder turned out to be United Yacht Transport ("United"). They said they would ship her to Ensenada, Mexico for $19,500. I presented this to my insurance company. Two days later they called and not only agreed to contribute, but to pay for the whole thing, including whatever it would cost to tow our baby out from the yard to the waiting freighter. (Thanks Novamar & Geico!!!) It took me all of 30 seconds to call United to arrange for Third Wish's passage.

**WARNING, BORING LAWYER STUFF AHEAD. **
In my 30 years of practicing law, I had never done any work in admiralty law (although I had thought about it in law school when I was under the mistaken belief that you got to wear a cool uniform and one of those Captain Crunch hats along with all the medals and the bitchen epilate things. Turns out I was mistaken, so I went into land use law instead). I was nevertheless interested to read the shipping contact United had sent me. PRO TIP: if you are ever going to contract to ship a boat, YOU NEED TO BUY CARGO INSURANCE!!!! It turns out that there are provisions in shipping contracts that make you, not the shipper liable for all sorts of stuff. My personal favorites are the "General Averages" and "New Jason" clauses. Here is how they work. Suppose you are shipping your $50,000 boat on a freighter that has several multi-million dollar yachts on it. (There are always multi-million dollar yachts on these yacht shipping freighters.) Assume that during the voyage, the freighter runs into a situation where the crew decides that, for the safety of the freighter, they need to jettison one of the multi-million dollar yachts into the deep. This decision could be because of bad weather, or a fire on the yacht, or any number of things. If this happens, the shipping company is NOT responsible for the loss. Rather, everyone who is shipping anything on that freighter is proportionately responsible to reimburse the poor dude whose multi-million dollar yacht was sent to Davy Jones Locker. Your liability could be well over the value of the boat you are shipping. The only way to protect yourself from this absurd result is with specialized cargo insurance.

***OK, BORING LAWYER STUFF DONE***
Once we contracted for the passage, United told us Third Wish would be on a ship named the Lisbon Trader, and that she should arrive in Colon, Panama, sometime between February 9 and 15. They also told us that they could give us a better ETA as the shipping window approached. On January 31, Carolyn and I flew down to Panama to get Third Wish ready for the trip. We reinstalled the rudder, along with 2 fuel tanks and 3 water tanks, rebuilt 2 bilge pumps, and installed 3 thru-hull fittings so that she could be placed back in the water and towed out to the Lisbon Trader when she arrived. We also contacted a boat towing company who agreed to tow Third Wish out of the marina and into the industrial port in Colon for loading. Ture to Panamanian form, however, 4 days before the Lisbon Trader was due to arrive, the guy from the towing company said that he no longer had any towboats available as a "better" job came up. With the help of "Edwin the Kind" at Shelter Bay, we were put in touch with Enrique Plummer of Plummer Marine Services, who it turns out is not only connected with a towboat, but is United's agent in Colon. He arranged a tow for us and stayed in close contact regarding the arrival of the Lisbon Trader.

The Lisbon Trader arrived at about 2 a.m. on February 12. Enrique told us to be ready to be towed at 8 a.m. Like clockwork (broken clockwork) the tow boat arrived at about 9:45. Enrique told the tow boat crew about the tribulations we had been through, and as a result, they were wonderfully kind to us. They put out lots of fenders and carefully side-tided to us. We held our collective breaths as they towed us out of the marina and past the reef that had caused so much damage to us and our boat. They towed us across the mouth of the Panama Canal and out to a protected area where we anchored to await the time the Lisbon Trader would be ready to lift Third Wish aboard. Once we were anchored, the tow boat untied from us and sped off to collect the other boat that was going to ride the Lisbon Trader to Mexico, the Princess II, a multi-million dollar 90 foot express cruiser.

Two hours after we dropped anchor, we got the call that "the Trader" was ready for us. The tow boat again came along side and again tied up. I pulled up our anchor as they nudged me forward. Once I got the anchor secured, we were towed into the industrial portion of the port of Colon. There, looming before us like a giant green...uh...giant was the Lisbon Trader, loaded with lots and lots of boats much larger and more expensive than ours. She even had a 150 foot passenger ferry strapped down to her decks.

The ship was a beehive of activity. Two boats had just been offloaded and were being tied up alongside awaiting the arrival of their delivery crews to liberate them from the mothership. Meanwhile, we quickly became the focus of the loading crew's attention. The loadmaster said it might be necessary for me to undo our backstay so the crane could fit the big straps under our hull to lift us out of the water and onto the Trader's cargo deck. As I started to loosen the backstay, a guy from the ship put on a mask and snorkel and jumped into the water to look at the underside of Third Wish in order to assess the correct location of the lifting straps. (Lloyd Bridges has nothing on this guy. His job is to jump into the messy, oil filled water of industrial ports with nothing but a mask and snorkel. In order to communicate with the crane crew, he positions himself between the hull of the freighter and the hull of the boat being lifted. This puts him in a position to be crushed like a grape in the event that the wake of a passing boat causes the two hulls to come together.) After diving under our boat, he decided that it was not necessary for us to remove the backstay. The loadmaster thus instructed me to put the backstay back together again. It took me about 10 minutes to do this. When I was done, however, I noticed it felt like we were moving a bit differently that I was used to. As I looked up from the back stay turnbuckle, I was shocked to see that we were about 30 feet off the surface of the water, and still rising. For whatever reason, they decided to lift the boat while we were still on it. BITCHEN!!!!! (This was really a thing on my bucket list. And, to make things even better, there was no extra charge for this E-ticket ride.) Our upward trajectory stopped when the deck of our boat was level with the deck of the Trader. Still suspended in the lifting straps next to the Trader, but now about 50 feet off the surface of the water, the loadmaster instructed us to climb over both our lifelines and the Trander's rail on to the freighter's deck. I think it was at this moment that I came to understand that OSHA does not apply in Panamanian water. Carefully, and with about 6 times the normal amount of adrenaline typically coursing through our bodies, we climbed onto the Lisbon Trader deck.

Once aboard the Trader, we were greeted by an official-looking guy with a clipboard who started yelling in Spanish to anyone and everyone around. Carolyn, who speaks flawless Spanish, relayed the following conversation:
Clipboard: "What the hell are these people doing here? They are not authorized to be on this ship. I am Port of Colon Security and you must get off this ship immediately! Look at my badge!
Me: "Honey, what the hell is he yelling about?"
Loadmaster (to clipboard): "They (pointing to us) were on the boat we just loaded. The boat they are going back on is not here just yet, it will be here in a few minutes and we will load them on to that boat as soon as it pulls alongside."
Clipboard: "No! You need to get them off this ship NOW! They are not authorized to be here. GET THEM OFF NOW!!!! Don't you see my badge?!? NOW DAMMIT!"
Me: "Honey, he seems mad. I think he is gonna have a seizure."
Loadmaster (again to Clipboard): "We have no place to put them yet."
Clipboard (to Loadmaster): "You can them in the fucking water for all I care, they just cannot be here. Move it! NOW! Look, at this badge!
Loadmaster (to us): "Uh...follow me."

The loadmaster led us back along the ship, and stopped at a rope ladder dangling down the Trader's hull the full 50 feet to the water, which, from the deck, looked really far down. He pointed to one of the boats they off-loaded but was still tied to the Trader's hull and matter-of-factly said: "You guys climb down this ladder and jump on to that boat." Being pretty sure I misunderstood, I said: "Huh?!?" "Yea," says he. "Climb down this rope ladder and jump onto that boat."

