Pictures first…story at the end

COLON

COLON

COLON

COLON MARINA…CARIBBEAN SIDE OF PANAMA CANAL

PORTOBELLO….the once greatestSpanish Port in the Americas

Portobello Rasta’s home

a third of the world’s gold once went through this building…

blue sky mining…

the reincarnated war-lost ghosts, now vultures

Jesus is black…

taking the last gunpoint…

Isla Grande lighthouse

Kirk…around the world in a folk boat

Brace the base, she’s com’n down

The front tooth is leveraged to take out the incisor..

Isla Grande

a fucked mast

the restaurant to our repair shop …. Isla Grande

Isla Grande

pump’n it up..all weekend

Voodoo me boot mate

The bar we can swim too

voodoo headdress

disco buses

freaks behind me

patches

White Limbo….$35 and paint

Linton..for non rodeo mast repair

Nicole from NYC

I need a lawyer…like this one, blue eyed and black haired, from Dublin>>>

San Blas..Chichime

San Blas

Pete from AWAB

The Caribbean hits you the moment you leave the Panama canal breakwater. Immediately, it’s time to crank on the sheets. No more rolling around in industro’ urbane, Panama City anchorages. No more motor sailing down drifty Pacific oceans.

It’s time to put de lime in d’ coconut, and shake it all around. And shake it all around we did, the moment the wind and the waves hit us, just meters outside the Colon breakwater. They sure had a lot of spare fill and rocks, when they built the Canal, as the Colon breakwater makes it half way to Europe.

And god is great in the Caribbean, as there are no more of those shitful 20 foot tides. Tie your dinghy to dock on the Pacific side of Panama, and when you get back, it can be hanging vertically from the bollard, or worse, if you tied it to something at the low tide end of the beach, get ready to swim 200m to the damn thang.

Whilst on damn thangs, American yachties call a dinghy, ‘a dink’, and, I don’t approve. “Dink”, to and Aussie,  stems from the baby boomer English word “Dinky,” a miniature replica car, kids use to trade their wealth …and whilst our dinghy may be look like a fading jumping castle, it’s certainly not  dinky.

On the subject of inflatable things, and just recalling that this rant was once meant to be about Zen and the Fart of Boat Maintenance, spare me a space to explain my new found distaste for my $200 inflatable canoe. It may have been the sexy new  air pump , but something tells me, I may not have fully followed the Chinese inflation instructions, and I may in fact have given the fuca a bit too much of a Viagra, no return, woody.  It blew a value…kinda’ like a fat, redneck, game fisherman, with a heart problem, in a whore house.

Anyway, at a base investment of $200 for the canoe, two replacement canoe heart values were begrudgingly paid for at  added cost of $80, but the heart surgery part  is where it got messy. You can’t just screw in a new heart valve. Firstly, you need a delicate piece of surgery, to cut away the old valves. I lost the plot, and took out half the pericardium. Then you need to delicately sow in the new valves. I used the glue provided by the Chinese manufacturers. It stuck like Boy Bush, to an international justice treaty.  Then, once the valves faced inflation duties, I might as well have invested in Zimbabwe dollars.

The net result was, a-ship-to-shore device,  that again reminded me of a condom that had done 20 rounds in a Thai brothel.

Hence, my new found distaste for my once rigid canoe. We now have matching canoe and dinghy. Both feature, nice, checked, home spun, vinyl floor coverings… not covering the floor, but holding the fuca’s together as patches. Patches.  That reminds me of that sickly Elvis Presley hit, from his depression, and diamond stud stage.

Patches, how could you betray me like this? And of course, the smart arse answer from the patches was simple, “Add more patches and we will strike a deal,”… kinda like dealing with old trade unionists, with their falling membership woes.

Hence, the patches on patches outcome.  The original two small value leaks that needed repair, created a subset of 9 new leaks, before the “sssss’ finally went out of ‘ssssszodiac’. So much for my valve surgery efforts.

No sooner had I seen the last of the valve leaks, than an all new ‘sssss’ started to tease my ears. In denial, I went below to tweek the CD player, only to face my initial grim fear: the hissy noise was not coming from CD, but that shit bag know as my canoe.

Cheeky elemental spirits from the fuc up realm, shit me. But of course, in this begrudging thought, resides my karmic fate. Swear at a fucking dinghy, and it will deflate just to piss you off.  Dish up abuse at an outboard, and it won’t start, even if you kids are drowning.  It is from such mindless observations  such as this, that literary gems such as Zen and the Fart of Boat Maintenance are ill-conceived.

