MUTINY ON THE KNOTTY DOG

(Besure to see Portobelo also)

The next day, the weather wasn’t’ much better.  Richard and Margie decided to get a taxi and take a day tip to Portobello and back.  I just wanted to stay on the boat and get caught up.  The boat was filthy and needed to be cleaned.  Our crew didn’t seem bothered by the dirty decks from the canal lines, nor windows covered in salt or an interior that needed vacuuming.  So off they went.  Larry, Dave and I stayed on the boat and did the cleaning again. 

Richard and Margie returned later in the afternoon.  They had enjoyed their trip, but somehow, I didn’t enjoy listening to all the fun things they did as we spent the day cleaning the boat.  I was beginning to feel a little like the scullery maid. 

The next day, the weather was still bad and we were stuck on the “flats”, which is the nickname for the anchorage in Colon.  Margie was getting anxious just sitting at anchor and was pushing to “go out in it” and “suffer if we have to”.  Dave was of the same opinion I think.  He has the stoic sailing attitude that is at some point you must suffer and be uncomfortable.  I as usual had the conservative opinion and would rather wait until the weather window. I noticed no one else at the anchorage was leaving either.  Larry and Dave were getting the scheduled weather faxes that came out morning and night.  They were giving us a 24 hr, 48 hr and 72 hr projected conditions along with the present.  It looked like there might be a window in a couple of days.  Larry and I weren’t anxious to go out in 12-foot seas with 20-30 knots. 

Larry also requested a weather window recommendation from Walt the “weather guru”.  His company is well known and used by many cruisers.  It was a service we paid for this trip from San Diego to Florida.  We could email him and request his recommendations at any point on the trip. His company would analyze the weather situations by gathering information from many sources and then make calculated recommendations for the safety of our travel.  Capt Rains, “Uno Mas”, “Zipolote” and the Nordhavn crew that cruised around the world are just some of the boaters I know of that use him.  Margie on the other hand gave the impression that she thought all this information was ridiculous and a sign of indecision. 

That night, we all went in for dinner at the Panama Yacht Club.  I was surprised that the Surbecks were joining us this night.  It was becoming a rarity for us to do anything together anymore.  Once we reached Panama City, they started doing most everything by themselves.  They started going out to restaurants on their own, then fixing their own dinners separately on the boat.  To me it was especially annoying at dinnertime to have two different shifts.  If she was cooking their dinner I had to wait until they were done and cleaned up before I could start and vice versa.  Poor Dave, I think sometimes he didn’t know who to eat with and who to go to town with. 

The food at the YC was better than I expected.  Everything is on the greasy side but it was edible.  The place was a real dump but has character.  Ratty starved looking alley cats crouched under your table looking for scraps.  The chairs were about to fall apart and the tables slanted.  There was nothing pretty about this place.  It was hardcore and the people eating here were not a happy lot.  You had no other choices because it wasn’t safe outside the compound.

The next day, I again felt the pressure lingering in the boat to stick our nose out in the weather again.  I don’t understand why people can’t just sit at anchor and go when the weather is right.  There’s something about sitting there day after day that drives people crazy. I think its time to get caught up on things and read.  Make the most of it. 

Larry and Dave thought we could make the 20 miles to Portobello with the hopes of having a more pleasant place to stay while we waited out these 12-foot seas.  Again, Margie was still anxious and irritable about “the indecision on this boat”, and just sitting at anchorage, but she didn’t want to go to Portobello.  I’m sure it was because they had seen it the day before but she said it was because Portobello wasn’t a protected anchorage.  She said that yesterday the bay was covered with white caps and the wind was blowing hard.  This didn’t make any sense because according to its location is appears to be totally protected from the winds. 

Since we left San Diego, Larry had talked about nothing else on this whole trip but his dream of going to Portobello and anchoring in the harbor next to the Old Spanish fort and it many cannons.  So I think, if we were going anywhere, that’s where Larry would try to go.  We didn’t really have any other options, as nothing else was close or protected.

I didn’t want to go out in the weather but was willing to go along with what everyone decided.  We got Walt’s weather window and he said Monday was the day to go and today was Saturday.  Upon hearing that Margie muttered in her snide way, “what does he know, he’s in Connecticut and we’re HERE!”  You just couldn’t please her at this point; she was just determined to get out in it.  Dave, I think, was thinking we should go a bite the bullet.  He’s of the philosophy that you have to earn it, suffer it, and be uncomfortable in the Caribbean.  He said the winds are always blowing and you’re not going to get around that.

They all wanted to leave, and Portobello was the closest, so we pulled the anchor and headed out to the breakwater.  The wind in the anchorage was blowing at 20 knots and the seas were reported to be 6-8 feet at present conditions, but blowing in the most uncomfortable direction for us.  It would be rough.  There were white caps inside the breakwater. 

