Homeless By Choice

I dropped my room-mates off at Cosmic Crab where they shopped for organic products and headed over to meet Worth, who agreed to look at my hull problem. I was running a bit late as I waited on my crew so I felt a bit better when I passed Worth on the way to the shop. Earl, the shop owner agreed to let me lift the boat for nothing. Worth gave a courtesy assessment and told me he was very busy and referred me to someone else, who had grown up making boats in Cartegena, Colombia. Worth assured me that he was more than capable of taking on the job. Earl called him, he showed up in minutes, assessed the damage, which was in fact a failing repair, nothing I had done and gave a quote for $150. Earl made it perfectly clear to him that this was all inclusive, labor and materials following a side comment that without proper handling prices were subject to change during the job.

The boat has to be perfectly dry, drying for days before the fiberglass patch can be applied. Ok, the boat needs a paint job anyway. Boat bottoms should be covered with a strong paint infused with copper to stop marine growth. “How long is your boat?” “Fourteen feet.” “Hah!” “Ok, call it twenty-two feet.” The price runs $33 a foot and includes prep work of scraping, sanding, washing with muriatic acid, priming and painting. Worth assured me that Earl’s paint jobs are great and that his last one lasted five years.

“Ok, $810, patch, prep and paint, how many days?” Five. Whatever, I have a spare boat. “When can you get started?” “It’s on the lift now.” “Sounds good, I’ll have it by Wednesday?”

I put down a $400 deposit, which was really being used to go buy the paint at $300 a gallon and the fiberglass. Not much of a deposit is required if one is in possession of the boat.

Worth told me how much he liked the boat, saying that he had wanted to buy it. That makes about half a dozen people. It really is a nice boat for $7,500 even if it is underpowered. Worth pointed to his monster, with twin 115 E-tech (Evinrude two-stroke) outboards and said “That’s $500 a day in gas to fish off of.” “Well, we’ll take my boat, if you show me the spots, I can pull that off for about a fifth of that.” “I’ve got all the gear and I know where all the spots are.” Okay, now we have fishing, and crocodile, snake and frog hunting on the itinerary.

Last night I had to run the generator as it had been a particularly cloudy day and we had done a couple of loads of laundry. Down to the dock, up 100 steps with five gallons of gas. I put in a gallon or so and the thing ran dry. I pulled on the rope many times until I was holding the handle and a severed cord. A quick inspection revealed that it wouldn’t take much more than a socket set and maybe some screwdrivers would do the trick. Ok, off to Kow Chai to buy a socket set. “Shit, crap, Cooper, let me see that one.” Man that was over priced. I ended up with a half inch metric set, not near the black chromed Vanadium set that is lost somewhere at my brother’s house or even any of the five sets I have in storage, but it would do the trick. Pull cord, “No Shakey, that’s twisted nylon, it needs to be braided, see this spool, it’s even labelled, ‘Pull Cord.” Ten feet. Some haggling on prices, a can of starter fluid. “No, I’ll take this one, they are both 11 ounces of ether.” Ether way didn’t need it, but it’s nice to have on hand.

Water taxi. Need a water taxi. Off to find a friend and get a list of names and numbers. Guy number one said he would pick me and my roomies off every day for $40. Guy number two said he would take me home for $20. Maybe these prices were based on the fact that I told them my destination was an upscale resort near my house to give them an idea of the location, maybe I just looked stupid. Number three agreed to $10. He showed up, I scurried over with my tools, a waterproof toolbox and a five gallon gas tank from my boat, my backpack. Good to go. We pulled out and a woman yelled at me, “What about Jessica?” Damn. How could I forget my friggin’ puppy?

I got off on my dock. Keys. Always take the boat keys. Don’t want to walk another flight if possible, but mine were back in my boat. No big deal. I have tools. Five seconds to compromise security.

The repair of the generator took about five minutes, thank you Honda. I recalled the number of times I to effect this repair on a Briggs and Stratton, drilling out rivets and working on really lousy stamped metal and plastic parts. Hey a chance to work on my Panama web site, the girls are staying overnight in town god knows the bars don’t close until four.

Following a blissfully calm morning, doing little more than sitting on the deck, soaking in the view and consuming coffee the occupants of the little jungle house on the hill made our way to town, accompanied by Jessica, our lovable little mutt. Time to dock. No room at Chow Kai, my hardware store of choice. Hmmm, let’s see what kind of abuse is heaped upon us for occupying a slip behind the sailboat tour company. It was dished out warm and firm, no I couldn’t stay there. Brandy went to La Buga Dive Shop for her first dive this trip and Ricardo, the owner pointed to a slip and said it had my name on it. I’ll be getting my Dive Master Certification at La Buga, so that’s pretty much every weekday for the next couple of months.