Anyway, enough of boat maintenance stuff. Surely no one thought I could keep churning out stuff about fixing ya outboard?

Although…

I do have and interesting story about a how you think you can make an anchor winch work, using a special quartz crystal.  But that later.

Back to our core theme. Spirituality…  let’s talk about …sailing.

Recall, some dic proffered the concept that the way to enlightenment, was through the ‘off’ switch to the monkey mind. The current models of the smart arse mind are delivered, with only active modes in the past and future mode, but no, now mode.  The now portfolio was left to your timeless soul.

So to sailing:

As soon as we made our way through the breakwater gates of Colon, technically Colon’s sphincter, it was on the nose.

I should explain. To yachties, the fact that the sphincter can be stinky, has nothing to do with the yachtsman’s interpretation of, ‘on the nose’.  When the boat wants to go in the direction from where the wind is coming, it means that the wind is, ‘on the nose’, ah, of the boat.

Borat has a more direct view.

Anyway, when the waves and wind are hammering down on you, and they are all coming from where you want to go, it’s without doubt a right, regular, pain in the arse’ for us cruising yachties. Those stressed out corporate types who like their weekend yacht racing around the harbour buoys, hey, they don’t mind tacking into the wind. To them, it’s stress sport. To us cruising bums, it’s hard work. Firstly, everything in your home slides sideways. Soon, bedding is carpet, shampoo is floor polish, and all that is on the menu is muesli bars.

Anything else, down below, by way of cooking is a challenge. When was the last time you needed walk up an incline to your swaying kitchen stove, a stove that was at eye height, with containers of boiling water and cooking oil awaiting you on the rise? Oh, and then there was an earthquake in your house.

It’s for these reasons, that ‘sailing on the wind’, is closely related to, ‘having bad wind’.

Nonetheless, being the former owner of heavier, more gracious sailing boats like the 53 foot, Swan rippoff ‘Fullmoon’, it would be misleading of me to suggest that a good beat isn’t fun. That’s not, “beat“, in the Michael Jackson sense of self sex. Although it’s close.

This is “beat”, in the sense of, beat into the wind and waves. Like remembering you left your keys on the seat, exiting a packed stadium amongst the throng, and then having to turn, push and weave your way back through the oncoming crowd.

One needs to let the mind at ease about all this shit flying, beating or tacking stuff.  There is no big deal here, sailing a focused zone is a right here, right now, thing to do.  The monkey mind is soon out of the game, or can be.

Of course, when you have the boat almost flattened by a gust, as occasionally happens, you can find yourself almost hanging from the upper gunwale of the boat, dangling over the water, but this is not a wind the problem at all , this is a fully shit yourself situation.

When sailing to windward, one exercises what is known as the ‘tack”. Its kind like the zig zag in sewing. It turns a short run, into a long thread. To go ahead, what you must do is kinda evade the wind’s full frontal aspect, and slip along it’s edge, using sails shaped like plane wings, to get lift. To windward. On the nose. Beating. Got it?

The mind, regretfully, can be needed in the game of ‘climbing’ to windward, as the mind needs to balance time over water, or speed, vs angle to windward, or climb. Do you go slow, with calculated zigs and long  zags, or do you sail like fuc, with dozens of over locked zigs and zags? Things, like who wins the Americas Cup, reside on issues like this.

A key way to come undone, as a cruising sailor, is to let time be too big an issue.  The go with the flow, does not mean look at the watch, or the instruments… it just feels where the boat and the elements mix, and, well, sail on, sail on, sailor.

But to make your way to windward, according to this treatise, suggests you should not worry too much about the last few degrees of climb, just flow. Time is an illusion.  With some luck, the Mayan’s end of times gig, is all about the end of the minds version of time, and the start of a whole new understanding  of time and space. Let’s face it, time had Einstein fucked, and since Einstein, everyone else has been fucked, trying to figure out him.  Steve Hawkins was equally fucked on time, all he could do, was write a Short History of Time….at least the Mayan’s gave us the full history of consciousness, along with a tight, short history of the future, to boot. You may not believe in much, but your might believe that there have been a lot of changes in our group consciousness, in your lifetime.  For example, were you reading blogs, 9 years ago? Soon, Google earth will be more than a map.

