Drowning, not swimming may, I presume?  There in front on me, on a peaceful long weekend beach scene, in about 5 foot of water,  on a calm sunny day, a couple of meters in front of me, hundreds behind me, was a couple, ah, well, drowning. You will have to forgive me, but it didn’t really occur to me that anyone could be anywhere near drowning under these circumstances. But apparently they were. Saving them was no big deal, just 60 seconds out of my way, and then it occurred to me…  could it be that the world could be in exactly the same position, and I had barley noticed?

Today, right here, right now, I’ve found a small hole in the wall, in maze of island pathways, in some Greek island meets Mexican taverna, 30 minutes by boat off Panama City…and in this small hole, are a bunch of kids playing on computers. I´m now one of them.  Internet Tobaga.

When Sir Frank Drake and his one eyed patch lot were living here, in between shopping raids, I wonder if he too had the shits figuring out how to activate the @ button on old Panamanian Internet cafe keyboards…  I still can´t figure it.  I find myself deferring to the same gig as the 60′s hippies, just hitting the SPACE button, man, and meditating.

Anyway, I am here, as we await the transit. The biggee. The transition from the huge tides of the Pacific, to the allure of the Caribbean. With the passage, we are shat out into the Atlantic through a town, appropriately names Colon, Panama’s sphincter.

Anyway Tobago is a bunch of Panamanian houses perched Portofino style on one of the oldest island pirate hangs of the Pacific, looking over a bay, with the Panamanian skyscrapers 20k away in the haze.  The keel and frames of an old pirate galleon poke out of the sand and rubble of the onshore beach. A fleet of elegant, 200foot, purse seine fishing boats sit at anchor in the bay, each one with a small chopper atop the cabin. These rapists of the ocean, with nets big enough to circle Tasmania, will need all the choppers they can fuel, as by 2043, they say every table fish in the ocean will be gone. I must rethink my tuna salads, next time I open a can. But then where do I stop?

I went shopping yesterday, to replace some of the clothes my Bocos hotel gave away to some dicwit, and I’m now wearing clothes, no doubt made in a sweat shop paying less that a $2 day, where the cost of  transport for employees to get to work, is close to a half their pay, and all the food they can afford can fit in one hand, where they work 12 hour shifts, with 4 hours off each week, where they are allowed a piss break once, maybe twice a day.  Don´t believe a word Nike says defending themselves, things are getting worse, not better. Nike are liars.

I got here in ferry burning oil plundered from someone else´s country, where World Bank criminals impoverish the subservient oil suppliers by providing loans for massive failed infrastructure deals, that benefit the corporatocracy, the 1% local elite, and when the debt repayments are twice the GDP, the World Bank (on behalf of US Illuminati) come in for the sting, extracting the ´concessions´. Imperialism disguised in a packet of Kellogg’s Corn Flakes.

We fucked up with the Panama Canal booking, missing the office opening hours by 10 minutes, and when we figured out what day it was, it was the start of a weekend, a long weekend at that. Today, Panama celebrates the day the US let fire and killed 20 protestors.

Only 20 shot I asked, recalling Father Bush had bombed Panama city more recently, killing 2000. Daddy Bush lost his cool. You may not have seen this on CNN, but Noriega blackmailed George Bush senior, with security footage of  Boy George  doing weird things with his dick (no doubt mastered at the Skull and Bones Club mutual masturbation class), whilst hovering up coke on Contadora Isla, the next island back from where I type.

When the Shah of Iran had to walk the plank, he too ended up on Contadora , a few doors up from Boy Bush´s little war creating slip up, or slip in.

But no, it’s just the 20 dead being immortalized this weekend. It signaled, so they say, the start of Panamas independence from the US. Yeah right. That’s why the local currency is still  the evil eye on top of the pyramid owned by US Federal Reserve ( and not the American population), the world’s most fraudulent and legally counterfeit currency.