First stop was an attempt to get a duplicate boat key. My only chance was the Yamaha dealer. Yes, they duplicate keys, but not console keys for Yamaha, a full court banana country press. He shoots, he scores! I was told that maybe I could get one made in David, on the Pacific side. Hell, that’s nothing but a four hour ride each way for a maybe.

Down at Earl’s boat repair I found Erwin, surrounded by near a dozen people, preparing to leave the business and turn it over to Leonardo, a Ngobe. I asked if I could interrupt and told Erwin that I wanted a pair of electrical lines snaked through the conduit, one affixed to the new bilge pump and switch and the other left as a spare for another bilge pump I would obtain. Erwin translated to Leonardo and I was advised to go fetch my boat. Off I went to get my boat and upon return Leonardo started shuffling the boats that blocked the way to the boat lift. I moored, leaving him to finish his nautical Rubik’s cube after getting a quote of $20 to do the work and returned to La Buga, got my Emergency First Responder study material and tried to connect to the internet there. Little Jessica was doing her usual fine job of luring bikini clad hotties while I tried to connect to the internet. The owner didn’t know the password and passed me off to another guy who gave me one that did not work. The woman who runs the restaurant knew the correct key. Hint, case is important and one cannot subsititute underscores for dashes. I wrote down the correct password and gave it to Ricardo for reference.

Off to a place I frequently haunt I listened to the house jack-of-all-trades docking the boat. Every time he put the engine in reverse a long grinding of gears testified that the lower unit on this outboard was in the process of being converted to metallic shavings and dust, issuing protest that penetrated clouds of blue smoke, signalling the upper unit was near ready to join the lower unit.

Back to the boat shop, the heavy battery cables were being repaired, a large pile of brochantite and malachite, the green byproducts of copper oxidation, littered the deck. Would I like the cable replaced? That would be a “yes.” Another hour and a half. Don’t forget, I want the hull inspected, it has a breach. Upon another return trip, the boat was hoisted further and a fist sized hole, with the fiberglass in place but with a large ragged edge was found to be the source of the leak. Now I needed to call Worth, but Stephen has his number and he is in Texas and Erwin failed to give me his number so I couldn’t call Erwin and ask. I finally got the number and called Worth. He obviously didn’t know who I was. “Worth, it’s me, Jim, we are going to go snake catching together.” Well that warmed him up. See you tomorrow at 11 after the Organic Products sale at the Cosmic Crab.

Eventually the boat was put back together and I paid the total tab, which included half an hour’s labor at $20. $40 an hour for mechanic labor seemed excessive, but who am I to bitch when he actually worked for a couple of hours. The total tab was $56.

My room-mates found me and we headed back. It had been a cloudy day and after a couple of loads of laundry the batteries had not recharged. Back down to the boat to fetch some gas for the generator. It ran for about 20 minutes and then sputtered to a stop. I added more gas but it refused to start again. I pulled repeatedly on the Honda engine, stopping when I held the pull handle and a limp bit of nylon rope, no longer affixed to the motor. Guess I’ll have to buy some rope and a socket set and repair this, something I’ve done so many times I couldn’t imagine trying to put a number on it.

Jessica needed to be crated, with a free run of the house she stays up all night, plays with toys, chews on things and blesses us with piles and puddles. I locked her in the bodega, hoping that the area was sufficiently small that she would be averse to soiling it. She protested in no uncertain terms, howling and barking but finally going to sleep. I was pleased this morning to find that she had controlled herself and that upon release she provided fertilizer to the slope on the west of my house. She know plays with her favorite toy, a six inch diameter hard plastic silverware holder with a long plastic handle. It rolls. Pounce on it and it scoots. Pick it up with the handle and it bangs on the wooden deck which sounds like a loud drum. I have no idea how these women sleep through this.

In bed at 2:30, up at five to a cold rain. Down to the dock and on the boat. So much rain had accumulated that water had filled the bilge and now sat on the deck half way to the bow. Several hundred scoops later all accessible water had been removed but hundreds of pounds of water remained below the deck. I had discovered that the bilge pump had burned out, clogged with dog hair and fishing line. $229 for a new pump is nothing compared to the cost of a new outboard after sinking a boat in a tropical rainstorm. The plug that I had failed to replace may have contributed to some of the water problems.