Let me put this into perspective for you. This is a ROPE ladder, kinda like the troops used to climb down to landing craft from the troop carriers on D-day. It is pushed up against the hull of the freighter, so that you need to push the rope out away from the hull just to be able to grab it. It's a 50 foot drop, and there are no safety attachments between you and the ladder. If you miss any of the rope rungs, you freefall down the side of the freighter into the water. "Off ya go," said the Loadmaster. Before I had time to contemplate this, I was climbing over the Lisbon Trader's safety rail and on to the first rope rung of the ladder. This was pretty damn cool!!!!! I started down the rope ladder and, as I was pushed up against the Traders' hull I thought to myself, "Wow, this boat REALLY needs a paint job." (It is crazy what thoughts pop into your head while under stress.) Down and down I went until I got the bottom. It was only then that it dawned on me: the boat they wanted me to jump onto was still a full 20 feet away (laterally, not vertically) from the bottom of the ladder. Clinging to the ladder I shouted up to the Loadmaster: "Hey, you gotta move the boat closer so I can jump." A couple of crew members grabbed the lines to the boat and started to pull the boat over. After a few minutes I figured the boat was close enough. I pushed off the Trader's hull and jumped onto the swim-step of the boat. MADE IT!!!

Once I was safely on the side-tied boat, it was Carolyn's turn. Apparently realizing that sending me down the ladder with no safety line was super stupid, they tied a big webbing strap around Carolyn's waist, wrapped it around the Trader's safety railing, and helped Carolyn over the side and onto the rope ladder. As she climbed down, they belayed her. What a STUD Carolyn is!!!! Hand over hand, and still slightly crippled due to her recent surgery for a torn Achille's tendon and broken heel, she made her way down the ladder. I grabbed her when she got the bottom and pulled her on the side-tied boat. As I did, we saw our Third Wish go up and over the rail to her waiting cradle somewhere in the center of the ship. Soon thereafter, our tow boat arrived to take us back to land. We watched as Third Wish was being tied down for the trip up Central America to Ensenada, Mexico. Once we got to land, we wasted no time in packing up and getting the hell out of dodge. With luck, in less than two weeks our beloved Third Wish will be offloaded in a much better place. And at that, we will continue the story later.

As I sit here, getting ready to close up the boat and put her away for the coming deluge that is the rainy season here in Panama, I am reflecting on this past cruising season. That October day when we flew out of Orange County bound for San Salvador, El Salvador, seems so very long ago. Since that time, we have had more curve balls thrown at us this season than most guys in Baseball’s major leagues. We have been tested. We had the eye of an out-of-season hurricane pass over the top of our mast in a remote cove on the Pacific boarder of Nicaragua and Costa Rica. We were the victims of credit card fraud, twice in 2 weeks, which resulted in a 3 week layover in Bahia Papagayo, Costa Rica. We rode out a rare earthquake in one of the older buildings in Panama. We were piloted on to a coral reef at night in 30 knots of wind by the guy Roy Bravo, our Canal Agent, put on our boat, requiring us to abandon ship. I lived alone on a broken boat at the edge of the Panamanian jungle for 4 months, attempting to manage and assist in the repair of the damage to our Third Wish under difficult and challenging circumstances. And finally, my beloved mom passed away 2 days before I came home for a visit. Yeah, it was in many respects a very difficult year, and one I do not wish to relive.

It would be easy to focus on the less than enviable elements of this year’s cruise. But focusing on the negative for too long is both depressing and counter-productive. Moreover, giving in to that temptation would ignore the positive elements of this experience. Carolyn and I saw unimaginable beauty in both Pacific Costa Rica and Panama. We went weeks in secluded anchorages never seeing another human being. We had the pleasure of sharing spectacular sunsets with friends visiting from home (thanks Becky, Bob and Tommy). We made some wonderful friends who, as is always the case in the world of cruising, scattered with the wind to other destinations on the planet, only to be seen again in some future time, and in some far off port.

I think one of the biggest takeaways for me, the confirmed luxury-hotel-loving extrovert, was learning that I could live all alone while utilizing a foreign language a foreign country, in a broken boat with no refrigeration, no shower, and no toilet, and not only survive, but, to some extent flourish. Don’t get me wrong, I have lived alone before. But I always had friends nearby. I was always able to go to a store and easily communicate what I was looking for. Simple acts of hygiene maintenance were an unremarkable part of every day. This experience was different. I have never felt so alone in my life. Primarily, I was without Carolyn, my wife, partner, and the person who makes the impossible possible, and the intolerable tolerable. I had no one around who knew me. Friendships, to the extent that they were made lasted approximately a week or so when the newfound acquaintance would untie from the dock and head somewhere else. Moreover, I had to manage a major boat rebuilding project using the only 11 Spanish words I knew, and three of them were pronouns! And finally, simple acts of hygiene required me to descend eighteen foot ladder and go on a hike. In spite of this, I was able to complete about 75% of the work necessary to get our boat back into working order. In addition, not only did I not become suicidal (murderous perhaps, but not suicidal), I was able to maintain a relatively happy disposition most of the time. I thus end this cruising season feeling pretty decent, all things considered.

As difficult as this season was, I already know I will look back at the “shipwrecked period” of my life (yea, it already has a name) somewhat nostalgically. I had an experience that few people have had, and survived. I lived at the edge of the Panamanian jungle. Each morning I was greeted with all the fantastic beauty a verdant jungle provides. My background soundtrack was provided by a troop of howler monkeys. I met, befriended and said good-by to sailors from all over the globe: U.S., Canada, England, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Germany, France, Belgium, Switzerland, Israel, Brazil, Peru, Korea, Japan, South Africa, Australia, and New Zealand. I greatly improved my, albeit still pathetic, Spanish. I learned how to repair a damaged hull on a sailboat, and, I even got to binge-watch both Chuck and Archer.

Sometimes life throws you a curve ball. And sometimes you’re the designated batter for an entire inning of curve balls. So you stand there and, to the best of your ability, you swing. Life is like that. Let’s hope the next inning is better.

As of this writing, we have come to understand that the best way to enter Shelter Bay marina is to motor down the channel leading from the Panama Canal until you reach the breakwater. At the Breakwater, turn left into a secondary channel that takes you right into the marina. Unfortunately we did not have this information when we exited the Canal. We were in Omar's hands, and because he wanted to get off the boat as soon as possible so that he could head for home, he decided to take a short-cut, a fact that he did not bother to disclose to us. Rather than following the channel, Omar had us exit the channel in the middle and put us on an obtuse angle to the Marina entrance. This required us to slalom the large ships anchored between us and the Marina, and to do so both in the dark and with the strong winds and building seas occasioned by the Norther. But since we had gotten used to strong winds, we persevered, understanding from our Agent that we were in "good hands" and we had his "best man" aboard to show us the way.

As we neared the Marina, we could see both the "green" and "red" lights marking the Marina's entrance. At this point, Omar told us to head closer to the Green light. This, however, was exactly the opposite of what we should have done. As we got closer and closer to the Green light, we similarly got closer and closer to shore due to the obtuse angle he directed us to take. Soon, Omar seemed confused. He stared out over the port side of the boat as if lost and asked if we had a flashlight. At about the same time, our boat rose on a large swell and landed with a shuddering thud on something very hard. It was as if someone had plucked the boat from the water and dropped us on a concrete roadway. I immediately put the boat in reverse in an effort to pull us backwards off of whatever we had just landed on. Unfortunately, she would not budge. I was initially mystified because the charts did not show a shallow spot where we were currently stuck. Moreover, although the depth gauge showed that we were in shallowing water, the initial reading showed that we had enough water under the keel to be floating, even though we obviously were not. Then there was another shuddering thud accompanied by a very loud grinding noise. Clearly, we had not only hit a reef, but giving the weather conditions, we had hit a reef that we were not going to be able to get off of on our own power.

I lost it. Anger was flowing out of my body (and mouth) like water out of a fire hose. I turned to Omar, our agents "best guy;" the person who we were told to trust to get us into the very marina at night that we did not wish to attempt to enter until daylight. I yelled at the top of my lungs: "OMAR--WHAT HAVE YOU DONE?!?!?" YOU FUCKING ASSHOLE!!!!!" (I may or may not have also threatened to implant my foot into certain of his orifices.) Now, the wind and waves were pushing us against the reef such that every five seconds or so there was another shuddering thud and the concomitant grinding howl of fiberglass meeting coral. It was the worse sound I had ever heard. It sounded like our beautiful boat was in its death throws. With every wave, she now started to lean over more and more: first 5 degrees, then 10, 20, 30. All hell was breaking loose and this progressive listing was not stopping. When she got to 60 degrees, which happened very quickly, we made the decision to abandon ship because she would soon start taking on water over the gunwales and into the boat, if her hull did not puncture first. Mind you, this all happened in the space about 3 minutes.