Independence?  Sure.That´s why Panama hosted the School of the Americas for so long. You know how we like bombing those rotten El Qaeda training camps here and there? Did you know those mad mufti’s train people in bomb making, assassination, terror tactics, and subterfuge at those rotten camps? Shame on them. How dare they. But hey, it was perfectly OK for the US to run their own camps in the very same curriculum, here in Panama.

I must say, however, the graduates of the School of the Americas went on to much more esteemed careers. Those School of the America’s grads excelled in murdering or overthrowing every second anti US corportocracy leader in South America, so whatever they did at the School of the Americas, it sure worked out far better for the US tutors, that it did for the Bin Laden´s lot, out of Pakistan. Just like ex CIA agent Saddam Hussien, Noriega excelled from his School of the America’s training. They will try and tell you that guys like Noreiga and Saddam Hussein were the clones gone feral. But the opposite is true. I mean, how the hell would have the Illuminati found an excuse to invade both Iraq and Panama without Sadd’ey baby, and pock faced, fellow student Noriega. They did wonderful jobs. Game, set and match.

I went to church today.

And it´s still Saturday.

But hey, its day of national pride, and the church too needs to pretend that it´s fully behind independence from the evil US.   An on an aside, without Latin America, the Pope would be fucked.

And without the Pope, the Iluminati would be fucked. You can´t have the poor suffering masses actually finding out what is going on, for Christ’s sake.

But I didn´t just go to any old church. By coincidence, I went to the second oldest church in the western hemisphere, here, 50 meters up the road from this internet café in Tobago.  I’m sure if all the pirate confessions lining the walls of that old church, could be downloaded onto my Dell, I’d have 20 best sellers ready to print.

The priest was a black as Ethiopia.  His altar boy was a white as snow, but showed some signs of going where the huskies had been….ah…so to speak.

Mother Mary had pipped Jesus at the post, for the best real estate on the dais, the walls, the alcoves, and the big, kinda golden cuckoo clock, with lots of opening and closing doors (to confuse parishioners), on the, ah, church stage.

I liked the service. I like the bit where the black guys in white, swing the brass incense thing around. I like eating the flat bread stuff.  Hey, I didn´t eat yesterday, to deprive my overpopulated gut bugs of a decent living.

I had no idea what the fuck was going on, as it was all in Spanish, but hey, I have no idea what the fuck is going on in English speaking proceedings anyway, despite having been sent to church, 3 times a weeks for 10 school years.

I mainly now only go to church for weddings.  I like the contractual sophistication of weddings. The most important contract you make in your life, and all you have to do is say I DO. No fine print, just panties off, and into it.

Just as well Jesus wasn´t hanging around the prime viewing spots of the dias, as I´m sure he would have reconsidered accession, if he saw what a miserable mess the church has made in keeping folks in fear and ignorance, a sort of holy superstition. ¨DON’T ROLL AWAY THAT FUCKING STONE, CAN´T YOU SEE I´M DEAD YOU IDIOT!!!

I liked the bit where everybody embraced each other for some reason. I reckon you could scrap 90% of the papal babblings, and just cut to the bit where everyone smiled, shook hands, or embraced. That´s basically the purpose of a church anyway. We are all one, are we not?  But according to the church, we are all two. There´s God, and then there´s us. That´s two, the way I figure it. If we suck up to God, via his agents, attorneys and administrators (insert the word church on the contract)….then ye shall be issued an access-all-areas, back stage pass to heaven. Everyone else can cue for hell. Bad luck. Yeah right.

The last few days have been expensive. Certain international security arrangements preclude me from discussing how annoying one recent fuck up was in Bastimento, but maybe when we clear customs and are about to publish the book, shall I tell you about it.