I was in taxi last week, driving around Panama City, through one of the avenues of the old, US, abandoned military base ‘burbs. There, walking down the footpath taking his time, was a guy wearing  T shirt with 2 huge words on the back, ‘LIVE  SLOW’…. and on passing him by, and looking back, the front of his T shirt  read, ‘SAIL FAST’.

I’m left wondering the wisdom of the cute T shirt, and can go with the live slow stuff, but sail fast had to be rethought, when after a pounding afternoon sail out of Colon, our mizzen mast spilt, warped and nearly match sticked itself enroute to Portobello. In sailing  terms, damage to the rigging is a serious hit, sidelining  you out of the game immediately.

Out of the game, and into weeks of repair work, can also mean, out of writer’s words for a week or two.

But whilst you read this, it’s just another line. Allow me, when writing, to note a leap of a few weeks.

Through the porthole, drifts the heavy base of Latino tunes from 5000 watt speakers. The small bay in which we lay at anchor is lined with restaurants and bars. This is Isla Grande, the discarded micro equivalent of the once unfashionable Atlantic City, or the UK’s Brighton, where once it was full occupancy, around the clock. Who knows what may have knocked Isla Grande off its perch…maybe the 5 newly stationed marines in the beach house, next to the Bob Marley Bar. Maybe they have scarred off all the Columbian coke importers, who formerly sailed the channel between Isla Grande, and the Panamanian shore line 400m away. But then these marines seem to like to mix it just fine with the girls, the booze, and the 180DB sound system next door to their beach house base.

Odd.

This island, like Bastimentos in Bocas, is built on funky black based culture .  For example, I hear the whistles starting up. The voodoo dance team is assembling.  The dancers are lead by Isla’s antsy-est dudes, those with the strongest party attitude, and a hip dance step, who have been drinking and dressed up, all day. The whole island has been on the piss since breakfast, infact.

The boys voodoo dance attire, his kit, starts at ground level, with white socks (worn over the trousers, with no shoes). Around the waste, are dangling all manner of shiny thingos, from toys to irons. Rows and rows of beads come next. Next there is the head, and the makeup is simply, Samboy black, atop already black skin.  In effect, the face is a black out, with teeth. The hat is the special bit. It’s the ultimate in voodoo chic. Or chichen. Birds you know, are all about the spirits around here. The Kuna are mad about bird hats. But that is 40miles east. Here, its Congo meets the Panama.  Afro-cordingly, the local ex Congolese don their major feather headdresses, and then, fully kitted up, hit the whistles. Then the dance floor.

There was a loose dress rehearsal last week. That was an all weekend party. Tonight is the grand whatever. Don’t ask me what is going on. We have been sitting in this picture perfect bay, with our twin anchors set at one edge of the coral, with surf rolling around all around us, for days. Through a hydrodynamic mystery, we sit pretty calmly in our little Isla Grande entertainment eddy. What we drop overboard, we can still see and get.

Now recall the mizzen mast misery.  The moment I climbed aboard, up from a swim, after initially laying anchor many days back, I knew we would be on Isla Grande for at least 10 days. Or more. The mast had to come down, and be had to be rebuilt.

To get the mizzen down, we had to turn the main mast’s boom, into an extended boom crane, using the mizzen boom strapped to dear mother, the main boom. In crane mode, Ave Maria immediately looked like the Ave Maria Mooring Contractors. Captain Cook or Bligh would have rewarded our spar crane ingenuity, with double rum rations.  Dutifully, we used each ration each night, swapping our imaginary rum coupons for Vodka coconut and lemon.

The mizzen was slung as close to its centre of gravity as we could possibly get the winches around, like using your front tooth to leverage out your incisor. It was still an awful lot of wires, spreaders and timber spar that we somehow had to lower on the deck, strip, then boat ashore, on the local 20 foot, open pangas.

With more winches engaged than seen at the start of the Sydney Hobart race, inch by winch, we got the sick mizzen down. That was two days work. Stripping and sanding it was another two days. The glue up, and fibreglass bandaging was another few days. Then the varnishing began. Two coats per day, 10 coats. Except today. The afternoon off today.

Earlier today, we had tried to get the dinghy to deliver us to the internet, at the secretive yachty hidey hole, Panamarino,  accessed via a mangrove channel, in a tunnel of love style, a kilometre long .

But the dinghy had opened up a mouth in its floor, mid ocean, that just needed Mick Jagger’s tongue hanging out of it to make it picture perfect.

The trick was to get the dinghy going, raise the bow, and empty the ocean content, already flooding the floor.