Tom saw that I was becoming incapacitated with anger, and took charge. He told Carolyn to put out a mayday call. Carolyn immediately got on the VHF radio and started calling "mayday" with the necessary information for a rescue party to respond. Back above-decks, we tried to launch the dinghy from its davits so that it could serve as our life boat. This proved very difficult due to the listing of the boat and the fact that we had the dinghy tied up and secured for the passage through the Canal. Thus we had 2 webbing straps diagonally running from the floor of the dinghy's bow to the davit at the stern of the dinghy, and from the floor of the dinghy's stern to the bow davit. In addition, we had a webbing strap running from the floor of the dinghy's bow to the bow davit, and from the floor of the dinghy's stern to the stern davit. Finally, we had the dinghy bow and stern secured through the hoisting lines running through 3:1 blocks on the tops of each davit. Not surprisingly, this very quickly became a tangled mess. I grabbed the sharp knife I keep at the binnacle for occasions like this and handed it to Tom who started to cut away the tangled lines. The dinghy's bow was on the high side and it was cut away first. A wave immediately took the bow and flung it like a ragdoll across the boats transom toward both the reef and shore. The Dinghy's engine was now scrapping back and forth against the transom. Tom started cutting the dinghy's stern lines free, but, for some reason, the dinghy's stern still would not lower.

The situation was deteriorating quickly. Nick jumped into the partially lowered dinghy to try to free it up. Within seconds, the dinghy was hit by another wave which simultaneously rolled the dinghy upside down and flung Nick into the dark water. Now, in addition to our boat being dashed against the reef and, for all we know, in its last few minutes of life, we had a man overboard situation, AT NIGHT. This is exceptionally dangerous. Nick was in the water near a reef with a large swell continually rolling over the coral. Tom yelled to Carolyn to bring up a spot light and a life vest. Omar, at this point, was curled up in the fetal position on the seat behind the wheel rocking back and forth and mumbling God-only-knows-what. Tom gave him the light and instructed him to keep it on Nick so that we could attempt to bring him back onboard. At the same time Carolyn gave me the life vest which I flung to Nick, all the while still yelling at Omar.

Meanwhile, the scene down below was chaotic. Many of the cabinets on the starboard side (the high side) were being flung open due to the violent slamming of the boat against the reef, their contents now being flung across the boat. Carolyn, who had received a response to her mayday call was now attempting to prepare Gilligan, our cat, for the rescue. Normally, she has a cat carrier at the ready in the V-berth in case we quickly need to move Gil off the boat. Unfortunately, we had moved everything out of the V-berth and converted it to a bed so that our crew had a place to sleep. As a result, his carrier was AWOL. Carolyn thus emptied everything out of her backpack and tried to stuff Gill in.

At this time, our rescuers showed up. It turns out that the Oyster brand of sailboat was having a round-the-world-rally which happened to stop in Shelter Bay a few days before. (Oysters are super high-end sailboats, the smallest being 45 feet.) One of the boats in the rally, Shalen, had her radio on and picked up our mayday call. Lenny Sackstein, the Owner and Captain of Shalen jumped into his dinghy, which fortunately was tied to the dock and thus did not need to be launched, and was out to our boat within 5 minutes of the call. This was truly an amazing act of selflessness given both the weather he had to battle and the fact that he was going to have to be in close proximity to an unmarked reef in order to be of any assistance.

We first noticed Lenny approaching off our port bow. As he inched closer, he found that he could get right under the bow pulpit (the metal guard rails on the bow) on the port side, thereby allowing us to duck under the pulpit and drop about 5 feet into his dinghy. Naturally, the first person in the rescue dinghy was that piece-of-shit Omar. Nick, who was able to swim away from the reef, also got picked up by Shalen's dinghy. While this was going on, I went down below to get Carolyn. I found her in our cabin trying hard to stuff Gilligan into her backpack. It was a lost cause. He was simply having none of it. I told Carolyn to give me the cat because it would be easier for me to carry him up to the bow and into the rescue dinghy as I have more experience carrying things while duck-walking up and down the decks. (I knew the years of practicing my Chuck Berry impression would someday pay off.) She reluctantly let me take Gilligan. It told her we had to hurry and follow me to the bow, NOW.

The boat was laid over at a hellish angle as we made our way forward. With every couple of steps, she would lurch and grind on the reef. The swell was breaking against her side, which was having the effect of pushing her higher up on the reef and laying her over more on her side. I felt like I was in the Poseidon Adventure, only I was not hampered by having been wearing a tuxedo. I got the bow, dropped to my knees with Gilligan in my arms and handed him under the bow pulpit to someone in the rescue dinghy. I turned to make sure Carolyn was behind me, and I dropped down into the dinghy. I turned around, grabbed Carolyn's arm and helped her to drop down into the dinghy as well.

I felt sick as we pulled away from what appeared to be our dying boat. I had spent 10 years of my life rebuilding her, bolt by bolt, to get her ready for this adventure. I felt as though I was leaving a family member to die as I saved myself. All at once I felt selfish, incompetent, inconsolable, and, through it all, intensely angry. As if this wasn't enough, the tear faucet then turned on, and the tears just started to flow uncontrollably.

The dinghy ride in to the Marina took no more than a couple of minutes, given that we were so close to the Marina's entrance when we went up on the reef. The scene when we arrived was surreal. The marina was filled with Oyster yachts, most of them lite up and decorated with rally banners and streamers. Because it was an official rally stop, there was a party atmosphere that permeated the air. We, unfortunately, were about to pee in the proverbial punchbowl.

Lenny pulled the dinghy into the dock adjacent to the restaurant. The first thing that happened was Omar got out of the dinghy and immediately ran off into the jungle. We have not seen him since. (A situation for which he should consider himself lucky.) When we got out of the dinghy, we were disoriented by the cognitive dissonance that resulted from being on what we figured was a sinking boat a few minutes before, and then being dropped off in the middle of a big, joyous party the next. We were immediately surrounded by people we did not know, but who were willing doing everything they could to help. This was obviously much appreciated as we had left the boat with NOTHING: No wallet, no phone, no money, no identification, no passport, no dry clothing, dare I say, no Wheat Thins ...nothing. Thus we had no place to sleep and no way to pay for one.

At this point, Carolyn and I figured we had two categories of things we needed to do to: (1) figure out how we would provide for our and our crew's physical needs given our dearth of resources; and (2) figure out how to get our boat off that dangerous reef as quickly as possible. Carolyn took charge of the former while I attacked the latter. Carolyn was on it! She arranged for dry clothing for our crew and a place for all of us to sleep. (I will admit to being a little bit jealous of our cat, because one of the Oysters provided Gilligan his own private stateroom. Carolyn arranged for another Oyster to give Tom and Nick a set of dry clothing and a stateroom in their beautiful boat, and their Captain gave us his hotel room in the only Hotel in this remote jungle [which was fully booked at the time] so Carolyn and I could get some sleep.)

I was substantially less successful in my attempts to get the boat off the reef. There were no boats in the Marina that could go out at night to pull us off. Nor would the Panamanian Coast Guard (called "Areonaval" in Panama) could be of any assistance, in spite of the fact that the reef on which our boat was stranded is a mere several hundred yards off one of their main bases. Unfortunately, all of their boats were out on drug interdiction missions at the time, so they could not assist. (Thanks super-successful war on drugs!) My next option was to contact my insurance company, inform them of the accident, and see if they could arrange for a boat to pull Third Wish off the reef. Unfortunately, they were equally unable to help. The only option then was to wait for first light and try again.