But fuck ups come in many forms. Taxis to find shit in Panama is one sure way to fuck up. Try finding specialist lithium batteries for 6 year old Sony digital dinosaur, or fuel filters for a 1968  US yacht built in Hong Kong, or one of a menagerie of other weird stuff you need to keep a boat afloat makes thiose mystery survivor races look light weight

. Even a gas bottle refill can be a fuck up. There is one place in Panama City where you can leave a propane gas bottle for a US nozzle refill. And the place where they do it, closed down permanently, the day before we finally found it. One taxi driver ruined my day, by assuring me he could take me to a Novey hardware where they refilled US configured gas bottles. After agreeing the $15 fare, and meeting the driver at the dock at nine, empty gas bottle in hand, what unfolded was no fun. The same of rent-a-wreck awaited me, with the bucket in the bucket seat being a little too literal. This day, even my favourite 88.1FM dance radio station was not available, even after chasing wires around the dash board whilst dodging trucks. Sure enough, Novey was outta gas, after the long weekend. No problem, grins the taxi driver, as we make our way out of town, through the jungle, and half way, literally, across Panama, to get a fucking gas bottle filled. I could have bought a tanker full cheaper, less the taxi cost. It was time for a transition, and I was battling. Get me into the Caribbean, now!

This little piece landed on my Dell screen the day before. “The Beings of Light in the Realms of Illumined Truth are revealing to us now that this very moment is providing an unprecedented opportunity for us to utilize this gift from our Father-Mother God. January 10-11, 2009, we will experience the Full Moon as it passes closest to the Earth in its annual orbit. This close passage is called perigee, which is always a very powerful Full Moon.”

Amongst other things, the perigree moon came that close to earth, that it nearly sucked up the all water in the Pacific, to the heavens above. Ask the Martians where there water went, and they will understand.

The king tides around the world were at 18 year records, and in Pacific Panama, they were just ridiculous.

Ask any wise guy about interpersonal relationships leading up to, and during any regular Full Moon, and they will often wince before answering. But this pass, when it came to menstrual angst, was insane.

Like the taxi ride.

But it´s not all bad, I suppose. Some taxi drivers can be fun. They are usually found in rusted out shit boxes, with diffs that sound like wheat grinders, with a brake, not brakes, and a wolf whistle for a horn. The worst drivers speak the best English. The worse they drive, the more likely, they once worked refueling US B52´s, or cooking at the School of the Americas.

I loved the horn button on Louis the taxi’s sports wheel, that could do one of twenty differing styles of  wolf whistles, with varieties that could be interpreted anything from, “hey, cute smile,” all the way to, “how much for your mother too?”

In between all day traffic jams, we take shelter in one of three or four disgustingly massive shopping centers, where you need a GPS to find the bog.

We discovered, much to our surprise, that with $25, you could just about rebuild your entire summer wardrobe. So we did. Just because we ended up looking like preppy wrappers, in surf wear, didn´t deter us.

There is a lot to be said for Zen and the fart of boat maintenance when it comes to the depth and color of your travel experience. Anyone can lob into a foreign town, grab a table  and chirp a simple, “dos cervasas, por favor.” Anyone traveller can keep batteries up to his or her travel alarm. By try keeping a highly complex, non standard, left hand threaded boat alive, when you can´t speak the language, you don´t know where anything is, and you have no forwarding address: that’s hard.  You sure get to know the ins and outs of things foreign, when you don’t just need the bill, por favor. Try doing this on half a shoestring budget, and the game triples in complexity.

French sailing buddies Andre and Claire are trying to get a new engine fitted. We see them exhausted each day, as they flop back into their dinghy after a day on the road, chasing prices and kit. As for us, our dinghy is just one psi up from a jumping castle anyway, so we too can collapse into our dinghy at day’s end, with added bounce. But a wetter arse.

So finally, after chasing around from one obscure Panama Canal Authority office to another, and forking out $850 in fees and $900 in bond, we were given a date for the transit. Those that drift through the canal on cruise ships, miss the whole experience. The Panama Canal Authority, now in Panamain hands, is as hut hut as any naval operation. The World Bank has backed yet another scam to widen the Canal, at mere $6 Billion dollars. Panama Max mean all boats transiting the canal can only be 100 feet wide and 1000 feet long. Supertankers on weight loss programs have no chance. But then supertankers have different agendas.