But with a gut full of water, the dinghy could not drain itself, and there was a  moment there when thought we were about to rip out the floor altogether, leaving us mid passage, with an outboard on a floor-less doughnut, with two guys and two laptops looking very fucked, on the rail.

Somehow, we got the sinking mess back to the island, and into the panel shop. Yep, by decree of Highly Sailarsy, the Isla Grande Community Hall, has been deemed abandoned, and forthwith donated to the suffering crew of Ave Maria, to use for free, for weeks, where we can deploy our shit everywhere.

Being that this hall is basically a boatshed, and being that it is right on the waterfront, alongside  a choice of restaurants, (where we patronise the one that allows us to plug in a power lead), it would be fair to say, that if there is to be anywhere, where you would want to be stranded for repairs, this was surely the best we could have ever arranged.

Kids on bikes rolled into our panel shop through the indoor, and out the outdoor on their bikes… albeit the actual doors had fallen off, ages ago.

Drunks snuck in for a piss against the wall, on big nights.

The cheeky, local black kids hassle for turns using the drills and the sanders.

The mizzen mast is strung up on a series of ropes and clamps. We lived in this shed for days, keeping casual hours, and finishing at dusk with a few 50c, over the counter beers from the shop next door.

Mornings started after yoga and swim at the sand point. Lunch, always the best value meal of the day, was a whole fried fish, with rice and beans, and a slice or two of fried plantain bananas.  $6. Nights were blurry.

This went on for days. Along the way, I noticed a holed plastic kayak-meets-surf ski….covered in weed and rubbish, in the bay’s flotsam refuse. $35 later, gratefully transacted into the small hands of a 12 year old vendor, I had a new canoe. Two canoe Rod. A few hours with an angle grinder, and the original garbage bin plastic was revealed. Using the failed fibreglass ‘scabs’ that had kept the useless thing sinking, with a supper goo known  here as 5200 (Sikaflex), the scabs adhered, and a more  were  added.  Then, on went a couple of coats of white gloss, and a braced, bright blue back rest ex of the de-flatable. Some fire hose with conduit inners, made good grab handles, and in a few days, Ave Maria had a new, bullet proof solution to deflating dinghies and canoes. I was very happy about this.

No sooner had the new white canoe been sea trialled for few minutes,  that expeditionary plans were laid. Whilst the San Blas will be cheap, $30 was not enough cash for 3 weeks, so step one of the, get-some-money expedition, involved paddling across to the mainland for the 9 o’clock bus. I was there early, but still missed the bus. But not the panga. With 50Hp on a light hull, a panga could, and did, outrun my bus, heading it off at the point, and on the bus I was. These buses have a truck front, and a disco interior. He who plays the loudest, hippest Latino tunes, gets the passenger patronage. It’s a sing along. Madonna and air gun goddesses, mix it on metal. Black arse is squeezed up against everyone, as the sardined aisle patrons, get squeezed onto those seated. And the beat goes on. As it is through the porthole still.

At one of those cross road locations, were the evil of the World Bank’s idea of ghetto sweat shop towns manifest, you can find a good El Ray supermarket, and the only ATM within 60k. I made a point of buying hundreds of small chocolates to trade with the Kuna ahead. I also bought a roll of vinyl flooring  to patch the god forsaken dinghy. Oh, and yet more lemons. Never get caught short on lemons.

Back on the return bus, and I thought that  lunch at Portbello would be in order. Like Henry Morgan, we had already been to Portbello. Indeed it was a beautiful sheltered bay, but it was hard to believe that it was once Spain’s most major trading port in the Americas. At one time, a simple two storey customs clearing house saw a third of the world’s gold pass through its doors. This was the cleptocracy’s best  export depot, where the Spanish raped and stole the gold from the locals, whilst the English then stole the stolen gold from the Spanish. Gold is all a bit silly really, I mean, why all the fuss about something you must grovel underground to get, only to rebury it underground, under banks, as soon as you get it to the surface. Just leave it there. This idea is actually law amongst the Kuna’s and parts of Panama. As soon as you get the gold around here, some areshole rips it off, and kills you.

Portobello goes back to before the 1600′s.  Chris Colombus actually named it.  All traffic, making its way across the isthmus from the Pacific, and Lima, all came to Europe via Portbello. Most of it, hot.

At first, the Portbello fortifications resembled a medieval castle. But that idea soon got changed after raid one…one of seven galleon and gun battle raids of bloodlust, that generally left Portbello in ruins. Like today.