Back up a hundred steps to the house, dry off, change clothes. Back out on the deck. The sun broke revealing a destroyed rocking chair that I had purchased in Fortuna, Costa Rica a month or two ago and hadn’t gotten around to assembling yet. This chair was a replacement for one I used for untold hours while I lived in Cocles, Costa Rica, which I left with a friend who coveted it. Soon my room-mate was up to reveal that an overnight guest had sat in the partially assembled chair at some time closer to dawn than midnight. It was sufficiently assembled that upon drunken inspection in darkness it might resemble something suitable for its intended purpose. The responsible party tossed on the futon, ignoring phone call after phone call and ignoring his Samsung phone snooze alarm that pierced the calm every fifteen minutes, louder than the parrots that were raucously chastising the squandering of daylight.

After many hours the women woke up, I made omelettes and American Fries, we cleaned up and our guest finally got out of bed at near noon. We went down, bailed out the boat again and headed into town. As he got off the boat I castigated him, not for having broken the chair but for failing to have the decency to have mentioned the fact. He laughed and blamed it on the dog. Scratch this place off your party spots, peckerhead.

The women went off to socialize and I to tend to matters. The Yamaha dealer had boat plugs. I bought three. Their bilge pumps were $229. Come on, it’s a sealed DC motor, an impeller and a plastic housing. Off to Chow Kai, a hardware store. I met Shakey and told him I was new house owner here. I found a 1750 gallon per hour bilge pump for $59, seems more than adequate to replace my 1100 GP/H unit. Ok, crimping connectors, silicone liquid electrical tape, screwdriver set, stripping crimping pliers, some mounting screws.

I moved my boat over to Casa Verde and set about install the new pump. I showed Shakey how the electrical pliers were used to crimp the connectors, telling him that I used to manage a hardware store. He learned a thing or two. Back to the boat. I hooked up the pump to the old connector. No luck. Do I have power? No way to know. I tried to borrow a volt ohm meter, but there were no cables. Flaco graciously offered to go home and get his. It was worthless. I tested it on charged batteries. Let’s see, three Nickel Metal Hydrides in series, that should be about 3.6 volts. Nope, -17.32, +53.2, piece of shit. Back to the store. A bit of wire, a Greenlee volt-ohm meter, some more connectors. Give money. Wait for change. Get off the phone, just give me my seven dollars back. “Hey, I’ll just get my ch Back to the boat. No power. Hmmm. Attach some terminals to the wires, Attach terminals to connection block, run wires. Bilge pump runs all the time. A short walk back to the store, part of the reason I had relocated the boat. Boat a float switch and confirmed I could use it if I didn’t need it. Checked the resistance on the existing switch and found it was operative. Hell, I’ll keep the other switch and add a backup bilge pump. Patched in the switch. Siliconed the connections. The women found me. Not hard to guess where I would be. Bought some food and headed home.

Early night for all.

A gentle breeze ripples the water, creating a continual flow of crescents bordered by a flat sea that mirrors the clouds, looking as much as melting ice on a spring day as it does an invite to snorkel the nearby coral and spearfish for snapper.

To catch up on the blog or go snorkeling, that is the question.

After breakfast of american fries, eggs and bread prepared by yours truly we set about putting the house in order. Brandy cleaned out the cupboards and took care of the floor, while Becky washed every pot, pan and utensil that been removed from the cupboard and we set about sorting and reducing the amount of cookware, plates and glasses. We really don’t need 20 plates, glasses and sets of cutlery for three people and would rather dedicate the cupboard space to food. Becky found the jug used for bailing and emptied hundreds of gallons of water into the ocean. She was not aware that there was a tube that runs from beneath the deck. and that as she was emptying the water was being replaced by water under the deck. I inspected the bilge pump to find that it was clogged with dog hair and had burned out. My two spares were much smaller units and wouldn’t fit the discharge hose.