The night of March 6 will not go down in the annals "great nights' sleep." We were both, to put it mildly, inconsolable. I was feeling horribly guilty for putting my loved ones at risk. I was, after all, the Captain. It did not matter to me that at the time of the accident I was doing exactly what I was told to do by those who represented to me that they had the local knowledge necessary to bring us in safely. I should have followed my instincts and anchored out somewhere until we could get enough light to see the Marina entrance. But what was worse, what was gnawing at my sole, was the fear that Carolyn would lose confidence in me as our captain. Of all the awful things that happened that night, this would have been the worst. No contest. (Thankfully, she has assured me that it is a non-issue for her. For this, I am eternally grateful!)

I lied awake in bed until dawn. I saw Tom and Nick walking out to the point to see how our boat was doing out in the reef. I quickly joined them. The sight was heartbreaking. She had blown over the top of the offshore reef we initially hit and drifted inshore. Although she was floating, which was awesome, she was still repeatedly being picked up and then dropped on the hard bottom of the coral trough in which she came to rest. With each drop, I could see the wheel whip back and forth and her rig shake. I couldn't watch. Depressed, I turned and walked back to the Marina.

When got back to the Marina, the wonderful Oyster captains were in the process of forming a towing party using three of their largest dinghies. I accompanied them out to the reef, got on board Third Wish and set up the lines they would use to haul of off the reef. Unfortunately, this effort was for naught. Those small dinghy engines were simply insufficient to pull us off the reef. Try though they might, all they could manage to do was to slide sideways with their prop wash as they tried to pull us off. This resulted in 2 of the 3 dinghies running themselves onto the reef. While this was going on, a large Panama Canal Pilot boat went by. They clearly saw what was going on. I tried to waive them down, but they refused to render assistance. (Thanks incredibly efficient and helpful Panama Canal Authority!) Thus, our boat continued to slam and grind on the coral bottom.

I saw Canal Agent Roy Bravo when I got back in. Unbeknownst to me, while this was going on, he was calling in favors in an effort to arrange for a sufficiently large and powerful boat to pull us off the reef. By 11:00 a.m. he had located an industrial dive boat to render assistance. I got in the Marina's dinghy and went out to our boat and again organized the tow lines. The lines were ferried out to the big work boat and tied off. The radio crackled with the signal from the work boat that they were ready to commence the pull. I sat down next to the mast, crossed my fingers, and held on (which is not so easy with crossed fingers). The lines went steel-cable taught. Initially, there was nothing. Then came a loud and unearthly grinding sound. Ever so slowly the bow started to pivot to seaward. Another grinding sound. Then, forward movement. We were free!!!!! I ran down into to the boat and looked into the bilge to see if we had any water coming in. Thankfully, no water!!! I gave the signal and the tow boat began to tow us into the marina. They pulled us into the Travelift ways, and we tied off. Within minutes the Travelift crew had the slings under our hull and pulled taught. I disembarked and the Travelift started to winch Third Wish out of the water. Five minutes later her bottom, and her significant hull damage was fully exposed as she sat over the water, dripping in the slings.

The damage was substantial. Half her rudder was gone, the entire port side was heavily abraded, and big chunks were missing out of the fiberglass which encapsulates the keel. (See the pictures posted to the Gallery.) Shockingly, however, in no place was the hull holed. NOT ONE!!!! It is an amazing testament to the strength of Norseman construction that she survived 15 hours of grinding on a reef on 30 knot winds and high swell without a single hole in her.

Third Wish now sits on the hard in the Shelter Bay Marina boat yard with me as her sole resident to oversee the repairs. (Living on the hard is ridiculously difficult [which is where I think the phrase "living on the hard" must have come from]. We are pushed up against the edge of the Panamanian jungle. I can hear the howler monkeys so loudly you would swear that they are on the boat. The mosquitoes are plentiful and, unfortunately, hungry. I have no toilet and no shower. To gain access to either, I need to climb down a 15 foot aluminum ladder, and walk across the boat yard and its adjoining mosquito infested field to the marina complex. It's hot and humid, and the air is filled with the fiberglass dust that results from grinding away the damaged fiberglass so that new fiberglass can be attached to the hull. Given that it only takes one person to manage this process, it did not make sense for Carolyn and Gilligan to suffer through this hardship.) I have worked though the insurance company to get the funds (minus our sizable deductible) necessary to repair our boat. The current estimate stand at $75,000.00. But that does not include any damage that may be reviled once I pull out the fuel and water tanks so that we can see the inside of the Keel to Hull joint and the interior bulkheads. I have hired and fired 2 work crews to date (the first crew did virtually nothing but charge me $80.00 per hour to talk about fixing the boat, and the second spent 50% of the time sitting in the shade under the boat in their hazmat suits doing nothing.) Three seems to be the charm. I am not a religious man, but thank you Jesus (that is the name of the guy that leads this third work crew)! They now have 6 layers of new fiberglass on the port side of the keel-to-hill joint and 4 on the starboard side. We are making progress!

I look forward to the day when the repairs are done and I can go home to Carolyn. Being in a foreign country where you barely speak the language while trying to manage a large nautical repair project is challenging at best. Humans can temporarily endure almost anything. I keep telling myself that I can endure this. And I will. As they say, the difference between adversity and adventure is attitude. Mine is good. But I am ready to put the adventure aside for a little while and have lunch at Chipotle. Thanks for reading!

I am still trying to get my head around our transit of the Panama Canal. It was the quintessential bitter-sweet experience. The "sweet" part is due to the fact that getting to and transiting the Panama Canal just seems like a big accomplishment. I imagine most of those with an interest in sailing have always considered a transit between the 2 great oceans (sorry Indian, Artic, and Southern, you gotta try harder) on their own boat to be a bit of a horizontal Everest: one of those major challenges/accomplishments associated with a particular sport. Personally, I never thought I would be able to include it in my short list of "have done's" (which list includes visiting the Detroit Wonder Bread factory and a tour of the estate of Samuel W. Frances, the inventor of the spork [ U.S. Patent 147,119]). But, about 10 years ago Carolyn and I decided to go cruising on Third Wish, our Norseman447 and the Panama Canal all of a sudden loomed. Inasmuch as the Panama Canal was in striking distance at the end of last season, we looked forward to this cruising season with a great amount of anticipation. This was the year we were going to "Do The Ditch." (See prior blogs entries for stories on this year's journey from El Salvador to Panama.)

The Canal Authority (or "God" as they are known in these parts) scheduled us to transit the Canal (and thus the continent, albeit the skinny part) on March 5, 2017. They then bounced our transit date around to various days over the course of 2 weeks, only to land again on March 5. (The Canal Authority personnel, it seems, read the same books on management efficiency as Congress.) Under Canal rules, you need 4 line handlers on board. The job of a line handler is to take in the slack on the lines connecting you to the side wall of the lock chamber as you "lock up" (rise from one water level to the next in a series of locks) or to feed out the line as you "lock down." This is important because there can be tremendous turbulence in the locks when you combine the prop wash from the gigantic cruise ship in front of you and the millions of gallons of water flooding into the lock chamber in a very short period of time. In the right conditions, it can be like being in a washing machine. The line handlers also have to be able to control the lateral movement of the boat in an effort to keep the boat centered in the chamber. My good friend Tom Miller flew in to help us through the Canal as one of our line handlers. In addition, another friend, Nick, also joined us. With Carolyn, that meant we only had 3 line handlers, and thus needed to hire a fourth. For $150.00, your Canal agent (the guy who arranges your transit with the Canal Authority) will hire a "professional" line handler for you. Our agent told us we would meet this professional on the morning of our transit. Since we were scheduled to begin the trip at 7:30 a.m. on our departure date, we were told to pick up our line handler from the marina dock at 5:30 a.m.