The Panama Canal currently earns Panama $400M per annum. Not that much, if you consider that the canal renovations, at $6B, will need a shit load of interest to make it pay, and they will need to double the canal income, just to pay the interest.  This comes at a time, during this 2009 recession, when some shipping rates are down by 40 %, and where once very recently, it was $2700 to ship a container from Rotterdam to Singapore, but some prices are as low as $200 for the same deal in 2009.

The 100 pound gorilla of the Panama’s clientele is China. Just last year, with the ice melting away in the Arctic, the North West passage opened up for brazen shipping. If the ice melts a  bit more, it’s a shit load shorter to ship goods from China to Europe over the world’s bald spot,  rather than via its Panamanian belly button. Add to this, rival canal projects being pursued in Nicaragua, and put it this way, I would be nervous about spending $6B on widening the Panama Canal. But bugger the loan, the real game is control.

Lining the canal are the remnants of just about every evil Iluminati agent in world history. We know about the Spanish. The French had good go, and managed to kill 22,000 French workers in their failed attempt to dig the canal.  Basking in the glow of his Suez building efforts, a frog called Ferdinand  de Lessups brought his contractors to Panama in 1881, but like that short guy Napoleon before him, he underestimated to joys of yellow fever and malaria, and like Napoleon before him, declared bankruptcy in 1889, less a few employees. They’ve left a nice Sumerian (sum of the Aryans) Illuminati obelisk on the old city’s prime real estate, at Plaza de Francia, on the point of the old fort city of Casco Viejo. The French version of the Illuminati’s obelisk symbology, has big brass cock on its tip. How French.  When I photographed it, a local buzzard had appropriately made nest alongside the French cock. How perfect.

The Yanks had the shit to do the dig. They wasted no time in buying out the rights to the canal from the frogs, and in early 1903, one of Lessup’s engineers signed over the sale, but the then ruling Columbian government wouldn’t have a bar of it. No problem, thought the Yanks, and by November that year, the 1903 version of the CIA had backed a revolutionary junta, that demeaned Panama “independent’. The Columbians had weren’t too happy about this, and with some smoke and mirrors, and one meager battleship, the US ‘threat’ lured most of the Columbian garrison onto a train between Panama city, (where the revolution was underway), and Colon, a few miles from where I write at this point in the now. In true F Troop style, the train managed to fuck up midway between Colon and Panama City, and the rest is history. Long live the Panamanian revolution. Oh, and by the way, the Yanks negotiated and effective US territory, smack in the middle of Panama.

The Frogs knew how to dig the canal, but they could not master the difficult business of getting rid of the rocks. The Yanks on the other hand, had just written, directed and produced “How the West Was Won”, and with steam locomotives and track laying supremacy,  and could haul empty rail cars up to the dig, then roll cars  full of rocks downhill, and 1914, just in time for a small world skirmish, the first  US ship sailed through the world’s greatest engineering marvel. One of the world’s biggest military bases was then established in the US controlled banks of the canal.

Like the confused Colombian army on a train, as I write, I find myself stuck between Panama City and its Colon.  We are currently locked up, and high.  3 locks up, infact, and about 85 feet above sea level. Onboard Ave Maria, here in Gatun lakes, in the middles of the Panama Canal, we were required to weigh anchor, under instruction from our pilot, and await further instructions. That was yesterday. To our port, we are tied up to a buoy that puts the big into buoy. To our starboard, is about 2 million tonnes of shipping is waiting to be lowered into the Atlantic. We figured out too late, that our pilot simply wanted a root and beer, so dumped on this shipping buoy, and high-tailed it home before dark, murmuring something about us being out of here by 10am. It’s midday.

Hopefully we will be squirted out of the Colon by nightfall.

