This post is my entry for a contest brought to us by @regenerette . Feel free to check it out and participate. There are some tokens to be won, and you still have time till tomorrow! The instruction is simply to tell a story where we felt life was passing us by. The details also explain that this doesn't have to be necessarily something bad, and instead of focusing on how we overcame it, we should just show what it was like. Well, I have a curious little tale of a time when I purposely put myself in that situation.
Panama to New Zealand
It happened a good decade ago, when I read about hitchhiking on sailing yachts, and decided I wanted to try it for myself. I was in Central America at that time, and wanted to hitch a ride on a sail boat (called passage making in the sailing jargon) to New Zealand, where my parents live. Of course the best place to catch a boat going to the South Pacific would be Panama...
In Panama City I checked into a hostel, and every day I spent scouring the bulletin boards at the marina, hanging up info about myself, and my intention to accompany someone across the Pacific, if they were headed that way. December was the right time to do this, right after the rainy season, and everyone passing through the canal was a potential ride. Soon, I even figured out, that the best way to get to know the yachting community is by helping them to get through the canal. This is actually a popular thing to do, called line-handling.
Line-handling on the Panama Canal
The law requires each vessel that wants to pass through the canal to have at least five people on board: the skipper at the helm, and four additional line-handlers in the four corners of the boat, to keep the ropes tight that hold the boat from moving around in the locks.
Since most small yachts don't have that many people, there are three options for them: employ a local Panamanian, ask other yachters for help, or let backpackers like me do it in exchange for the experience. It's a win-win for all, and for any curious tourist the best way to see the Panama Canal. At the same time, you'll get to know not only the person whose boat you're helping with, but usually other yachters too. That's how I was offered three rides to Australia, New Zealand, or at least into the general vicinity... And I refused all of them!
First Offer: Plain Plainness
The first offer came from the owner of the first yacht I line-handled for. The boat was a beautiful catamaran, huge, spacious, luxurious, and all white, white, white. The owner was a retired businessman from Australia, who had sold his business and was now cruising around the world ... in style. He was not very talkative, but in the brief small-talk of the first five minutes he offered me a passage-making opportunity. He said it would be only the two of us, so he needed someone to do the night-watch while he was sleeping. This meant, I had to be awake, and whenever I saw another boat, I had to call them on the radio, making sure they saw us, and avoid a collision. Otherwise, it was the usual $5 per day for food, water, etc.
I was quite excited at first, but during the 24 hours of line-handling I started having my doubts. Not only was this guy not talkative, he was completely taciturn. He didn't speak at all, with anyone! The rest of us, a guy from another yacht, a Panamanian kid, and another backpacker had great conversations, but he barely said a word at all. Also, the food he made for us (boiled chicken, boiled eggs, boiled pasta) had no flavor whatsoever. No sauce, no spice, not even herbs. A bit of salt, that was all. No colors, no flavor, no words... I felt I would probably start going crazy after a few days like this, not to mention months at sea! So I decided to keep looking.
Second Offer: Endless Party
The second offer came from another expensive looking boat, but this time the reason seemed to be the exact opposite. It was a group of six very young, and very wealthy French people. At first I was glad to see that I didn't have to worry about plainness on their yacht. They were always talking, laughing, and doing crazy things. Not speaking French, I didn't understand what was going on most of the time, but I was ready to learn it. And given a few months on end at sea with a group of Frenchies would probably be good full-on immersion. And these guys didn't even ask me to do any chores at all, only pay the contribution of the usual five bucks a day. But there were other things I didn't like: the constant party, the copious amounts of alcohol and other drugs, and finally the weird love constellations (and subsequent drama) associated with it. In the end, I would probably go crazy from all that, making me wish I had taken the first offer.
Third Offer: Toying With Crime
The third yachter that offered me a ride was the weirdest one of them all. At first he seemed to be perfect: an experienced sailor in his sixties, who was quite talkative, and was full of stories of his adventures. He was also American, so English would be the language we could communicate in. Sure, he seemed to enjoy a bit of a drink, but it didn't seem to be central to his life, unlike the young French who seemed to be all about partying. However, unlike anyone else, he asked for a daily contribution of ten dollars instead of five. When I asked him for the reason, he responded in the most curious way:
"Oh, are you tight on cash? Don't worry any longer, just open up that crate over there."
I opened up a box, and saw that it was full of porn DVDs. I failed to understand how this would solve any financial problems, so he explained:
"See, I'm planing to stop by in Fiji. And you may have heard, pornography is illegal there, which makes any of these videos unavailable. In other words, the local Fijians will pay ten times or more as what I bought them for here."
I didn't answer, but I understood his technique. So when we got to Australia, where cocaine is illegal, that's what he would be selling there. Aha! By now I also understood why he was so vehemently against stopping by the Galapagos Islands, or anywhere in Ecuador for that matter. He had probably gotten in some kind of trouble there before, and was still wanted by the law. So not wanting to end up in a Fijian jail, I decided to refuse this offer as well.
Missing the Boat ... On Purpose
All this happened in a time-frame of over a month. Traveling by boat everything takes longer after all, and that includes hitchhiking. In the meanwhile I was hanging out at the hostel, doing some work-trade for a bed, and otherwise wasting time with other backpackers and yachting folks. I also got my hands on a book with a nautical theme, titled Missing the Boat by Michael Hutchinson. Though the story had a completely different background, there were certain similarities with my case. For once, both of us kept missing, or rather rejecting opportunities to take the boat ride of our lifetimes.
In the end, I kicked a sack of cement, hurting my little toe so much that I decided to abandon my plan of hitching across the Pacific, and I took a bus back to Mexico. This one month in Panama, however, left me with a cool story I like to share whenever the topic of boat-hitching comes up, or the Panama Canal, or examples of not accepting certain offers. In this case, I felt it's a great illustration of a time when I felt life (or rather boats) was passing me by.
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Such a picaresque narrative!
Congratulations on opening up and writing about your sailing experiences.
I hope to see you around after tomorrow, more, more!
Thank you, and most certainly! I think we've been following each other for a while. And since you posted a contest, I just had to participate! 😁
I'm glad you did. In this way, I can read more about you and this last post really made me travel a bit with my mind.
Nice! This last comment made me super happy! Thank you.
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Wow, nice. Thank you!
I don't know why you have made me so admirable, but I really like the logic and the thought process of your writing to be honest and I have tried to write it very nicely from my place. Good luck to you.