March 5 came fast. As an "A" type, I was at the dock at 5:25 a.m. I met both my Canal Agent, Mr. Roy Bravo (I am not making that up) and our line handler, Omar Santizo 15 minutes later. Roy introduced Omar to us as "his best man." (Yes literary buffs, this is foreshadowing.) I introduced myself, walked Omar back to our boat, started the engine, untied the dock lines, and headed out to the Panama Canal Advisor rendezvous point. (Note: you are also required to hire a Panama Canal Advisor. The Advisor is the liaison between you and the Canal Authority while you are transiting. He tells the captain where to go and when to go there. In exchange you are required to both pay him a handsome sum and feed him hot meals while he is onboard.) We spotted the pilot boat carrying our Advisor about an hour after arriving at the rendezvous point. The Advisor jumped aboard and we were off.

Before I go on, I should explain what a Panama Canal transit entails. It is about 45 miles from the Pacific to the Caribbean through the Canal. These two oceans are basically connected by a man-made lake (Lake Gatun) in the middle of the Isthmus. Think of the lake as a water bridge over the mountain passes that were flooded when the Chagres River was dammed. This "bridge," however, is about 90 feet higher than the oceans on either side of the Panama Isthmus. To access the Lake, you need some mechanism to lift a boat up 90 feet. This "lifting" is accomplished by a series of 3 locks on either side of the Lake. Each lock consists of a 1000 foot long chamber with water-tight doors on either end. When locking up, the doors open, the boat pulls in and the doors close. The lock chamber is then flooded with water, which thus raises the boat about 35 or so feet. Once fully flooded, the doors at the other end of the chamber open and the boat pulls forward to the next lock. After 3 locks the boat is at lake level. A boat transiting south to north (from the Pacific to the Caribbean) locks up through the 2 Miraflores locks and then again through the Pedro Miguel lock. The boat then motors through the Culebra Cut and out into the Lake. At the north side of the Lake, the boat then enters the Gatun locks and "locks-down" through the 3 chambers in Gatun.

In its infinite wisdom, the Panama Canal Authority decided two important things regarding our transit: (1) we would be going through the locks "center chamber"; and (2) we would be placed right behind a very large cruise ship with a very large propeller that would be turning each time the cruise ship had to move from one chamber to another. Center Chamber is a somewhat unusual way for a small boat to transit the locks. It only happens when there are no other small boats transiting that day. (When there are more than one small boat, the boats are tied together, side-by-side with only one boat tied to a wall.) It is also the most difficult transit method for the crew of the boat. Here is why: a center chamber boat enters the lock chamber and first has to maneuver close to the wall on the starboard side of the chamber. Once near, but not touching the wall, each of the two guys standing on the top of a wall about 50 feet above your boat throw down a very hard ball (called a "monkey fist") to which is attached a "messenger line." The line handlers on the starboard bow and stern of the boat then tie the messenger line to the 100 plus foot Canal lines you rented and then placed on your boat's starboard bow and stern. Those lines are then pulled up the chamber wall by the Canal Authority workers who in turn tie your 100 foot lines to large bollards on the top of the wall. Once attached, you then must maneuver your boat across the chamber to the port side wall where this process is repeated for the bow and stern lines on the port side of the boat. This entire ballet is repeated for each set of locks (of which there are 3).

If you are lucky, the guys throwing the Monkey Fist did not get seriously wasted the night before, thus inhibiting their ability to accurately throw the monkey fist so that the hard ball does not hit sensitive and fragile things on the top of your radar arch. (We were not lucky.) Once all four lines have been attached to the canal wall bollards, the line handlers ease the lines in and out to control the movement of the boat in the chamber and to make sure that the wash generated by the ginormous propeller on the ginormous cruise ship inches away from your bow does not propel your boat sideways into the chamber wall. They also have to let their respective lines out and/or take it in as the boat rises with the water when locking up or drops with the water when locking down. If they don't do this correctly, the boat can be dashed against the chamber wall if there is too much slack in the lines, or you can pull the cleats off your boat's deck or worse as the water drops and you boat becomes suspended in mid-air by the too-taught lines.

Once comfortably aboard our Third Wish, Our Canal Advisor, asked the question on the lips of all Canal Advisors: "When's breakfast?". It was thus with "Quiche-Carolyn" and Coffee in hand, he got us started into the Canal with these immortal words: "murph slouff dernfubers..." Having been in Latin American now for three seasons, I quickly realized this was not Spanish, but fractured English spoken by a man happily stuffing his face with the egg and bacon delight. After swallowing, he clarified: "See that huge cruise ship, you are to follow it into the first set of locks." I looked to my left and, sure enough, there was a massive cruise ship steaming our way. I believe my involuntary response was: "ARE YOU SHITTING ME"? It was at this point that I realized two things: (1) Carolyn has very strong and pointy elbows; and (2) they hurt when they make contact with your rib cage. Taking the hint, I immediately followed up with "Yes sir, I will follow that cruise ship into the locks." We thus entered our first lock, maneuvered close to the starboard chamber wall and prepared to receive the monkey fists. They came down fast and furious, but our line handlers were on it. They received the messenger lines and tied them to our 100 foot Canal lines which were then quickly hauled up the chamber wall by the Canal Authority dudes. I then motored across the chamber and this was repeated for our lines on the port side of the boat (except on the port side one of the dudes on the wall hit our solar panels with the Monkey fist. Fearing the elbows of death, I remained silent).

Within minutes, the water level in the chamber started rise. We were amazed by the speed with which the water flooded in. The water level in the chamber rose about 40 feet, the doors at the far end of the chamber opened, and the Cruise ship put power to her props and inched forward out of the first Miraflores Chamber and into the second. Within an instant we were hit with turbulent, swirling water the likes of which I had not seen since that unfortunate swirly incident in the boy's bathroom in Junior High school. In spite of the churning water, our guys were able to tweak the lines to keep the pointy end of the boat facing forward. Once the cruise ship created some distance between the two of us, the Canal Authority guys on the top of the wall removed our lines from the wall-top bollards, and walked the lines forward as we motored into the next chamber. (To see a time lapse of our trip through the Canal, copy and paste this link into your browser: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qFTSyPrDyVk)

The above described process repeated itself two more times; once in the second Miraflores chamber and again in the Pedro Miguel chamber. Once out of Pedro Miguel, we motored out into the Culebra Cut, which is an artificial valley cut through the Continental Divide in Panama. The cut is about 8 miles long and starts at the Pedro Miguel lock on the Pacific side and runs to the Chagres River arm of Lake Gatun. The French began the process of digging the Cut in on January 22, 1881. But due to the shortage of smelly cheese and good wine, they abandoned work in Panama in 1904 and the United States took over. Not needing smelly cheese, the U. S. Army Corp of Engineers were able to complete the excavation for the cut in 1914. We motored through the 8 mile long cut and, at the little town of Gamboa, entered Lake Gatun. We spent the remainder of the day comfortably motoring through the 20 or so miles of the lake until we arrived at the Gatun locks, the literal gateway to the Caribbean. Although we arrived at about 3 p.m., the Canal Authority refused to permit us to enter the last set of locks. Instead, we were directed to the holding pen, an area of the Panama Canal where boats needlessly spend the night tied to a big buoy wondering why they are needlessly spending the night in the Lake tied to a big buoy. Within minutes of tying up to the big buoy, our Canal Advisor was picked up by the pilot boat. His parting comment was that another advisor would be at our boat at 10:30 a.m. the next day, and that we should be untied and ready to enter the Gatun locks at that time.

We spent the balance of the day swimming in the Lake (with one person on crocodile lookout duty), eating, and looking forward to entering the Caribbean. Things got a bit crowded though after the sunset. While boats heading from the Pacific to the Caribbean leave the Pacific in the morning to transit the Canal, boats going the other way leave Colon in the late afternoon, go through the Gatun Locks, take a hard left and spend the night tied up to the same buoy we were now tied to. So, at about 9:00 p.m. seven boats showed up and started rafting up to us. ("Rafting" means that one boat would tie to the side of our boat, then another would tie to the side of that boat, then another to that boat, and so on.) Since everyone had a long day, the obligatory introductions were proffered and everyone then went off to sleep.