Over 500 years, Spanish military engineers agonised over the new unstoppable fortification rebuilds, and eventually the bay had more flanked canon power, than Houston’s  nuclear sub.

I would suspect that Admiral Vernon’s invasion fleet would have been met by much shattering of oak frames and human bone.

Conveniently, the western fortifications were left to me alone to conquer, after my daily use of these battlements for yoga practise.

There are so many grand ruins here, that the town has grown all over them,  excluding our fortifications, on the western side of the bay, the yachties’ zone.

At my command, a dozen or so beach head canons could assist in sinking anything entering the bay, and a higher set of seven, would be up for the long ball lob. Turrets with gun sight slots punctuated each corner, to lay waste with lead, those daring to sneak up the beaches.

Accordingly, raider Henry Morgan, in his fine fiendish style, did the Japanese-in-Singapore gig, and with 500 men, crept up from behind Portobello, over the hills, giving the Spanish a bit of cold steel up the U know what, (no, not the Colon), and on the way, collected his share of the sometime 40 laden flotillas of stolen gold, that once left this lluminati vulture point.

By the way.  Jesus is black. In Portobello at least.  Here they have a giant annual fuss with the grim faced, Black Jesus on a cross, gig. When I was there to pay my respects to Black Jesus, he was behind a glass grail, and there was a blackout. I might add, he was not smiling, on his cross…so all I could see were two eyes. He gets wheeled around town, to thousands of fans, being that after the gold left, all that was left was the funky African mob, and today, they are out in earnest to cheer for the black Jesus. I’m with them. But maybe he was also a she. Whatever.

I have redecorated my cabin in respect. Behind me are two doors to the anchor locker: the anchor locker is that space that maintains connection between earth, and those floating around.

Now, at $7, I have a brass Jesus on a timber crucifix, holding closed the anchor locker doors. The symbology was all a bit rich, so I added above the crucifix, the second last of TRIP FM’s bumper sticker, that reads, ‘JESUS IS MY AIRBAG’.

Above the beachhead cannon, way up on the hilltop, through the halyconias, was a tall stone, rifleman’s bastion, maybe 15m by 15m, with its own moat, and about a dozen musket slots per flank.

Climbing it was a challenge, but a plank sufficed to breach the moat, and once inside, I used the same rotten, nail ridden plank to assault the upper walls, giving me full, lead-to-head, supremacy of the bay.

In shorts alone, atop my military accomplishment, an ant bit me on the arse.

In the tradition of US military rollovers, I had to call an immediate retreat. For good measure, I succeed all my people’s rights, signing a one sided free trade agreement with the ants, and agreed to obey, forthwith, all ant FDA orders, including making all awareness enhancing drugs illegal. An ant occupied zone was granted in all my peoples’ kitchens, of Gaza-esque proportions.

Today, Portobello is seemingly occupied by hundreds of war wounded ghosts, aspects of whom seem to have reincarnated as vultures. These birds have a propensity for sitting on the church and the guns, as if they are trying to tell us something.  The guns, the church and the mint…..all covered in vultures.

Nothing changes.

Except time. Or so we think.

After the dress rehearsal party, half of Panama arrived, the following weekend, on Isla Grande. A kind of, all black, arse shaking, Big Day Out. The pangas delivered a ton or two of sound system, and from the moment it kicked in, on Friday night, it went solid, all night, and all day, all weekend, all over the island, everywhere.

Latinos like it loud.

The throngs of partying visitors put the trash into, trash the place, covering the whole island in beer cans and plastic.

In the West, we send blokes to the field to belt each other, whilst our tribes barrack. On Ilsa Grande, they send cute arsed chics onto the field, with tribes barracking, and instead of belting each other, the chics must out spunk each other, until finally, the judges declare a winner, pretending the prize went the most demure dancer, when in reality, each dancer visually fucked each of the judges, one by one, from 2m infront of the judging table, in a Latino variety of pole dance themes, that puts the erectile into pole.

Then, the masses hit the dance floor, and unlike us western types who can only dance when in semi darkness, usually, whilst pissed… the locals here dance all day, sober or bent, and in so doing, enjoy pumps and hoses to keep them cool.

The boys get the girls.  The girls get their boys. And there are a shitload of young kids on Isla Grande as a result.

Even when, just after dawn, no one was dancing, there was still full a throttle full of tunes being twisted onto the beach side, basket ball court, dance floor.