On dusk, our Panamanian pilot, Astro, (as in George Jetsons’s dog), left us with some passing thoughts. Firstly, those weird noises coming from the jungle behind us, were not the sound of the Monster form the Black Lagoon. Somewhere between a leopard’s snarl and a werewolf’s growl, we were informed that the all night noises were simply Howler Monkeys, the same ones we saw gawking at us from the trees as we took Ave Maria for a drive through the jungle yesterday. Apparently, like Palestinians, all they do is throw rocks. There are 20 foot crocs in the lake, so swimming isn’t stress free. There is cemetery full of dead French diggers in the bushes, and apparently, glasses have been known to slide around yacht tables here, even before the séance has begun.

When you transit the canal, you need a pilot and 4 line handlers.  Being this is Ave Maria, we don’t have just any line handlers. Onboard ship, our chief volunteer line thrower, is the former commanding Officer of the US Nuclear Submarine’s flagship, the Miami. His name is Houston, and he does not have a problem, Houston. We also have aboard another guy who comes from Houston. He does have a problem. He’s just back from Iraq, where he was in charge of quality for Kellogg Root and Brown, where he was required to sign off on KBR branded dog kennels, that cost a mere $360,000 for a 4  sniffer dog kennel.  We can’t have those marines competing with the KBR affiliates, who have cornered the market in shipping more smack out of the Middle East, that the pommes did into China. No there’s a Dogs of War. Also aboard is  Chris, sometime sailing instructor from Alaska, and he is always wearing  a very professional un-inflated life vest, no doubt wary of the temperature of his home waters, even here in the tropics. Charming us all, is the slim and elegant Gail, who is happily in love with Houston, the CO, and they are sailing the world, this time by yacht, not nuclear sub.

Houston wins the award for most interesting guy of the month.  Hey, 89 days at a stint underwater, saddling a nuclear reactor, with enough armory to take out half of Europe, is a fun job. The Miami was the first ship the Yanks sent to Bosnian mess.  Houston did have a problem then. I mean, who was who, who, should we bomb?

Bosnia, as PJ O’Rourke, notes “was the war, the war hater’s loved”. In the end, the US got confused, and just bombed the neighboring country anyway. What the hell.

But Houston was not just busy at leading edge of Armageddon, he was a dolphin researcher, to boot.

Flipper, one of his mine sweeping dolphin trainees, was one of the more wayward of his submarine sailors, preferring to figure out shortcuts in the daily identify-and-report  mine sweeping exercises, so he could go check out the babe dolphins in the nearby pens, and waggle his doodle, being that part of Flipper’s training saw cute your female naval interns, give him hand jobs in the pursuit of science and sperm. What is a horny dolphin meant to do? After putting in a seemingly good day’s effort, Flipper simply failed one last computer stroke report, and his trainer with held his fish. So fuck you was Flipper’s response, and he went AWOL, heading out to sea, surfing the bow wave of a Santiago Cruise liners’ bow wave, exiting the harbor, with a crew of  tense navy handlers in pursuit.

We await the return of our pilot, any pilot will do. Yesterday, I had to keep crew and pilot in hourly top up of food and beverage, from before last light, to the final vodka and lemon for stumps.

The Panama Canal is an experience every yachty must make in his ocean mecca life. Bullshit surrounds the horror stories of the uplift locks.Nonetheless, those engineers sure make it interesting, when they fill the locks from below, at seemingly millions of liters per minute. For a moment there, boating the lock becomes more like canoeing the rapids, when they start the flooding. Line handlers are meant to keep the boat in the middle of the cavern as the swirling begins. Fairleads need to be steel plated to stop ropes hauling cleats out of the deck. But on our first virginal uplift, we were tied alongside a tourist ferry, dishing up historical facts on its PA, as we scrambled the lines. 50 tonnes of ferry made a nice fender against the stone walls of the locks. Not that we are short of fenders, with something like the standard 20 tires all around Ave Maria. We still managed to get a scarred topside as a lock memento, nonetheless, as the ferry driver kicked  her arse out exiting the lock, smack into my failed attempts to fend off.