As we left the anchorage, Dave called Cristobel, (the canal control) to let them know we were entering the channel on our way out.  As we approached the opening to the ocean, we could see the waves breaking over the protective breakwater.  As we “poked our nose out”, as they say, the seas were terribly confused and huge waves were coming from all directions.  The boat was banging into the seas and was being pushed in all directions.  It was like being in a washing machine.  It was horrible.  I couldn’t stand to even look at it.  It scared me so much that I went down into the salon and braced myself at the settee.  I thought the whole thing was ridiculous.  Larry must have felt the same way because I heard him say “We’re going to turn around because he wasn’t going to fight that all the way to Portobello.”  I was scared to death trying to turn around in these huge waves.  As we turned, they were coming at us on our beam and it was dicey for a few moments.  I was glad to head back to the “tranquility”, if you could call it that, at the “flats”. 

Dave was at the helm running the boat to our anchorage spot and Larry was at the bow getting ready to drop the anchor and release the chain.  For some reason, Dave brought the boat into the anchorage really fast and over shot the mark.  He took it around to make a second approach at it and still he was coming in fast but came to a semi stop.   Larry started dropping the chain but the boat kept moving forward.  Larry kept waving Dave to back it down.  The boat seemed out of control to me.  I told Dave that something didn’t sound right and the boat was turning around and seemed like it was going forward.  Dave was trying to manipulate it with the bow thrusters but nothing seemed to be working right. Larry was waving from the bow trying to tell Dave to back down again.  Dave kept saying we’re hooked and Larry said no we weren’t and to back it down, but the boat wasn’t responding the way it should. 

Larry realized that Dave forgot to disengage the wing engine.  By not doing that, the wing engine was thrusting us forward even though the main engine was trying to back us down.  Larry quickly ran to the pilothouse and disengaged the wing engine and then went back to drop the anchor and hook it.  It all came together then and Larry let the chain out and we were secure. 

While this was going on, Richard offered absolutely no help, and I think he and Margie were in the salon reading their books.  When it was all done and Larry was still out on the bow, Richard came up into the wheel house, (and probably not understanding what was going on as usual), said, “Larry doesn’t know what he’s doing, he doesn’t know the first thing about anchoring.”  That just set me off like a rocket.  It was the last straw.  This comment, plus the many other snide remarks I’d been hearing for the last several days was just more than I could tolerate.  I snapped and yelled back at him.   I said that if he had something to say about the way Larry was doing it, don’t tell us, that he should have the balls to tell Larry to his face, not his chicken shit way of doing it behind his back.  He snapped back at me telling me he doesn’t know how to anchor again and I said that he’d been hooking it all the way down the Pacific coast and Alaska with no problems so he must be doing it right.  I also should have said he had us hooked here in the flats for the last two days in 30 plus knot winds and very rolly conditions and the boat didn’t move an inch!

By this time, Larry walked in to the wheelhouse in the midst of our yelling match and asked what was going on.  Richard told him again that he didn’t know how to anchor. 

I just couldn’t figure out where Richard was coming from half the time.  Most of his comments never really made sense.  We think that he just couldn’t get past their 40-foot Nordhavn and related everything on our boat to that and it just wasn’t that simple.  It had been a constant irritation to Larry as Richard was always second-guessing him on everything in the engine room when Richard didn’t really have a grasp of the magnitude and differences this boat was to theirs.

Larry asked him what the problem was now and asked how he thought it should be done.  After listening to him, Larry very simply told him there wasn’t just one-way to anchor. I told Richard I was sick of all of their snide remarks behind Larry’s back and if they had any more comments they should say them to his face and not so he can’t hear them. 

Larry and I regrouped in our stateroom.  I told him that it just wasn’t working out with these people.  No matter how hard I’ve tried to ignore these things (and many other problems that I won’t even go into here), I just can’t tolerate them anymore.  We both agreed.  Since they had come on the boat the trip it wasn’t pleasurable anymore. 

Larry suggested getting a taxi, and spending the day in Portobello to let things settle, and then have a sit down with them when we got back but I wanted to sit down with them NOW.  I didn’t want this lingering on my mind all day.  I was ready to put it on the table, get it out in the open and confront it! 

So, we went into the salon and told them exactly how we felt.  We said if we couldn’t get on track as a team that we all should reconsider what we were doing.  They admitted that they weren’t happy either.  The most important thing to me that Richard said was that they had already decided quite a while ago that they weren’t planning to go across the Atlantic!  He said they were going to tell us at some point in time so that we would have enough time to find more crew!  

