Trinidad to Panama (Inbetween)

My Skipper commanded nicely that I do not write too much, but how can I put eight days to the Panama Canal in only a couple of sentences? So please, don`t miss out on our fun and games, and make sure that you scroll down the page to the last blog you`ve read before, and do the Chinesey thing and read from bottom to top! Also don`t miss out on Joe`s Blog, now that I am talking about Chinese…


Anyway we are still beating for the fourth day and thank goodness will be in Panama soon! To my non-sailor friends and especially my non-aquatic family I will take the time to explain the term, ” beating.” It is exactly what the word says. Like when you throw four cracked eggs in a bowl, and you take the Moulinex Beater, and you don`t put it on full speed, but just one less, and you put the two twirly metal things in the yellow yolk of the eggs and you switch on the beater, and the white and the yellow starts to blend, and it becomes foamy and frothy… That is exactly what it is to beat! The wind is switched on at one less than top speed, right in front of you, and the swells are on the nose, smashing all over the boat, leaving a salty crystal layer, and inside this bowl is the four little eggs, rolled around into a frothy feeling.

And yes, it is such a long time since the moon interfered into my life cycle, that this constant frothy state had to interfere with my biological clock some way or the other. And don`t think my clock is ticking, but something was surely ticking this morning. We are steering clear of each other, trying to create as much as possible space between us four. I decided to grant me the pleasure of a proper shower and not a basin wishy-washy clean. The thick lather of the fresh green apples filled the shower, to replace the fleshy flavor. I stood there enjoying feeling soft and feminine again, but alas… All of a sudden I was drenched from above with a wave full of salt water. Someone didn`t close the hatch properly!! The apples went! The freshly washed washing at my feet were soaked in salt water! The water washed out of the shower and was now running over the floor, down the alley of the master cabin, to fill up a puddle in the corner on the wooden floor, right at the foot of our bed! I am not a screamer, but I yelled! No one bothered, because they knew you can`t fall over board where I was! I didn`t stop this time. I yelled! Eventually Marco peeked around the corner, and when I asked him for an old deck towel, he only replied that, sorry, he can`t find one. I didn`t stop. I yelled! My husband or was it perhaps my Skipper peeked around the corner. ” Sorry, I am busy sending a message via the SAT phone. Can`t you close the hatch yourself?” By now my estrogen was in a knot, and with one heave I got hold of the very tight handles of the hatch, and with no freaking apples in sight anymore, I was swinging from the handles trying to twist and turn them, only to watch my husband turn around, (it wasn`t my Skipper) his feet wet from the seawater return to the SAT phone. I could only sit there, girls, in a salty shower feeling sorry for myself for a little while, before I had to get up, dry up the floor, rinse out the washing and gasp for fresh air again. Ready to beat the rest of the day!

Important note: To all the creators and designers and architects of this lovely boat! You have to put some kind of barrier at the entrance of the door at the heads. It is always wet, and the water is always going to run down the hall way. I know you think with your port side of your brain, but please save the girls from running after the water, and trouble with their Skipper!

Beating? Beats the hell out of me, how they came up with that word! It is like calling up angry spirits from the Sea, giving them permission to beat you up. Three days of great sailing, one day of a nothingness, only to complete the first leg of our journey with the next four days of beating. But this last morning with the beautiful islands ahead of us…Pan Pan Panama! All hell broke loose! Twenty nautical miles still ahead of us to the entrance, and we were faced with a storm pushing us away from the entrance, back into ocean. Thirty knots of wind on the nose, the fog thick around us, water washing down from the heavens and salt water crashing over the bow…Pan Pan Panama! Beats me!