Mad.

On Sunday night and Monday, understandably, not a soul was seen.

Catching another bus, out of this madness for a day, is fun.

But chaotic. A 60 kilo backpack full of food, on bus so full it would burst a sardine can, can be, ah, educational. You never know who you will meet on a bus. I met Leonardo. He had broken into what sounded French, but what was Italian, back at the chaotic bus stop in front of El Ray supermarket.

I attract freaks, and the one I lured at the El Ray bus stop, was one legged and from Zimbabwe. He was, as it turned out, despite his good English, begging.

So I got him a buck and a feed, and asked him, whilst sitting down to eat chicken with him in the gutter, where he lost his leg.

With busses pulling up at our feet, and chicken bits hanging out our mouth, he just shook his finger at the spot in front of us, saying…. ‘there’.

Chopped off above the knee, and still hurting, and with $20 needed for a doctor, he was doing it tough, but was cheery about it, assuring me that in 2010, Zimbawee sends a lost boys ship around the world to retrieve destitute nationals.

If I were him, I’d stay in Panama. But I’m not him, or so we are wrongly led to believe.

Anyway Leonardo was the one who extracted me from this one legged chat, as bank workers, soldiers and cops watched on in amused distaste.

Leonardo was born of Rome, and was raised in Naples. In his hand was a starter motor, and I had him pegged as a yachtie, as only yachties catch buses carrying 20 kilo parts. He looked 50, but was 62, awaiting  his  Italian, $1000 month pension,  an amount pleasantly enough to live handsomely on yacht in Panama.

It turned out Leonardo was no ordinary yachty, but had being sailing  the high stakes, Panama to Columbia, backpacker run, for 4 years. The plane ticket from the grumpy neighbours, Panama to Columbia is $350.  Backpacker logic says, you can offer 5 trips of 5 days, by yacht, from Panama, via San Blas, to Cartegena, for the same price as the air ticket, and, the back packers will come. By the hundreds.

Where I sit now, a bunch are being loaded into a shitty yacht with a substance abused skipper, heading out into waters so bad, that half the restaurant I am in,  was just washed away. I tried to warn them, but they must go. Wave heights are reaching several stories, and the wind is gale force, but ebbing. We too have been pinned down for days in this gale.

We shifted bays into this Linton backpacker depot, so we could do some glue and screw, to our other, fading, main mast, without too much mast rodeo.

Leonardo says that sea sickness is handy, as it means he does not need to feed his guests, and they demand nothing. He in return, only asks that guests only spew to leeward. I asked him how he avoids getting busted by returning clients slipping a  few kilos of coke in their packs. As the bus honkered along, he explained to me, that in Cartegena, before departing, he casually disappears for a few hours, telling his new crew that customs will along before departure, for an inspection. He asks them to leave their packs on the boat’s roof. Leonardo then goes and gets a coffee. By the time he is back, all drugs have been smoked, snorted or throw overboard, and of course, Leonardo was bullshitting about the customs inspection.

I asked him if some other charted captains have ever come unstuck, and he recalled a colleague currently rotting in Columbian jail after allowing 200 kilos on board. The immoral moral, according to Leonardo, is simple. Never export coke in amounts under a tonne. $6-$7 million dollars for a tonne worth, and you are in the game. Under that, and you are a perfect target for the PR team.

Columbia works just the same as all other US sanctioned drug export areas. Take Cambodia, and Thailand, the Golden Triangle….the world’s once main export centre for smack, under US, body bag delivered sanctions, that kept the world opiated for 20 to 30 years. Today its Afghanistan supplying the 90% of Europe’s smack, under US affiliated and supervised black ops. Hey, black ops don’t come cheap, and the CIA must fund its mates, one way or way or another.    Plus, certain black hands need a profit.  Besides darlings, have you seen the latest prices for mines and bombs at the supermarket? Outrageous.

It’s the PR teams in these places that are dangerous. The PR teams are, I’m told, a combo of the US’s drug enforcement agencies, and the narco bosses in designer suits.

When some idiot exports 200 kilos of coke, the whole US Columbian system knows about it. And at under a tonne, the PR team can arrange the yacht bust, get the headlines, and send the right message to those good, gullible folks back home.  Meanwhile, from Cartegena alone, some say 75% of the US’s massive neurotic demand for coke was, or maybe still is, supplied under US control. It comes from Bolivia. The US pretend they are in force in Columbia, to rid the place of coke, but the dead opposite is seemingly true, as per the usual facts, your honour. Some say the US is using the last remaining, pro US, South American state, Columbia, to mount a huge military subversion force to deal with the all new, anti US, left wing South America.  Bad guys in CNN sterilised packets. It’s the Samsara we all signed up for.