We woke up the next morning at 8:00, made breakfast, ate, and generally readied ourselves for our 10:30 a.m. rendezvous with the Canal advisor who would accompany us through the Gatun Locks. At 9:00 several pilot boats showed up and disgorged their cargo of Canal Advisors to the multitude of boats tied to us. None of those advisors, however were ours. So, at 10:15 we untied from the big buoy and began motoring in circles waiting for our advisor. At 11:00, we were still motoring around in circles, still waiting. At 11:30 we were dizzy, but still Advisorless. The only thing that changed at noon was it was hotter, we were dizzier, but we still had no advisor. We decided to start calling "Colon Signal" (the name of the Canal Authority operations office on the Caribbean Side) on the VHF radio to try to figure out what was going on. We were finally able to get a response at 12:30. They told us that the Advisor would now not show up until 2:30, and directed us to re-tie to the buoy. But by 3:00, shock of shocks, we were still without the Advisor necessary to transit the last set of locks. We decided to call again: "Colon Signal, Colon Signal, this is the sailing vessel Third Wish looking for an update on the advisor ETA." This time the response was quicker: "Third Wish, Colon Signal, we have had a change in plans. Your advisor will show up at 4:00. You are instructed to remain tied to the buoy." Us: (but without pushing the transmit button on the microphone) "You guys suck!" Yes friends, the Canal is a lot like Washington D. C--all the friendly charm of the north coupled with the efficiency of the South.

The Canal Authority's new plan for us was not particularly well received on board Third Wish. If the Advisor was not to show up until 4:00, that meant we would not begin our transit through the last 3 set of locks until at least 4:45. As a result, it was going to be near dusk when we came out of the Canal. If we hightailed it to Shelter Bay, we just might be able to arrive before dark,... maybe. This is important because we have a policy to not to enter marinas after dark if we have never been to the marina before. The primary reason is that there are many, many obstacles in and around marinas, both above and below the water, all hard. And given that marinas are located along the shoreline, you are always in a shallow water situation when you enter. Given that you can see none of this in the dark, night entries are to be avoided. When we arrive to a new destination at night, we simply stay out to sea and sail back and forth in sufficiently deep water until daylight.
The new advisor ultimately did showed up... at 4:15! Only 5 hours late! He directed us to untie from the buoy and head into the lock entry area and tie up to the wall. Ten minutes after tying up, a Canal employee showed up and told us that there was yet another change in plans. We were now to be the last boat transiting the Canal into the Caribbean that day. Thus, we were told we had to untie from the Canal wall, back out of the lock entry area and wait until 6:00 p.m. to enter the Gatun locks. According to our now baffled advisor, this was a set of instruction which was unprecedented in his experience as a Canal Advisor. It was now certain to be dark before we even completed locking down, let alone arrived in Shelter Bay Marina. To make matters worse, a Norther had kicked in with 25 to 30 knot winds.
Not wanting to enter Shelter Bay at night, I asked our advisor if we could simply spend the night in the Lake again and transit the locks in the morning. His answer was an unequivocal "no." This then prompted a call to our Canal Agent, who previously told us that he would meet us at Shelter Bay Marina as soon as we arrived. I expressed both my concern about entering the Marina after dark and my desire not to do so. He first told me that it was an easy marina to enter at night. He also assured me that Omar, his man on our boat, has entered the Marina 100's of times in the dark. If we followed Omar's directions, he assured us that everything would be fine. Omar also assured us that this was not a problem (and yes, for the literarily astute, this is more foreshadowing). Thus, against our standing policy and our better judgment, we decided we would carry on to Shelter Bay once we exited the Canal.

Our trip down the Gatun locks was effortless. Although we were center-chambered, we were in front this time, so that the prop wash from the super-ginormous-Panamax ship locking down with was not going to be an issue. As we anticipated, however, it was dark by the time we began dropping down in the final Gatun locks. We were nevertheless ecstatic when the last set of lock doors opened up and we were, finally, in a new, albeit dark, windy, and choppy ocean. With the final Canal doors fully opened, we Pacific Cruisers entered the Caribbean Sea...and smack into the teeth of that 25-30 knot Norther. Our Adviser directed us to the spot where he was to be taken off our boat by the pilot boat. It was so windy, it took the Professional captain on the pilot boat 5 tries before he could get his boat in position to take the Adviser off our hands. This finally being done, Omar took over as the person giving us directions on how to get to Shelter Bay. We were almost ready to break out the campaign. What could go wrong....

"Being a coward, I've never been tested.
I'd like to think I would pass."
- Mighty Mighty Boss Tones

"Carolyn, activate the EPIRB and call a Mayday.
The boat is going down!"

An hour earlier, everything was great. We had just transited the Panama Canal, going from the Pacific Ocean to the Caribbean Sea. I am telling this story as a message to other sailors. Learn from our mistakes.
We started on Sunday, March 5, at 6:00 a.m., at the Pacific side of the Panama Canal. On board: Tom, a super sailor we met in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico (he and Jeff are BFFs and have sailed Tom's boat up from San Diego to San Francisco); and Nick, ex-US Coast Guard, (Nick has practiced shipwreck scenarios hundreds of times while in the Guard) and Omar, our Panamanian Line Handler (he has been working in this position for 7 years, doing approximately 3 trips per week). Line Handlers get paid by the trip, not by the time spent transiting the Canal. So Line Handlers want to get into port ASAP, especially if the shuttle bus from Shelter Bay Marina to Colon leaves at 7:30 p.m., or not at all until the next morning. Omar lives in Colon, so he will want to be able to catch the last shuttle of the evening from the Marina to Colon.
Bumpers, lines, measuring the boat, passage date, etc. are all handled through a Middle Man, "Agent". He also sets up the Line Handlers (who will stay on the boat, overnight if necessary).
On Sunday, March 5, we picked up our mandatory Canal Advisor. No one may pass through the Canal without an Advisor/Pilot aboard. They basically sit in the back seat princess chairs and have a radio on them to communicate to the Canal Authority.
We went through the first two sets of locks (Miraflores and Pedro Miguel), and rafted in Lake Gatun adjacent to the Gatun locks for the night, with 7 other boats, also transiting, but in the opposite direction from us. Omar, the Line Handler, slept on the boat. Of course, Carolyn served amazing food, snacks and drinks to all throughout this journey.
We were met by the Pilot boat, which took our Advisor back to shore upon arrival at our overnight holding pen in the lake. The next day, March 6, we were told by our on-shore Agent that our next Pilot/Advisor would be on the boat by 10:30 a.m., to take us through the Gatun locks (the final locks prior to entering the Caribbean).
At 10:25 the next morning, we untied the mooring lines and motored out into the lake to meet our Advisor. By 1:30 p.m. he had still not arrived. We called the canal authority on the VHF and were told that the Advisor would not show up until 4:30 p.m. Omar was in contact with our Canal Agent, and was holding his phone close.
At about 4:45 a Pilot Boat finally brought our new Advisor/Pilot. We were told to tie to the side of the Canal. So we did. Then we were told to untie and back out of the Canal, to let another supertanker through. So then we were told to re-tie to the Canal. Finally, we went through the last locks. It was dark. The weather was blustery: 25-30 knots of wind and 5-6 ft. waves.