I should have at least two battery powered units and one that runs off AC. It’s easy to lose a boat in a single night of rain and a submerged engine is pretty much shot. We snorkled around the house, finding an octopus, a lot of snapper, some of them well into dinner sized, anemone, urchins, various coral, a parrot fish, some angel fish, starfish and sponges. Far from awesome, but hey, it’s thirty feet from the dock. Having burned away most of the day, I took a gas tank off on boat and used it to fill the tank on the primary boat with the aid of a funnel and we made our way to town. By this time it was past five and the gas station I use was closed. It turns out that another one is near the marina on Carenero and we headed over there to see if we could find it. We heard loud drumming and rounding the corner saw a school yard through an opening between a couple of building and dozens of young students beating on bass drums. November is the month of parades in Bocas. There are about five holidays, all on weekdays, in November. Get your banking in while you can. Speaking of which, we heard last night that all of Banco Nacional is offline as a result of a lightning strike that took down its mainframe. Interesting, there is only one bank in town, Banco Nacional. This should make things fun at the ATM. Fortunately I topped off the day before.

We saw a shack near a sign reading “No Fumar”. That must be the place. I pulled up and got out. A ray swam out from the under the dock. A tour boat operator pulled up, pulled out his tank and ran to beat me. I’m in no hurry, go ahead, cut in. The woman who ran the place put a 3/4″ piece of clear plastic tubing into one of the many 15 gallon plastic cans, sucked on it and siphoned his five gallon tank full. Nope, there is no dockside service, I’d have to get 22 gallons five gallons at a time, measured out in a plastic five gallon water bottle. Brandy laughed when she saw me returning to the boat with a five gallon bottle of water, a Kodak moment in her mind and she is virtually a Bocaratorian. This is all so strange and unusual to Becky that she just took it in stride.

After the second bottle full and filling up my five gallon spare, my hands covered in gasoline, gas soaked cuts on my hands from some barnacles, I figured it would be fine to just top off the next day at my usual filling place. We checked out a couple of places, couldn’t find a place to dock and went over to eat on a boat that serves as a restaurant, although it is actually capable of being operated as was demonstrated during a recent divorce of the couple that owned the place. I’ll have to skip the details, I can no longer tell interesting tales on cities two hundred miles in my wake. I live here.

Well, my new roomie, Brandy finally made it back to Bocas after about four months in New Mexico. Having gotten her fill of snow skiing and snow boarding in for the year she returned to the tropics for blue water and jungle. Having taken the overnight bus from Panama City to Almirante with her friend, Becky, she was to meet me at Casa Verde where I would escort them to my house. Following a fair rain, on the run in I had to remove the plug to drain the boat of the accumulated water and having achieved that task was chagrined to find myself withdrawing the plug and latching handle separately from my pocket. The rubber component was placed in the hole but absent the handle could not be firmly secured as the handle compresses the plug increasing its diameter.

We met at the dock, I met Becky and we went off to secure some provisions and I to get some locking pliers with which I might effect a repair to the plug until such time as replacement and spare. The handle serves as a cam and is mounted through a hole in a rod and affixed by a pin which was missing. As stated in a couple of former entries, hangers and duct tape have been used employed in many a make shift repair here. We headed off to the house and soon thereafter, Becky, worn out from the trip and some sleeping aids, took a nap while Brandy and I took a short walk in the jungle, returning after finding and catching one of the famous tiny red frogs that inhabit this island. Feeling she had rested enough and that this warranted a view we woke her and showed her the frog which was a small fraction of the size of my little fingernail. She declared it the cutest thing she’d ever seen.

With all parties up, we headed out, with flyers in hand to look for Ngobe indians hoping to get a lead on my missing dog. Rounding the west of my island we encountered my groundskeeper, sitting in a dugout canoe with but half a foot of freeboard paddling the still waters, clad in long pants, a shirt and a jacket, quite a contrast from the small bikinis worn by my passengers. He denied knowing anything about the dog and inquired as to when I wanted him back, I told him I’d let him know. Passing through a cut that separates Isla Solarte from Isla Bastimentos a woman called out to me and waved from a porch. From that distance I couldn’t see who it was, but her gestures were so animated that a visit seemed in order. I pulled up and docked and Michelle descended and was most pleased to see that Jessica, the puppy I had purchased from her was with us. A short while later two large men with shaved heads, one with a small pony tail, wearing a thong, joined her. The look on the woman’s faces as we ascended the stairs was sufficiently comedic as to distract from that which is most likely to draw a guy’s eyes while ascending stairs behind attractive women. We chatted for a while and finally I said something to the effect that we had to go or they had to invite us up on the dock so we could get out of the sun. They invited us up to the “main house” a two hundred square foot wall-less structure furnished with a table, several chairs, a bed, a stove and a refrigerator. Clyde and Verne were the only inhabitants of this 28 acre plot of land and seldom went to town.