I guess we didn’t quite grasp the impact of his statement or were in shock because in my mind we were still working on a way to sort this out.  I said that if we were to continue we needed to work together as a team and not foes and be clear about everyone’s role and responsibilities.   We told them that if we can’t come to terms, this might be a good place for them to consider getting off, as Panama City was nearby and had international flight connections.  We said there was no reason that they should feel like they had to stay if they didn’t want to.  We didn’t want them to feel trapped.  We said to think about it and we could discuss it when we came back from Portobello.

As we drove in the taxi to Portobello, I was more and more shocked that they said they already had decided they were not planning to go across the Atlantic.  It wasn’t that they just decided, but had decided days ago.  Here they are using our boat, eating our food, barely sharing in any expenses, making our lives miserable, and had no intentions of doing the Atlantic crossing?  Why were they still there?  Were they getting a free tour through the canal and then planning to spend days anchored on our beautiful boat in the San Blas Islands?  Were they then planning to leave after we reached Isla San Andres in the middle of the Caribbean Sea? Would we then be stranded there in some remote island without crew?  Or would they get a free ride all the way to Florida?  It became clearer to me that this whole arrangement was wrong and these people were not for me. 

We had no friendship ties with these people, nor did any of us much like each other.  Why were we entertaining them, and paying their way on this trip through Central America?  It was evident that this turned into a free sightseeing ride. 

In our minds, it was too late to get another crew, so the North Atlantic Crossing was not a possibility now.  The only thing we knew for sure was that we would never go across the Atlantic with these people. 

Everything was becoming an irritant to me.  I was mad that we rushed down here on this insane schedule, missing sights along the way, to meet these people who we thought would be our partners in a great adventure.  I knew all along that it would be a risk but I had faith in them. 

I was mad now that we had been willing to put up with Richard’s handicaps so that they could go on this trip when really he wasn’t a strong capable crew member, or more precise, the missing link, that we needed.  He did not alleviate any of the work or strain for Larry but was more of an entry-level trainee than a crew hand.  It doubled the workload and responsibility for Larry.  Larry had three crewmembers, but none with the strength that he would need in an emergency nor aptitude to give him a break from running the ship. (Of course, I’m not including Dave in this.)

It was clear now that it would be difficult to finish this trip together but what other options did we have at the moment?  Dave had to get back home and Larry and I (me especially) couldn’t handle these long non-stop passages in rough seas by ourselves.  Larry needed another person at least.  We didn’t know quite what to do. 

We also felt bad that it had come to this.  We were concerned because they had come all this way to join us.  The fact that they rented their house out made us feel even worse.  If this wasn’t going to work, where would they go?  We were willing to try and make it work, but things had to change.  They would have to work as a team and be supportive.  They would have to do their share of the workload and help with the expenses.  

We tried to enjoy the day at Portobello but it was difficult with so much to consider.

When we returned from Portobello, Richard picked us up at the dock with the dinghy.  He drove us back to the boat and was friendly and acted like nothing had happened.  He told Larry that Margie needed his help to burn her photos off on to a CD.  He said she had been trying to do it on our computer but couldn’t get it to work.  (This was one more thing.  We had decided to put a block on our personal files on the computer because she was using our computer without asking and copying some of my photos over to her files.  Although I didn’t mind if she wanted some of my photos, I didn’t like the idea that she would do it without asking first and when we weren’t there.  I also, don’t like someone else having access to our personal business on our computer. Since we put the block in, it only allowed her to load and view her own pictures, which is the only reason she should be using the computer anyway.  That was why she couldn’t copy to the CD I guess.)  When we got on the boat, Richard was insistent that he wanted Larry to immediately help her.  Once he did, they laid the news on Larry that their bags were packed and they were leaving that moment! 

I was in our stateroom when Larry came down and told me they were leaving!  I said, “leaving?” and he said, “Yes, they’re leaving right now!”  He said I should be civil and come up and say goodbye.  Suddenly, I realized, as they were leaving in such a huff, that no one stopped to consider the fact that they needed to be properly cleared from our crew list so they could leave the country.  It also meant we would have a problem leaving also.  We couldn’t let them leave the boat with their passports!  Larry insisted on getting their passports back, since as captain, he is responsible for clearing the crew list.  Richard gave them back and then Larry called Tina our agent.   Fortunately she was in Colon and would be able to help us immediately to get the necessary paperwork done.  So off Larry went in the dinghy, with Richard and Margie and their luggage, to the YC to get this sorted out and just that quickly, that was the last that I saw of them.

 It took several hours for the process to be completed.  Dave and I stayed on the boat and were pretty silent about the whole affair.  It was a shock to both of us. 

I couldn’t help while Larry was gone, going over in my mind the many things that weren’t right from day one with this crew. 

