37 – The Other Side of the World
The storm left a vicious sea in its wake. Waves were choppy, steep, and aggressive. The water was no longer blue, but dark jade. The trade wind was stronger, blustery. Unforgiving. Everything became a chore. Nothing was easy, not even sitting or sleeping. The fun was gone. Gentle and amazing became a living hell. Sailing was bloody hard work from then on.
The crappy conditions put the kibosh on pleasantries and ratcheted up the tension between us something fierce. It's a wonder we didn't kill each other in the weeks it took to reach the edge of the Caribbean. “Do we hang a left and head for Cape Horn while we still can, or do we blunder on to Panama, hoping they'll let us transit? And, just to remind you, that hope is based on the same good feeling Jon had about Gibraltar.”
“Thousands more miles to Cape Horn. And I saw that film!” We probably shouldn’t have watched Master and Commander, especially that bit about rounding the horn. “This is not funny any more. I rather would swim to the beach, live in the jungle. Boadicea and you go to the canal. If, with me, they don't let us pass, I will jump from the ship.”
Every mile we made toward the Caribbean sidled us a wee bit closer to the equator. My rationale was, hurricanes forming in the intertropical convergence zone hadn’t the time to mature into real rotters by the time we might have encountered one. My hypothesis remained untested; which, in hindsight, is probably why we are still here to tell the story. Eventually, the degrees of latitude wound down to single digits, the wind lost its bluster, and we ended up languishing and seasick on long, ponderous swells once again. Admittedly, the sailing became a little easier. The heat and humidity, on the other hand, were making every waking second of feverish sentience bloody near unbearable.
We were skirting the northern edge of the Inter-Tropical Convergence Zone (ITCZ), a band of warm, moist low-pressure encircling the globe that is characterized by light winds and occasional thunderstorms. What we saw to the south of us was a solid wall of towering cumulus. At night, the southern horizon was ablaze with lightning. Above, the sky was filled with stars. We had sailed back to amazing.
Six hundred miles east of the Windward Islands, we were met by a pod of short-finned pilot whales. They swam alongside, as curious about us as we were about them. For several awesome minutes, our very alien worlds converged. They were the first sign of any life we had seen since the storm.
~
Bleep-bleep-bleep—
“What the—?” I woke with a start.
“Radar, Meg.” Elena threw an arm over my chest, nuzzled closer. Mewled, “Turn it off. Need sleep.”
Bleep-bleep-bleep—
“Ugh,” I Houdinied from the bunk. Invariably, it's when you think it's a false alarm that it isn't. I didn’t know where in the hell we were, or what the radar possibly had to hoot at. Blinking, I peered around at the raucous chop on a pervasive swell: nothing but endless water and white-capped waves. Bloody false alarm.
Bleep-bleep-bleeeeeep.
I grabbed the binoculars. Clambered part way up the mast. Still nothing. Actually, wait a minute. Aye, something on the waves. Probably rubbish off a ship or some dead—
“Get up!” I jumped down the companionway. “Dress for company! Small boat. Like off Africa.”
“How close?”
“Half a mile!” I flew topside. The bogey was in the same place. Binoculars to eyeballs. Focus. Breathe… “Okay. No worries. Sorry about that. It’s not moving.”
“What is not moving?” Elena was still yanking on her clothing.
Another look through the binos. Whatever it was, it was kind of cute. “Holy kapoosta. It's some blokes, fishing!”
“You mean people! There are people out there?”
More of the brightly painted, wooden boats popped up on wave crests. They looked like children's toys, bobbing away in an infinite bathtub. I had tears in my eyes. It had been a month since we'd seen another human being on our lonely ocean planet. A few hours later, we had our first glimpse of land: the faint, low outline of Barbados.
~
Chasing the sun, we ploughed a watery furrow westward. Never catching up. Never coming to rest. The morning after we tearfully watched Barbados sink into the Atlantic off our stern, I saw what looked like clouds hugging the horizon. Binos to eyeballs. Focus. Blink, blink, blink. They turned out to be islands.
Another couple of hours in the surging, westerly trade wind got us close enough to make out a string of emerald green islands. The West Indies. The Caribbean! The end of the Atlantic. “Lenna, we've done it! We've actually crossed an ocean.”