Our passage down the canal become a defacto race between us a tug heaving massive exactor to one of the billions of dollars worth of dredging project along the canal. When we finally got the jump on the massive rig, only to be set back by a 20 knot head wind, howling down the Gatun cuts, 22,000 dead souls on the breeze. In the lead the tug drove us into the marker buoys, but we weren’t to be beaten that easily.

The Panama Canal drops dramatically in 3 cascading locks, spilling out of dam fed,  freshwater lakes,  and via  Gatun Locks,  we splash down in to the Atlantic. One minute you are high and mighty, the next you are gitt’n down in the Caribbean. Ex merchant men and navy types, do semi training roles guiding the yachts as pilots, and whilst they are nice enough guys, they couldn’t get a toy tug from one side of the bath to the other.

My suggestion to our second pilot was pretty simple. It said, mate, how about we wait for that tug behind us to tie up in the lock, all 300 tonnes of it, then we will tie our 30 tonne yacht alongside it, and then that 3 tonne launch alongside us. But no, the idiot wanted the launch between us and the wall, and bugger the tug. What a dickwit. The launch was the tender to the 125 foot white boat Pegassus, and was being skippered by an ex US Navy comm’s spiv, and his, on-the-mobile girlfrie

nd, who was either eating, putting on makeup, or stroking her white boy’s  bits. This spiv soon realised he had twice as much power,  and more steerage than Ave Maria. What he didn’t have, was a clue. His useless, all black , taxi driving, line handling crew all stood by dumb struck,  as the spiv managed to so badly mangle the first lock entry, that the lock master was forced to buckle, and give in to my original suggestion. According, tug first, Ave Maria

next, and tender on the outside, all 3 of us roped together, gently cascaded our way down three massive locks, in to briny, from the fresh. These locks, in their day, were the world’s biggest built structure, and are indeed marvels of engineering, and their size to  this day dictates what world shipping knows as PanaMax….the max

imum size you can squeeze, shuffle and grunt into a lock 100 foot wide and 1000 foot long.

Houston, former very senior Naval Commander, who’s drinking buddy from the Naval Academy once ruled the entire US fleet, and more recently, was second in charge of the CIA, had an understandable breaking point, less flexible than most, and when our pilot repetitively gave incompetent line releasing orders, this master and commander, used to docking Nuclear subs, snapped. I felt like whispering a few words in the daft pilot’s ear, to suggest that the guy giving him and earful, actually knew what he was talking about. Wh

en eventually, word got out as to Houston actually was, the whole set of pilots and ex navy guys were grovelling like U2 groupies.

From the Gatun Locks, fun  Disney ride , we made our way to the old fading Panama Yacht Club, in the war zone town, or so we were tol

d, of Colon. Colon was once the richest port in the Atlantic Panama, seeing blustering wealth, expressed in French colonial excess  grand architecture, which, like Burma’s Rangoon, has gone to rack and ruin, but in a fun kinda’ way. Sure, getting mugged is meant to be a weekly ritual here, but to me, on inspection, the

alleged poverty of the town exceeding India’s worst, is a complete myth.

The suburbs of any western metropolis are usually a lonely, dull zone, whereas Colon, impoverished as it maybe be, is alive with kids, spunk and chatter. Sure, box framed, tarp wrapped rooms built in the squattocracy of crumbling colonial carcasses, are no McMansion wet dream, but hey, they’re cheap.

I’ve just done some morning yoga on the dock, after a day re-patching the already triple patched, inflated fleet of dinghy and canoe. Paul battled all day in the lazarette ( the boot), to install the new autopilot parts. I Ajaxed away at the topsides, removing the rubber marks from tugs and tires. We have topped up our water and caught up on our Skype calls, and today, we head out into the groovy Caribbean after weeks of prep. At last, the transit is now a transition.

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