Mixed energy at this point.
• Yea! We just went through the Panama Canal. I had a bottle of champagne chilling, ready for when we tied up at the dock at Shelter Bay Marina.
• But... we do not like to come in to an unknown spot after dark. Especially a marina with so many lights and hazards. We talked about just anchoring out.
• But... We had been following the directions of our Canal Pilots, Agent, and Line Handler for 48 hours as we transited. We called our agent and expressed our trepidation entering Shelter Bay Marina in pitch darkness and blustery conditions. Should we anchor out for the night? Our Agent said not to worry, entering the marina is easy and Omar (our Panamanian Line Handler) had done this entry, "100's of times" over the past seven years, and could easily guide us in. He (our Agent) said "If you follow Omar's instructions you will be fine. I will see you there to collect the fenders and lines in a couple of hours."
Tom and Nick were at the bow, watching. Big seas, dark night, white caps, lights reflecting from everywhere. Unbeknownst to us, rather than following the channel, Omar directed us through the "flats", the big ship anchorage. We finally saw the Red and Green lights to the marina entrance at a very oblique angle. Omar kept telling Jeff to, "Head to Port, head to Port". Well, apparently heading to Port takes you over an uncharted reef. Even on our charts I can't find the reef. Locals know the reef. Omar is a local.
I was down below, making more snacks, when we hit the reef. We hit hard, rough and strong. The grinding sound was horrific and Titanic-like. And we rocked. Side to side, first, about 30 degrees, then, 40 degrees, then, 50 degrees.
The decision to abandon ship was made within the space of about 3 minutes, when we went from floating to listing at 60 degrees and continued to list further with no end in sight. Up on deck, the boys were trying to launch the dinghy to serve as our lifeboat.
Jeff shouted below to me to:
1. Give him the red lanyard that held the dinghy engine kill switch (which is also necessary to start the dinghy)
2. Deploy the EPIRB
3. Call Mayday
4. Get the cat and get ready to leave the boat.
I spent the next 5 minutes down below, at the Nav Station, being tossed and bruised every time the boat hit the reef and rocked from side to side (approximately 5 to 8 second intervals) Calling: "Mayday, Mayday, Mayday. This is the Sailing Vessel Third Wish. We are a 44 foot sailboat with 5 people on board. We are on the rocks in front of Colon, Shelter Bay,Panama. We are sinking. I repeat, Mayday, we have deployed our EPIRB, does anyone hear me?"
Jeff, Tom, and Nick spent the next 5 minutes up above:
Jeff: Shouting at Omar, "What have you done to my boat, I will kill you, mother f-er!"
Tom: "Jeff, we need to focus on the issue at hand. We need to get everyone safely off the boat."
Nick: Planning to use our dinghy as our liferaft, could not figure out how our dinghy lines were secured, so grabbed the knife at the binnacle and began cutting the dinghy straps away. He could not get the last strap, so he jumped into the dinghy to cut the final strap. As he cut the last strap, a wind wave picked up the dinghy (with engine attached) and flipped it over, upside down. Thank goodness Nick jumped away from the wind-flying dinghy. Nick landed, barefoot, on the reef. We threw life jackets out, but the one thrown to Nick is a Super Comfortable Life Vest that doesn't deploy until it hits water. Unfortunately, it hit water and inflated before Nick could put it on. This was not good. Nick was almost drowned by trying to get himself into the now deployed life jacket.
Tom gave Omar the High Beam Flashlight, commanding, "Keep the light on the man in the water!" It was dark, the seas were rough, Nick was in the water, ... Omar spent the next 5 minutes with his hands over his eyes, sobbing, devastated. We all still wonder if he knew how to swim. Lord knows, he doesn't know how to navigate his own homeport!
At this point, I got an answer from shore! "Vessel in distress, repeat how many people aboard? We will be there in 5 minutes." I wanted to cry! Someone heard me! There was an Around the World Flotilla of Oyster Sailboats in the Marina at Shelter Bay. These wonderful people took their dinghies out in rough seas to save our butts.
The bow was now the lowest part of the boat, so we would have to get off of Third Wish by ducking under the lifelines at our bow and drop about 5 feet into the rescue dinghy's bow, in rough seas, with the dinghies also slamming against the boat. The lifelines on the boat were an issue.
Jeff came below to help me with Gilligan. We had always had an evacuation plan for Gilligan, but I had stowed his evacuation gear because we had extra crew on board and I needed to clean the forepeak so it could be a sleeping bunk. So, Gil's evacuation gear was under a lazerette, inaccessible.
Instead, I frantically emptied everything out of my backpack. I snatched the cat from his hiding place and began trying to stuff him, butt first, into the backpack. Well, that wasn't happening. Cats are WAY more powerful than they look! Now scratched and bleeding, I grabbed Gilligan and started marching up the hatch stairs. Then, a big wave slammed the boat. So Jeff, who was ahead of me, said, "Carolyn, I am sturdier on the boat than you. GIVE ME THE CAT!"
Jeff duck-walked to the bow of the boat and handed Gilligan down to the people in the rescue dinghies. Poor Gilligan! He was passed hand-to-hand, in the water, in a dinghy, in the night. My cat lost one of his nine lives that night.
I think I started to go into shock at this point. I remember Tom putting his arm around my waist and pulling me forward to the bow. I do not remember the dinghy ride in to shore, other than holding the cat and talking to him.
Omar was no help at all in the evacuation. He was the first person in the rescue dinghy and when we reached the shore he was the first person off the boat. He ran, barefooted, into the jungle (full of monkeys and snakes and bugs), never to be seen by us again. He left his wallet, telephone, shoes, etc., on our boat.
When we reached shore, Jeff, Nick, and Tom attempted to deal with the boat.
I dealt with the cat. One of the Oyster boats gave Gilligan a bunk to call his own. Another boat gave him a box, so I could shred paper for litter. Someone else gave him two cans of tuna. Then one of the Oyster Captains gave us his Key Card for the one and only hotel (which was completely booked, having only 12 rooms), knowing that we had no place to sleep. Another Oyster gave Tom and Nick a bunk, plus shorts, T-shirts, and flip flops. Oh, and did I mention, another couple gave us a $100 bill. We had shipwrecked and off-loaded with NOTHING. People couldn't have helped us enough! The boating community stepped up. Special shout out to the Oyster Round the World Rally. Good folk!
The boating community is amazing. People rescued us with dinghies in shitty winds (25-30 knots) and waves (5-6 ft.) on an uncharted reef. The Panamanian Coast Guard could not rescue us, or even offer any assistance for that matter, because they had no boat in this harbor, which is their base, because ALL the boats were out on drug interdiction.
The next morning, the Oyster Rally guys got 4 dinghies together and tried to lift Third Wish from the reef. No go. They were running their own dinghies onto the reef in an attempt to pull my boat out. We ended up finally getting a tugboat from and industrial dive operation to pull her off the rocks at a cost of $3000. She has suffered substantial hull and rudder damage, popped floorboards and broken bulkhead tabbing.
Now Third Wish is on the hard, on stilts, in the jungle. Lots of expensive repairs to be done to my sturdy vessel. We had deployed the dinghy to use as a life raft, but the wind flipped it over. Luckily, no one was hit by the dingy or it's engine. The dinghy spent the next 18 hours bashing against the reef, upside down. Hopefully, we can repair our dinghy and our little engine that could.

LESSONS LEARNED
I think that this will have to be in another post. My first impression lessons:
1. Listen to yourself! If you have never entered a particular marina before, don't even think about entering it in the dark.
2. Ditch Bag: Ours was at my feet as I was calling Mayday. We stored it under the chart table. Did we take it with us during this horrific shipwreck - no. Why?
A. It should not have been under the chart table, but strapped in the cockpit.
B. It is too heavy. I have now bought a Dry Bag Backpack to use as our Ditch Bag.
3. Life Vests: I need to insist that they be out on deck, for every person aboard, always!
As I said, lessons learned are for another post. We are safe. Jeff is in a muddy (rainy season has begun) and mosquito infested boat yard where repairs are SLOW, SLOW, SLOW. Gilligan and I flew home to California after Gil decided to "jump ship" in the Panamanian boat yard. It took us an hour to find my traumatized cat hiding under a stairway. He and I were not helping the repair project.

Jeff and I are still processing this shipwreck. I never thought I would be the person writing something like this. Between PTSD meltdowns I am trying to figure out the lessons learned. We are very lucky. The smartest decision Jeff and I ever made was to buy Third Wish 15 years ago. She is a Norseman 447, not the fastest boat in a race, but strong as ox. A lesser boat would have been "holed" and not survived this learning experience. Everything could have been SO much worse. I daily thank the gods for sending us Tom and Nick and the Oyster Rally folks. We will "re-group" and repair and set sail again, once my pretty little boat is ready.
We are all stronger than we think. Even the cat.

