Costa Rica
[ Written by Willem H. Eickholt ]
We cruise along the Costa Rican coast.
The weather is perfect, the mood is great and the fishing is unbelievable.
We pull up more tuna then we can eat. Bill, always thinking ahead, had brought
sufficient wasabi and soy sauce to season the fresh fish
into a heavenly sashimi. We complete the refinishing job we had started earlier.
We fine-sand and coat the teak coamings and hand rails with 6 coats of varnish.
When we meet the owner later on in Miami we'll have a nice surprise for him;
his boat will look better than when he last saw her.
I am starting to feel a little more at ease now. The first month of the voyage
had been full of new experiences and responsibilities. Navigating the boat
safely, keeping enough supplies to keep 4 hungry guys happy, dealing with
the landlubbering bureaucrats like harbor masters, customs -and immigration
officials in English and Spanish. Having Lucho with us is a real blessing.
Whenever we run into a language problem he'd solve it in a hurry and in fluent
Spanish..
And so we motor into Balboa harbor to start the most exciting part of our
trip; crossing the Panama Canal.
The Balboa Yacht Club has plenty of mooring cans to tie onto and a shuttle
service to get you off your boat and into the club house by motor launch with
a simple call on VHF. The club has everything a sailor needs. Good food at
reasonable prices, a bar
telephone service to the outside world and a friendly, helpfull staff. Lying
there we can actually watch the world go by. Ships from all over the globe
transit the very channel we are anchored in and pass us within a few hundred
feet.
I forget now how many authorities we have to satisfy before we can start our
canal passage. But there are the Panamanian Customs and Immigration, the Panama
Canal Commission for sure. Then we are told that we need "line-handlers",
one for each docking line. There are two bow lines and two stern lines.Because
we already have a crew of three we only need one Panamanian line handler.
At least 20 appli cants want the job. There are no rules for the hiring. The
captain negotiates the price for the service and the return trip to Panama
City by train. The line handler will be our guest for the duration of the
trip to Colon on the Atlantic side of the canal. Each pleasure craft is also
assigned a Panamanian pilot who takes over the captain's duties while transferring
the canal. We are lucky. Both pilot and line handler are nice guys. El brujo,
the line handler gives us the entertainment, the pilot gives us an insight
of the engineering and history of the canal. The transfer is fascinating as
we float up through the locks into Lake Gatun and down again into the Atlantic
Ocean at Colon. What blows my mind is that every time the locks open astronomical
amounts of fresh lake water run ddown into the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans.
I ask the pilot how that is possible without draining the lake. He obviously
has been asked the question before. So he smiles and says: Ah, there is so
much water in the lake and there is always so much rain that the lake will
never run dry......." Until a global climate change" I suggest.
His simple response is Que sera, sera!
To be continued.