“You thought, maybe we wouldn't!?” Elena said. “Serioznah, Meg! I crossed Russia. Then we with you crossed Ukraine. And the Black Sea. Türkiye. Mediterranean Sea. Now, the Atlantic: an ocean we crossed! Still, there is another sea, then a canal that might not let me pass, then another ocean. An ocean that is many more miles than this Atlantic. So, tell to me, what is so special?”
“Way to rain on my parade, princess.” I lowered the binoculars. “Oh, my, dog! I've had enough sailing, already. I want to wander on one of those hills; feel plants scratching my shins. I want to sit in the grass and listen to insects, birds, the wind in the trees.”
Elena rested her chin on my shoulder. “Radio to the coast guard. See if they will let us land.”
I made the call. Was footballed from one dumbstruck operator to another. Finally, got a number to ring from my mobile. A customs agent took our info and reluctantly gave us directions to a nearby marina. He would meet us there to clear us in for one day, and one day only. Yay! Twenty-four glorious hours of dirt beneath my feet.
We hugged, spun in the cockpit like Dervishes. Wiped each other's tears. Chattered on full-auto about dinner out, maybe a room with a real bed and clean sheets! A bathtub. Vertical walls and right angles. A ceiling one wouldn’t bang her head on. It felt too good to be true.
And then, my mobile rang. “Never had this situation— Regret to inform— Should have checked— Must leave our territorial waters immediately. Sorry, sorry, sorry.”
Elena crossed to the helm, disengaged the autopilot with her fist, and spun the wheel for open water. “As a Russian, I live being treated like an empty spot. Like I am not here. They all say, 'Oh, she is Russian! It means, she isn't here.' I don't exist. I am a bubble. No matter where we go, they say, 'Aaack, Russian. Now, what do we do?'”
The forbidden islands lay in our wake by the time the sun set on our bow. “To hell with them! I am proud. I have love. I have myself. I have the planet ahead where I steer my path.” Elena looked back at the West Indies. “I don't need any bones that they could toss in my direction.”
~
Fear of pirates and coast guards had us keeping as much distance from land as possible. It's how, when the trade wind blew itself out and died, we ended up as flotsam. Dead calm, mid-Caribbean—and don’t get any funny ideas about some kind of paradise involving Nicole Kidman, Sam Neil, a sailboat and Billy Zane. Oh no, this was nowhere near as nice and relaxing. Sure, the wind was dead calm, and we weren’t hunted by a psychopathic killer, but the sea was an insane washing machine of choppy waves from every which direction, including behind.
Hours of being tossed about, like light bulbs in a tumble dryer, had to end before one of us or the boat shattered. It was Elena who started the motor, slammed a course into the autopilot and dared me, with a blood-curdling stare of death, to say just one word.
I said several. “Are you mental? We don't know how long this will last. We certainly don't have the petrol to make Panama.”
“This isn't good for the boat. It isn't good for me!”
I countered by reiterating my biggest fear at the time. “What if Panama doesn't let us land? Think about that! So, what then, smarty-pants?”
“You like this arse pounding? Fine. You kill the motor!” And off she stormed.
Needless to say, the motor stayed on.
~
Apart from erratic winds, thunder showers of biblical proportion and an unpleasant bout of food poisoning, the rest of the Caribbean was stultifyingly routine. Until, that is, we sailed into a floating city of anchored ships: the Caribbean side of the Panama Canal. Now came the hard part.
An email from Bernadette was our first glimmer of hope. We might actually get into, or through, Panama. “I have secured a canal logistics agent for you. You are to take a slip at the Colon Yacht Club and meet him there.”
“That means they will let us, or me, into the country?” Elena asked.
“I don’t know, do I? This is all she says. Guess we pays our money, and we takes our chances.”
~
Tidy, one-story, white buildings with green trim; a perfectly manicured lawn; abandoned sailboats; razor-wire fence and heavily armed guards constituted the Colon Yacht Club. Despite its reputation as the world's most dangerous yacht club, it felt to me like a 19th-century, tropical plantation turned ex-pat country club. In a war zone, mind.