From the day that Richard got on the boat it became apparent, and I hate to say it, that he was really more of a liability than an asset.  He was not what we thought we needed to do this big adventure.  He had an alarming lack of comprehension of what was going on and seemed confused at times.  I hate to say that about anybody but it was true.

 His physical abilities were greatly restricted due to his replaced knees and shoulder problem.  His frail and sickly condition when he boarded was a concern.  He was dehydrated and wasn’t able to eat much for several days.  I was becoming more acquainted with the workings of his bowels than I really wanted to hear about.

His constant problem of breaking his glasses became tiresome and without them he couldn’t see.  He was unstable on the boat and fell down once, hitting his head and again breaking his glasses. 

He had surprisingly minimal knowledge or expertise to navigate the boat or operate the radar necessary for the scope of this trip.  I learned from Margie that she had done all that on their boat.  We were faced with the fact that he would be learning everything as we go.

I had difficulty feeling safe when Richard was going to take the night watch because Margie had told me that she couldn’t sleep on road trips when Richard was driving because he falls asleep at the wheel.  How was this man going to stay awake at the helm?

I become equally concerned when he got lost coming back from the bathroom at a restaurant in Panama.  We all looked everywhere for him and Margie seemed a little embarrassed.  She told us to go on without them that she’d find him.  She said he does this all the time.  We refused to leave without him and after much searching he was found wondering around looking for us.

He had no sense when it came to handing the lines, fenders or knots and his reaction time was so delayed that by the time he got around to reacting, the act was over.  I still don’t think he ever understood the knot we were required to know for the canal crossing.  We were also concerned that his shoulder wasn’t strong enough to handle the lines during the crossing and that his reaction time would not be fast enough.

Neither one of them felt a need to help clean the boat or share in the work unless requested and his generally selfish cocky attitude did not go far with Larry and I either.

Margie on the other hand started out as a helper but as time went on I think just wanted to be in charge.  Her way of handling her frustration was by making snide remarks about the way we do this or that. 

I wasn’t comfortable with her rash decision-making whether it related to evaluating weather conditions or navigation.  She was a risk taker and did not like to take directions.  Her solution for anything that didn’t work was to just start pushing buttons and see what happens.  With our sensitive electronic set up, it made me a nervous wreck. 

She had no respect for rules on the boat, whether it was engine check, following waypoints, or sharing in the duties around the boat.  Her way was the only way.  She’d change waypoints at her discretion and argued with me when I said that the charts are not totally accurate down here.  I said that landmasses, rocks, and shallow depths should be approached with caution and given a wide berth as we’ve found many discrepancies. 

They both had no respect for the ownership of the boat and nor the captain’s wishes.

I felt taken advantage of on this trip.  Richard never offered to pay for a single thing except a few inexpensive meals.  There was no offer to share in fuel, dock fees, agent fees, nothing.  He never reimbursed us for using our satellite phone multiple times, while they chit chatted with their kids, and made numerous calls to his boat broker trying to sell his boat in Washington, all at $1.50 a minute.  We consider the satellite phone a luxury to be used as an emergency or for necessary business that can’t be done efficiently or quick enough on email. 

 The few groceries they bought were primarily things they liked that we didn’t stock.  They would go to the grocery store to “provision” and would come back with gin and tonic that filled the whole top shelf of the refrigerator, and ice cream, sometimes forgetting necessary items like eggs and bread. The freezer was so full of ice cream that we barely had room for essentials.  Richard had an annoying habit of eating ice cream throughout the day, even for breakfast.  Every time there was something to be done on the boat, he had to conveniently have an “ice cream break”.     

This whole mess put a halt into our plans to get to Florida for the North Atlantic Rally.  No discomfort of this kind was worth trying to do that.  We now had to figure out what we were going to do.  I wasn’t capable to be the necessary crew Larry needed for the long passages required to get us back to Florida.  Dave needed to get home soon to his real life.  We had a lot to figure out but were confident it would all work out. 

We tried to put these bad feelings behind us for the moment.  Larry and Dave continued to analyze each new weather fax and we got our final recommendation from Walt.  He said we would have a window to go in two days.  He said it would be “safe but not necessarily comfortable”.  His recommendation coincided with what Dave and Larry thought.  We had originally told Walt we were going to San Blas islands but since this new development, we decided we’d go west to Bocas Del Toro.  They figured the window would still apply to that area and may even be better because the seas would be on our hindquarter.

I made a nice dinner that night and brought out the good china, crystal and candles.  I thought we all needed to have a nice civilized dinner after the crazy stuff that went on that day.  Larry said that he remembered he had made a reservation for a dock slip at the YC when we came out of the canal the other day and the first opening was tomorrow.  So tomorrow we could get out of the “flats” and get dock space.  That was positive!    Meanwhile in  Portobelo