And the beat goes on.

La di da di da.

The poor backpacker bastards are heading out to Cartegena infront of me. They are gunna get hammered.

Leonardo does not just take backpackers…he takes bikes, and a bike eats a lot less food at the same $350 for the trip, as do live cargo.

How the fuck he can take 10 backpackers, and 5 motorbikes strapped to the rigging is beyond me, being that his boat is only 47 foot long.  And not just small trail bikes, but fully kitted, 300kg BMW GS 1200s. Given the sea state, Leonardo must be tough.  Sure, he doesn’t look tough, bespectacled and bald, buy hey, looks can be deceiving.

The outboard has just been started for the last unwitting pommy backpacker crew heading to a grim fate. The weather is so bad they closed down the huge sea port at Cartegena. Even Kuna’s grass villages are being washed away.

I asked Leonardo how bad the jails would be. Here, the nearest jail is at the appropriately named Colon, one of the deadliest murder centres of Central America. He said they were bad.  He knew. He’d been in the Colon jail for a month, and the food was so full of dead mice, that he had to spend $1500 being extorted to get so called illicit food in from a shop, 100m away. The guard just walked 100m.

He had shipped a regular crew of 6 Peruvians from Cartegena. He said he had no way of knowing it, but their visas were fake, so he copped a month in gaol. Anyone other than Peruvians, he argues, and it would have never been an issue.

Its good to see that the yachts that got washed up on the beach yesterday, are back on their moorings.

I have a long paddle to windward to get back to Ave Maria.

I’ve been distracted by glamorous company at the Wunderbar,  an end of the world, backpacker joint, where bikes, backpackers and freaks await hairy yacht transfers to Columbia. Her name, Nicole, a  lone, sweet and sharp traveller from NYC. And others.

You never know who you will meet at weird, back lot, backpacker hangs.

This morning, all chuffed by the closeness of a nearby beach, in Linton anchorage, I went ashore for my usual beach yoga.

On this small, beachfront orchard and paddock, a foot above sea level, sits an abandoned Florida University research building, left to 3 monkeys, like some Jurassic park wanabe,  left to rot.

Once set up and deep in some chilled, lie on ground yoga pose, I looked up to see what, to all intense purposes, could have been an animated  character out of a Disney, raid the kitchen with animal animation, in the form of a standing monkey. It was so cute and affectionate.

It walked around, politely offering me its little hand to shake.

Then, like a bar girl onto an expat’s lap, it wanted to get cuddly.

But it was a trick. And, like any bar girl, at the moment the affection waned, it was time to bite the hand that fed. Chomp went chimp. The little fucka. Immediately, it was on. All monkeys to the front line, it was rumble time.

Bleeding, I made my way back to the canoe, fending the fucas off with a paddle, and matador rigged, yoga matt. Next time I go back to the beach for yoga, if I ever do, I’m taking a big stick and a bad attitude. I’m on the hunt for firecrackers, as in Sri Lanka, this is the usual way to keep the fucking monkeys outta the fruit trees.

That was not my most relaxing yoga session.

But all matters change, and as is the way with yachting, hard work is oft followed by blissful anchorages.

From Isla Grande to the San Blas is some 40 miles. It had been blowing nipples of for days, and so the sea state, between us and our destination, was as relaxing as yoga with the monkeys. Many had been waiting for a weather window, and at dawn, we woke to find ourselves the last to weigh anchor. Ahead was a luxury cat, a fast 50 footer, and a French aluminium can…all faster than us, but less arsy. Whilst most yachts headed miles out  to sea, in order to make a tack and stay ‘high enough’ to make it to San Blas in one hit, we deemed ourselves high enough, the moment we rounded the Isla Grande point, and in one, scrape it by your chin tack, we dropped anchor in yachty heaven. San Blas.

Having broken things in our last passage, this time Ave Maria was strapped down like an S&M whip lord. Every cupboard, rope, piece of fruit was lashed to something. Double reefs where in all sails. Awnings were off. This time we were going to make no mistakes. And no mistakes were made. Albeit, in order to hold one tack, we got ridden right along the edge of a reef full of broken dreams and sunken boats, until finally, we hit this, the first of hundred of San Blas Islands, our new home. I can see why some people just get of the world, and never leave here.

