Arrived here (here being northern Panama) last week after a 7day sailing adventure from Colombia. Mark and I chose to sail from Cartagena to Colon. We hooked up with an English guy and an Irish lad, and hunted out a boat and captain to hire for the ride northwest. We met a sketchy 65 year old Swede, paid him $250 each, bought a boatload (literally) of groceries and took off from port early in the morning.
We suffered through a small hurricane and yes, as i know you are wondering, i actually did ´batten down the hatches´. Also snorkeled with dolphins, drank lots of rum, walked on a deserted beach and fell off the boat at 2 a.m. drunk as a skunk. Managed to smoke two packs a day, lay perfectly still in the fetus position sick as a dog the first 24 hours, cook every meal the gang ate, only to hear them complain after each one. Mark and I also had the honor of taking the 3-6 a.m. shift for navigating and managed to steer us into a class 3 hurricane 26 miles off course. That takes a serious amount of talent. Also tends to piss off the captain a bit, but by that time, I could think of no greater joy.
I wish i had some better writing chops because the captain of our boat, named Hasse, deserves an eloquent voiced and devil tongued biographer. I'll just list the details of his actions so you can see just why, at the end of the trip, we did what we did. This was all told to us before we boarded said ship.
- He tells us that the boat not only has two life rafts, but also 8 life jackets, 4 more than we will ever need.
- He tells us that we can stop at an island he knows to watch the world cup final.
- He tells us that our departure day has to be delayed one day, this on the day of departure, because he just learned his son had been killed the night before in a car accident in Sweden.
All of the above proved to be lies that were not difficult to weed out within the next 4 days aboard the boat. He was riddled with skin cancer on his face, he liked to eat 'smash potatoes' because he liked not wearing his dentures. Invariably, he put most of it on his face because of the rocking of the boat; that or he just wanted us to be sick during our meals. When the hurricane reared its head and the boat canted so far to the left water was coming into the cabin, he decided it was the best time to mention (in a pitched scream because the wind was at 50 mph) that he had sold every one of his life vests 2 days before our departure. Each night during dinner, he would point to a jagged scar along his left wrist and tell us how he came about sporting said mark. Unfortunately for him, each time he told the story it was utterly different from the previous one, in all attributing 4 different means of attaining the same scar. Some examples:
1. Attempted suicide (although I've never seen someone slit their wrists from their palm toward their elbow)
2. "From the war" and then would shake his head. This was a popular one, as we heard it twice. When i mentioned to him that Sweden has never entered into a military conflict he would just turn the music up and go into his cabin.
3. And our personal favorite; a 5 on 1 knife fight in Colon, Panama, where not only did he receive a deep gash in his wrist from an attempted mugging, be he was able to fight off all five assailants with, and this is not a joke, an umbrella. This was quickly referred to, even in front of him, as the "Scandinavian Mary Poppin's Kick-Ass Shit Story". We imagine those beaten attackers still get frightened when it rains and find themselves menacingly surrounded by umbrellas along the sidewalks and street corners. We said that to him in a deep sarcastic tone, and he actually had the stones to nod his head seriously, and say "Yes, I imagine so."
Second day in, he asks me to come down into the cabin to show me something. That something turns out to be files on his computer of women he has taken photos of aboard his boat. They are all Colombian, they are all naked, and they are all obviously prostitutes. The pained smiles on their faces are enough to make me sick, but its the numbers at the end of each file name that enrages me. Turns out to be the girls age. More than a few rest between 14 and 16.
In a hired canoe ride from our boat to an island, a local tribal family paddles us toward the shore. Hasse asks the Irish guy to switch seats, and we can immediately see its so he can stare at the very young daughter of the family. When we get onto the shore, the English guy turns on him and with a bottomless pit of rage hisses at Hasse that 'she is only 13 you sick bastard'. His reply? "I gauge it by the kilo, not the age". We hold the English guy back, if only because none of us can sail the boat out of that port.
