C’mon Chris, you have a charter, let’s clean this dump up.

We moved shit off the back deck, out of the salon, from the cabins, from the pilot house.   Hoses, clamps, pumps, electrical fittings, tools, miscellany.  I emptied a dozen overflowing ash trays.   We took a boatload of shit to the battlestar, a retired naval vessel Chris had acquired for $1.  Another trip, more shit.   I emptied drawer after drawer, folded wrinkled bits of paper, crayons, colored pencils, water colors and stuffed this collection of little Noah’s doodlings into a plastic bag.   Hundreds of keys that would never enter a lock again, candles, ancient medications, drawer after drawer of crap.

The pilot house upper deck as covered in solid black hardened mold.   Some muriatic acid turned it red.   Straight 3.5% bleach and scrubbing got it clean.  Now to get another 30 gallons of bleach.  We took five gallons of diesel off the battlestar.   Then we couldn’t start the generator because the batteries are dead.   I took my charger ashore and intended to bring a cable so I could run two in series and rehabilitate a couple of batteries that I have to run in series for my charger.   Shit, left the cable on Alejandra’s panga.

About two Jen and Mel were ready to go snorkeling.  About time.   Definitely working on Panama time.  Off to Old Bank, we walked most of the way to Wizard Beach, then back to the marina to get my snorkel gear out of my boat.  Out to Hospital Point.  

Ahh, the masks are brand new.   Well, I have some toothpaste.  I never know when I am going to spend the night somewhere other than my house.   I scrubbed the silicone off the inside of the lenses, spit on the lenses, rinsed them in water and sent them out.   Bobbing in the waves, I took the boat for a quick spin to pull the plug and drain the water that had accumulated over the stern in the short time I was idling.  This little skiff is definitely going to see bottom some day.

I returned.  Where the hell is Mel?  I picked up Jen and went back to a tour boat that was moored at a buoy.  There she is aboard the tour boat.  Not quite the andventurer that Jen is.  Well, the water should be calmer at my house.   Mel saw a jellyfish and immediately wanted out of the water.  Jen couldn’t give a rat’s ass.  

Off to the end of the bay and up a small river toward the bat cave.  Only got stuck a couple of times.  Sunken logs everywhere.  Back to town.   Back to the house.  Jessica crawled between my legs, scared of all of the pounding that was compressing my vertebrae.

This skiff barely burns gas but it is not much of a boat.  Gotta go, it’s probably sinking right now.

This morning I grabbed a few things and stuffed them in my backpack.  The dogs knew that meant I was heading out.   No working computer at home, that’s another story.  The phones won’t take a charge either.  Two phones, five batteries, five battery chargers.  What kind of Bermuda Triangle of electronics have I entered?

New moon low tide.  I pulled the lightweight skiff out of muck.  I had pulled her close to shore to prevent her from sinking in case in rained.   Although Saturday I had improvised a bilge pump arrangement it was really sketch.  Purchasing a bilge pump, a float switch, battery connectors, a section of hose, a through hull fitting, a wire nut, some screws. a stainless steel push plate for a door,  some hose clamps and some liquid dialectric.   I bolted the switch and the pump to the plate, wired up the switch, put on the terminals and returned to hook it up to my boat.   It was rainining hard.  Mel was bailing the skiff, good thing else it would have found bottom.

In any event, it was time to secure this bilge pump, clean up the wiring, put in the through hull fitting in place, secure the wiring in a tube, effect a better installation of the battery wires, hook up the motor to charge the battery while underway and then tend to my scheduled activities, of foremost priority was getting a new foot for the outboard on my panga.

Off to town then.  |Well, partway.   Halfway between Carenero and Colon I exhausted the gas.  Soon a water taxi towed me the mile to the gas dock.   I filled up the tank and pulled repeatedly.   Soon the knot pulled right through the rubber pull handle.   I had no washer aboard.  I pumped the primer bulb repeatedly, wrapped the cord around the pull handle and pulled and pulled and pulled.  I popped the cowling and grabbed a loose cable that functioned as the choke control while trying to steady the motor with a second hand and pull with a third.   As I was doing this Victor, the attendant walked over.   During my thrashing the discharge hose was knocked into the boat and the drain plug was pulled loose by a security chain.  I was sinking.   I put the plug back in, better be sure to get another today and a spare, despite having no place to store any tools, spare hoses, hose clamps, lubricant, wrenches, screwdrivers, cable ties, wire, duct tape and other items I always carry on my panga.

|It finally started and I made it to town.  “Jim, can I talk with you for a minute?”  What now?  Need money?  Mom in the hospital?   Oh, you want me to repair your computer.   Shit, it’s not like I don’t have a huge backlog of my own stuff to take care of.

I am getting worn out.  I need a break.

“Sure, which boat?”

“Carlos’s”.

“Meetcha there.”

“Hey girls, let’s go to the beach.”  

“OK”

We met on Isla Carenero.   The boat owner, far cry from any sort of Captain, a 55 year old Uraguan, Mauricio a white haired, white bearded Argentinian Santa Claus who spent 16 years hitchhiking and sleeping under bridges, 45 year old Belgian Chris, 30 something year old Alejandra, hailing from Spain, 30 something Nadia from Argentina, 24 year old Melissa (Mel) from Thailand and 24 year old Jennifer from Belgium and I boarded the boat.  I tied my skiff behind her.

We motored slowly in the thrice sunk hull.  It never fully sank, but water rose over the tops of the counters in the galley.   Through hull fittings, bud, you have to watch this stuff.

At Starfish Beach Nadia wanted me to take her to bird Island.   Mel and Jen wanted to go.  Mauricio wanted to come. I don’t know whether he was more strongly motivated by never having seen these rocks that jut up out of the open water with near vertical cliffs and opening straight though that have been eroded by the pounding waves or the fact that I was taking every single woman with me.

Five aboard a 15 foot skiff powered by a 15 HP outboard.   Maybe a foot of freeboard.  Not a life jacket, fire extinguisher, flare, whistle, or anchor.   Bocas perfect.   Around the point and into the swells.   Boats flip over out there all the time.   It’s June, just exercise caution and don’t let the engine fail me.

Struggling uphill, speeding downhill, pointing into the swells.  Forty minutes later we made it.  Everyone aboard was enraptured.   I idled in the calmer waters leeward, they took pictures then we headed back.   Nadia, admitted that she had been scared shitless.  

We motored back.  Carlos has never put this boat under sail.  Nor can he dock it, nor tie a knot, he doesn’t even know how to wrap a cleat.  I showed the girls how to tie an overhand knot, a square knot, a bowline, a clovehitch, a sheet bend, a figure eight knot and an overhand knot, just the simplest most often useful knots.

Chris took the helm and docked the boats while Alejandra and I handled the lines.   I headed home, suspicious of the amount of gas I had.  Certainly enough to get home, questionable on making the return.