Let me have a go with words. Imagine a 25 acre resort swimming pool, with two quaint islands at either side of the pool. Decorate the pool with coral and aquarium fish. Add a dozen or so, palm leaf huts to each island. Have genuine, real indigenous types, paddle out to meet you in radical outfits with $1 lobsters and, if you like, get attracted to the one, tiny, hand written sign at the beach end, outside a grass hut,  that reads, cold beer, $1.

Get the landscapers to simply use mature coconut trees. Surround each island with soft white sand.

An ocean crossing shoe floats by as I write, covered in pippy like shells with long necks, being trailed by its green laces, like a footwear blue bottle.

This is the Kuna Yala territory, one of those rare places on earth where a multicoloured, matriarchal indigenous mob, have said no to western bullshit. No non Kuna run business allowed here. Aside of trading with the yachties and backpackers. This is the sort of culture, to which I feel very happy about losing my money to. For example, today, as a big fan of indigenous canoes, I traded $12 for a ride around the islands in a Kuna sail canoe. Kunas still have enough shore side lumber to make their canoes out of trees, or more accurately, tree. Yes, these are not planked canoes, these are the rare dugout, a boat type fast fading to the ways of fibreglass or planking. For about $100, you get the basic two man commuter. For $500, you can take the whole family, in-laws and all. Show me a tree that can be hollowed out, and still execute a shapely canoe stern without the end grain ends coming unstuck. Kunas can.

The $12 ride also was a morning aid project, as with it, the suffering skipper, needing eye surgery, was closer to covering his next doctor’s bill in Panama city, and along with some old sunglasses I donated, making me feel as good as the recipient.

DIY charity causes are marvellous things. Your mind will deny it, but your soul knows it’s true; give someone cash who needs it, rather than spend it on retail therapy, and both the giver and receiver are way happier.  Under Rod’s post 2012 paradigm, the most esteemed of society won’t be those with the most stuff, but those who can give away the most stuff.

We have weeks ahead at this lifestyle, it seems, so toady I got into practise. The all new, White Limbo canoe was fitted with a plastic box reading, US Mail, and like the US Mail, this canoe delivers, dive gear at least. As an exercise start, a few kilometres of paddling and swimming around the coral was toning. Regrettably, today’s spear fishing hunt went unrewarded, so a passing canoe traded some still flapping fish, and crawling crabs, both of which are being chilled in the ice box for dinner.  The crabs are so big, I hope they don’t eat the fridge contents before chilling out. I wasn’t happy seeing the suffering of yesterday’s lobster as it met the boiling water, so tonight’s crabs get gorged and chilled for a last wish. They say going to the boiling pot unconscious is best.

The anchorage emptied in the morning, and has since refilled with all manner of interesting hardware and flesh.

There are two cute things in life. One is a beautiful yacht line. The other is the female body. Both are in abundance here in paradise.  Bikinis’ of backpackers headed to Cartegena line the beach. Two gorgeous yachts off the design boards of Sparkman and Stephens, flank us, one being an old Swan 65, and another being a funky,  50 year old, S&S pilot house, that puts the ship, into yacht. Invited aboard, German Peter’s old girl, I was very pleased by the sense of space that weighted and wheeled windows of the old pilot house gave, slipping into the nether lands, to fully open the main living area to the tropical surrounds.

My last yacht, a replica of the Swan, whilst cosy downstairs, lacked inside connection with its environment, as though all was a North Sea gale outside. When it’s all swaying palm trees and $1 lobsters, who needs to be downstairs in the Tube station.

And who knows what day of the week it is, and who cares. Laid back under the awning of the cockpit is the Dell, and me.

Being that I promised not to write whilst out of it, today’s chapter must end with the first swill of de lime in de coconut, all fresh, with vodka, yo. The Kuna trading canoes are making their way back to their homes, homes made of just a few leaves and canes on the beach, no frequent flyer points needed. The backpackers are getting into party mode. The sun, it’s out there, slipping soon below the horizon, and the full moon, its already sitting just below the horizon, ready for a waning party, two hours after sunset. Soon the blessings of the Caribbean’s evening lifestyle will take it relaxing toll, and off to the cabin of dreams I will drift, no TV, no traffic, no hassles, and tomorrow, it’s blue azure all over again.

The musi’s are right. God is great.

 

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