Those that have been following along know that we started this year in El Salvador, Central America. After the usual work necessary to get the boat in sailing condition, we pointed the bow southeast and started our 800 or so mile trek to Panama. (Aside: In addition to the great anticipation of transiting the canal, the trip south promised other, almost Holy Grail like opportunities. For instance, El Salvador is not in anyone’s culinary top ten [the national dish is a tortilla stuffed with pork rind…’nuf said]. For over a year now we heard that Panama City has…wait for it …BAGLES!!!!!! Real honest to Moses bagels. Boiled and baked just like the Holy Scriptures requires them to be made. [Bagels are in the Bible, right? Could someone source me on that?])

We had a bit of a rough start when Hurricane Otto chose to visit us on Thanksgiving night. Although the eye passed over our mast, we escaped with nary a scratch, which I believe is a testament to both the nature of the bay in which we rode out the Hurricane and our Rocna anchor. We carried on down the coast of Costa Rica, which was beautiful and awe-inspiring, where we overcame the theft of not one, but 2 credit cards. We met wonderful people who will be life-long friends. We ate delicious food (bring on the gallo pinto!) and explored wondrous vistas. We climbed down into underground caves and repelled down the face of raging waterfalls. And, we sailed. Not motored, but actually, blissfully, quietly sailed. It was heaven!!!

We crossed the border, lowered the Costa Rican flag and raised the Panamanian flag. We actually made it! PANAMA! The land that harbors the path between the seas! Panama is so much more than we anticipated. Until I got here, I had always thought of Panama in a more utilitarian, industrial way. It is, after all, the home of the Panama Canal and thus is visited by more large ships than any other place on earth. I thus equated it with places like Long Beach/ LA harbor… you know, a grimy industrial place housing more concrete and creosote than critters.

How wrong I was. Panama is wondrous. It is a mini-Manhattan, a deserted tropical isle, a National Geographic moment, an expanse of wild ocean, a pristine jungle rain forest, and a melting pot of people from every corner of the planet. During our first week in this amazing country, we could have sworn the total population of Panama was 2. During that period we visited Isla Parida, Isla Seca, and Isla Coiba. These were pristine islands with abundant wildlife including monkeys, birds of startling varieties, marine life and beautiful, endless vistas. What was missing was people. We did not see another sole this entire time.

This period was also a time of great wind and seas. A Norther had come in. While it did not significantly affect us in the area we were in, it did prevent us from rounding Punta Mala, the western promontory that guards the entrance to Panama Bay and its approaches to the Panama Canal. Here is why: Panama Bay is about 80 miles deep. If heading to Panama City and the Canal Zone, you round Punta Mala and head due north for that entire 80 miles. When a Norther comes in, it blows offshore from Panama City across all of that 80 miles of Bay. This strong wind whips up significant, short interval waves. Thus to get to Panama City from Punta Mala, you need to pound your boat into those strong winds and big waves. This wind and wave action typically will reduce your speed to about 1 mile per hour or less. In a nutshell, it is an awful sail, an irrelevant point since you typically can’t fit a sailboat into a nutshell. Out of nutshell, but in a Norther in Panama Bay, it is miserable, long, upwind slog. Consequently, and being cautious, we waited the weather out in a place called Plya Vanao, one of Panama’s premiere surfing beaches.

Plya Vanao was an interesting place to “weather over.” The beach is dotted with a multitude of surf hostels whose denizens were an eclectic collection of young surfers and surfer wannabes from all over the world. Plya Vano is also interesting in that it is a wholly new community being created by 3 Israeli ex pats families. It is this origin that explains why, when you go to the only (and exceedingly small) store in Plya Vano, it’s an experience akin to going into my Grandma’s Kosher pantry. Need some nasty Manischewitz wine? They got ya covered. Run out of Matzah? No problem. Having 7 friends over for seeming hot matzo ball soup, but only have 6 matzo balls? Don’t harass yourself mister, they got more balls! The only problem with Playa Vanao was the 18 foot tidal range and the very flat beach. At high tide, getting in to shore with the dinghy was no problem. Low tide was an altogether different deal. The combination of an 18 foot tidal range and a very flat beach means that when the tide goes out, it goes WAY out. Like between a ¼ and ½ mile out. As a result (and unless you want your dinghy swept away with the incoming tide), you need to get out of the dinghy in calf deep water, and pull the 300 pound dinghy and motor that ¼ to ½ mile up the beach to just above the high tide line. After a week of doing my Africa Queen impression, the weather finally started to change. The wind in the anchorage (and around Punta Mala) dropped from about 30 knots steady to a much more comfortable 15 knots. This meant that we could avoid that horribly uncomfortable 80 mile bash up Panama Bay. (If interested, we have a video of this port of the trip at https://www.youtube.com/edit?o=U&video_id=E9tr5E7AnD0)

We left Playa Vanao at 7 in the morning and got to Punta Mala at about 10:00 a.m. Our “weather window” turned out to be perfect. We had comfortable breezes around Punta Mala, and, once we got about 2 miles around the Point, the wind died completely. We motored the entire day in small seas. At about 10:00 p.m. the wind came up to about 20 knots or so, but we were so far in the Bay by then that we were close enough to the North shore that we had little of the seas that would typically be associated with a 20 mile per hour North wind in that Bay. The only challenge proved to be slaloming the 100 plus anchored freighters in the dark to wend our way to the small boat anchorage at La Playita, Panama City. Thankfully, having had lots of night sailing experience in Los Angeles Harbor, this was just like being at home! After a very long day, we happily dropped our anchor in the Panama Canal Zone at 4 a.m., toasted our arrival in this storied place, and happily passed out.

Having arrived in Panama City, Carolyn decided it was time to head for home to get a much needed operation on her knee. This meant that I was to be alone in a very large, foreign city with tons of good restaurants, great and inexpensive transportation, an abundance of casinos, a biergarten, and several micro-brew pubs that serve extraordinary pizza. Yea, it was gonna be tough, but I decided to put the best face on it and suffer through. As you know, sometimes you just have to take one for the team! While the being-without-Carolyn part was a really a drag, I endeavored to consider it an opportunity to do some good urban exploring and wire the City and its offerings so that I had a great list of things to do when Carolyn returned. Panama City is a truly amazing place. Here are some interesting facts about the City: It has a large enough Jewish community to make me feel marginally guilty while I ate bacon-wrapped shrimp; It has an amazing public transit network which includes 25 cent air conditioned busses, 35 cent subways, and UBER; it has the nicest and most helpful police force I have ever come across (and just for the record, I did not discover this while being arrested…as far as you know); the City has an amazing skyline on par with San Francisco, New York, or Chicago; it is the first Central American local to offer us (me) great micro-brew; although men can’t go shirtless, women can wear next to nothing; I found a bagel store here; because the City is literally a crossroad for world trade, the City has people, and, more importantly food from virtually every corner of the earth; did I mention the good beer(?); there are casino’s with penny slots everywhere and I am up over $200. I could go on, but since I am no longer paid by the word, so I will leave it at that.

Carolyn returned 4 weeks after she left with a sore, but much improved knee. It was GREAT to have her back. And the timing was perfect as it was Valentine’s weekend and it was my year. (Some of you may know that we alternate Valentine’s Day festivities each year. That way, we each get to plan a Valentine’s Day event every other year.) During my urban exploring I found a great hotel/spa/casino. It is a Marriott autograph property called the Sortis. The place rocks!!! We spent 2 night in the City at the hotel and just lived it up. We slept in real beds, and showered in real showers. I got to show Carolyn all the cool things I found in the City, and took her to wonderful restaurants. As an accommodation to me, Carolyn even hung out with me at the casino while I played the penny slots. Too much fun!!!!!!!
Stay tuned for our next installment: Transiting the Panama Canal—The most bitter sweet of experiences.