Profligate's
Regress
May 7 - Panama
After a sizzling quick Canal passage, Profligate
is back in the Pacific, anchored about a half mile from the Flamenco
YC. The Panama City skyline looms about 10 miles in the distance.
It's hot. Real hot. Although it's early morning, sweat pours
from every pore. If you don't like heat and humidity, you have
no business in the tropics.
The new Gold Coast built 65-ft Tropicat as seen at the Panama
Canal YC. She's headed for charter service in Cabo, where she'll
take out nearly 100 passengers at a time, replacing the trimaran
Pez Gato, which long ago went 'soft'.
There are new and nutty rules for transiting the Panama Canal.
One of them is that our entire crew of 11 had to have their photos
taken and be fingerprinted!
It's been one of the wildest two weeks
of our sailing lives. In less than 14 days, we've raced Antigua
Sailing Week aboard the R/P 92 Leopard of London; taken
great photos of the new MaxZ86s Pyewacket and Morning
Glory, as well as the 140-ft Pacific Cup bound Mari-Cha;
with 10 others sailed 1,200 miles from Antigua to the San Blas
Islands; set a new boat speed record of 25.3 knots among hundreds
of surfs; spent a day - and a ton of money - running around Colon
setting up a rapid Canal transit; got photographed and fingerprinted
in order to transit the Canal; hung out at the Panama Canal YC;
did a Canal transit in six hours; anchored in Flamenco Marina;
and dropped off crew. Plus met hundreds of great people.
One of the better streets in Colon, Panama, the so-called 'colon
of the universe'. This was once a beautiful colonial town that
has completely gone to hell. Lack of jobs will do that.
Having completed that, Doña de Mallorca
and the Wanderer had about 11 minutes before welcoming the new
crew. Fortunately, the list of things to be done was small -
solve the starting problem on the port engine; make sure the
house charging system problem had really been fixed; deal with
some steering issues; and catch up on two week's worth of sleep.
Once that was done, the rest - dashing to Nicaragua, Acapulco,
Cabo, and San Diego before the start of hurricane season - almost
sounds easy. But of course, it's never that way. The one thing
we can say for sure is that life hasn't been boring.
Lake Gatun, the heart of the Panama Canal. The only way to cross
the continental divide by yacht!
Everything now seems much better. A lost
crew member was found; the port engine starting problem mysteriously
cured itself; the alternator bracket and steering issues will
apparently hold until California; and a good night of sleep was
enjoyed. See the June issue of Latitude
38 for more stories.
A slow and small boat in the canal about to cross paths with
a big ship. The little guy paid about $350 to transit, the ship
about $100,000. No wonder the Canal doesn't want small boats.
Our new friends on Tropicat locking down on the Pacific
side
Photos Latitude/Richard
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