Vern started the tour showing us the ornamentals in the immediate area of his house, of more types than I can recall, pointed out the pineapple plants and said that they produced pineapples with white flesh that have no acid. Normal pineapples have a fair amount of acid, but are so laden with sugar its not noticable. I surmised we reached the bounds of Verns domain as he passed me off to Clyde at which point we split up, the woman off to join Michelle. My pup Jessica took of with Ahos, the resident German Shepard, happy to have an outlet for one of her two energy levels, full bore, redlining tear it up, the other being deep sleep. We walked past a large Bobcat escavator which Clyde had brought down from the states and used for scraping black soil topsoil to supplement the red clay in cultivated areas. Clyde was in the process of rebuilding the engine and hydraulics and had constructed frame materials from plate aluminum. A bit further we passed a disassembled Cessna 182 which Clyde had used in a former life as a skydiving instructor; he has over 6,000 jumps under his belt and has a long, varied and interesting background ranging from professional underwater photography, para-sail design, parachute design, aerospace design, manufacturing, and much more. It’s quite a long list. A tarp covered section of ground served as a prototype construction area, with sewing machines that can punch through half an inch of nylon straps. Clyde is quite mechanically inclined and is prepared to take on major repairs to equipment as a former machine shop owner with a good amount of tools on the property including what may be the largest welder in the province. He had constructed an 80 foot communication tower and gave some workers instructions for installation with the result that it sits inclined at thirty degree angle stuck in a tree. Looks like it will be a while before they have internet.

“Clyde, why do you have a barrel a barrel tied to your dock?” “Shark bobber.” “Becky do you want to go for a swim?”

I finally got around to asking him about his knee brace. Turns out he was snorkeling and was run over by a tour operator who “couldn’t see past the first first pair of tits on the boat.” Both bones in one leg were broken clean and the prop tore up his thigh. He spent four days in a hospital in Changuinola, had pins put in his bones and his muscles sewn back together. Total bill? $300.

Michelle and Clyde gave me some tips on what to do with my malfunctioning propane refrigerator, how to take off the flue, remove the baffles and clean it out. Later I was told that the refrigerants can stratify and that the I might have to stand the refrigerator on its head and all sides for a period of time ranging from several hours to days depending on whose version one wished to believe. We met another neighbor I’d been told about, Furniture Dave and admired a sink he had made carved out of a solid piece of mahagony on the wall of Verne’s bathroom, not the ladies bathroom, which has a door. The sink was wonderful, providing a contrast to a house that otherwise looked like a temporary shelter for housing supplies during a construction project. Clyde’s house is a tent made of six mill plastic strung over poles. A tent with leather furniture, and a television, but a tent never-the-less. Constructed as a temporary shelter 5 years ago all that has been completed of the permanent house is a series of poles placed in the ground. Doors don’t provide security, being on your property does. There is no need for heating or air conditioning and an adequate roof keeps off the rain. We met “Dave the Furniture Guy” another local, a neighbor hails from England who is a cabinet maker now busy restoring yachts.

It was time to go, but Jessica was nowhere to be found. Becky asked Ahos where Jessica was and Ahos walked away. Becky followed for 50 yards and the German Shepard put his nose under the Bobcat and out popped Jessica, obviously disturbed from her nap. “Good dog, Ahos, you’re so smart.”

As we wished to get some snorkeling in before the sun went down and headed off to find Discovery Bay. We returned home, looked it up on the internet but couldn’t find its location and returned to Clyde and Vern’s. On the dock in his underwear, Vern asked “I was wondering how long it was going to take you to come back.” Hmmmm? We said we’d get some plants soon, but it seemed a bit odd to ask after only an hour had elapsed. Turns out somebody had left a pack a cigarettes there and he thought they were ours.

Apparently Clyde went through the mechanical aptitude line twice and got Vern’s share. Vern doesn’t know which end of a screwdriver to hold. rVern was listening to a VHF radio on channel 72 a local chatter channel called BEN (Bocas Emergency Network) in which people give updates on events in town, gossip and send invites to parties. A man in town sells the radios at cost, $200 away the radios to the locals that participate in an emergency response network, that provide emergency medical care or transportation. The group was started after a woman on one of these islands was bitten by a fer-de-lance and needed transport to the mainland for anti-venom as those that had it at the time were unavailable.

On our way there, we ran out of gas, but I had a five gallon spare. The women snorkled for a while, but we really didn’t find the reef, then we headed into town hoping had a gorgonzola, jalapeno and ham pizza and headed home to chat on the deck. Becky, this was not a strange day, you ain’t seen nothing yet.