So with the lies, the bullshit, the jeopardy he put us in, the following, a highly accurate account of said events, was not only a necessity, but quite enjoyable as well.
It was the final day of our trip and time to disembark. Hasse anchored the boat about 200 meters from the pier. We loaded the motorized dingy with our backpacks and climbed aboard. The trip was made across the bay in silence, no one had anything to say to the captain, and seeing as how we had relentlessly taken the piss out of him, the feeling was obviously mutual. We docked up at the point of the pier farthest from the beach and while Hasse held on to the wood pylons, we offloaded our gear and jumped up onto the platform. With everything off the soft-sided dingy, Hasse started up the engine and, sans goodbyes, putted away from us, but not back towards the boat, rather parallel to the pier going towards the beach. I figured there must be an 8 year old building a sand castle down there.
I looked down at our gear to see that Daniel, the English guy, 28, had decided to take only one item of groceries from the boat. Seeing as how it was 2 dozen eggs, i wondered about his idea of snacking as we were about to jump on a 2 hour bus, and this being Latin America, that means one thing: 25 seats, 65 passengers. Eggs seemed a strange choice.
Dan turned to me and said, ''Mark was telling us you were a quarterback in high school''.
''Uh, you actually know what a quarterback is?'' I asked.
''Mate, we do get fucken movies in London. Yeah, i know what a quarterback is''.
''Well, then yeah i was, but i was fourth string.'' I tell him.
''What the fuck is fourth string?''
''It means i should have played chess instead.''
''Well,'' he says, opening the lid on a dozen eggs and holding the crate in my direction, ''you win by default.''
I didn't need to be told twice and quickly dipped my hand into the cart, pulling out two eggs. The first one I fire high speed at the dingy just as our illustrious captain is making his u-turn and heading back in our direction, about 20 yards out and running parallel to the pier. The egg is way off target and my arm stings. Mark's eyes go wide and he snatches up an egg and lets fly a rocket that just splats off the captain's port bow. My arm goes back and i send a chicken missile just over the captains self-described "dashing" panama hat. He finally notices that he and his ship are under fire, and violently yells at us as i retract my arm for the lucky number three attempt.
He screams at us while whizzing by,
''What the fuck are you guys thinking!''
Immediately i yell back,
''We're thinking you should slow down, and this would be a whole lot easier!''
At that moment his hand is smattered in yolk from a direct shot by Mark. The U.K. boys decide to jump in, but there has been no call for them in their past to ever play a sport that involves overhand throwing, so this in itself turns out to be highly entertaining to behold. The English guy steps backwards and does a run up, straight-arm overhand cricket bowling of an egg in the very general direction of the miniature boat. The Irish guy, and I'm not kidding, actually fires off an egg underhand. Mark and I both stop our firing squad to stare slack jawed at our Irish friend.
Mark: ''What. the. fuck. was. that?''
Peter: ''E'f I tried to trow the egg like you fecker's, i only would 'ave hit myself''
Peter's toss, although highly accurate, lacked the true velocity this situation called for and bounced harmlessly off the rubber siding. Mark and I each get one last direct hit as Hasse was attempting to hide under his hat, speeding towards his boat. We turn and laugh, overjoyed that he got a slight bit of comeuppance. The boys gather up their bags, we turn towards shore and i watch as Dan reaches into his pocket and removes what is obviously Hasse's denture cream and toss it into the nearest garbage can.
On a side note, although the Captain did his best to keep spirits down onboard the boat, Mark found a way to make me laugh with his, what i like to call, "I'm a stupid person, and not aware of it" routine. Cruising through the cabin on the first day I caught him, only eight hours into our sailing adventure, sucking on limes cut in half. I asked him what he was doing, and cool as a clam, and intently serious, he responded that he was ''fighting off the scurvy''. It's been a long 7 months. But that one kept me smiling for the next 3 days.