Bernadette's yacht-services agent showed up with a stunned Panamanian official. “Where are your husbands? Who sailed this boat to Panama? Something, it is not right here.” Nonetheless, he cleared us in after a night-sweats inducing backhander was proffered. He also proposed marriage. Both the official and the logistics agent were adamant, we would never make it past the USA to Canada. Marriage to a Panamanian was Elena's best and only hope. Not only would she be legal, but she'd net herself an exceptionally fine hubby to boot.
“Why will I not make it past the USA?” Elena asked.
“You must stay two-hundred and fifty miles from America's shores!”
“That's crackers. We're sailing a beach toy of a boat. What kind of threat can we possibly be to America?” I said.
“USA coast guard, they arrest boats with illegals going to America.”
“But we aren't going there.”
“They think everybody goes there. Do not get caught near there.”
“It's international waters!”
“That does not matter. Coast guard, they think you are going to be in America, or you would not be there, close to their shore. After this terrible nine-eleven, they believe everything, it is a threat.”
“Less than two-hundred miles is close?”
The logistics agent shrugged. The official said, “She is Russian with no visa. She does not have permission to enter Canada. I am not shouldn't let into Panama.”
It wasn't like I didn't know this already. Bernadette had a Canadian immigration lawyer on retainer, and he'd given her the same spiel. Get caught by the coast guard or set one foot on American soil, and it was the end of the line. We would definitely be arrested. The boat would be seized. Elena would be deported to Russia. Aye, the USA was a thousand-mile chasm from Tijuana to Vancouver, and it wasn't a fair, downwind, tropical crossing.
~
Four strapping, Panamanian youth and a canal pilot came aboard. The rent-a-muscle was there to handle the ropes. The pilot was to orchestrate our transit to the other side of the world. Sidling our dinky pleasure-craft into an endless queue of gigantic ships was bizarre beyond belief. Crewmen on the freighter ahead of us jeered and waved. Almost directly overhead was the bow of an oil tanker assigned to follow us. Boadicea was an insignificant bit of flotsam bobbing about between these colossal giants. Talk about an inferiority complex!
Inching toward the Gatun locks—the first set of water-gates on the Caribbean side—dense jungle closed in on either side of us. The freighter ahead throttled up and belched whirlpools from its stern. We were ungracefully washed from the queue, merrily pirouetting toward the muddy bank accompanied by hoots of laughter from the freighter crew. After that potentially embarrassing loss of control, we followed our bemused audience into the lock and snuggled up to the freighter’s humongous, vortex farting posterior. Elena stood silently at the bow, completely awestruck. Towering, wet concrete walls slid by on either side, like two mythical fortresses facing each other. Along the top of each, scurried a myriad of warriors. The freighter reversed its engines, sending an unearthly, subsonic reverberation throughout the concrete canyon. We did the same, but with our coffee-grinder sized motor, it was more of a flatulent French bulldog sort of effect. Then a volley of tethered projectiles rained down on us. Our line handlers looped their heavy ropes through the cords tossed from above. The wall warriors in the sky, hauled in their cords and looped the ropes around stupidly big cleats way above our heads. We were immobilized, centre lock, like a fly in a spider web.
Behind us, colossal, medieval looking castle gates swung from the walls, met in the middle and shut out the Caribbean. Powerful currents welled up from underneath. Boadicea strained at the ropes holding us in the centre of the lock. While the line handlers took up the slack, to hold our tiny craft in place, the high walls shrank to mere kerbs we could see right over. The ropes were thrown off the cleats by the canal workers and reeled in by our crew. I throttled up, and we followed the freighter into the next lock.
Because we're slower than molasses in January, we were obligated to spend the night in Lake Gatun. It was a primordial dream come true. Lush jungle all around, alligators gliding by, starlight reflecting from the glassy water. I'm pretty sure I saw some of the dinosaurs that escaped from Jurassic Park, lurking on the banks.
Morning came, and the tyrannosaurs and weirdly oversized velociraptors crept back into the jungle. A canal authority boat delivered our pilot, and off we went, taking a shortcut channel for runty vessels and banana boats. The jungle felt close enough to touch. More than once, we saw monkeys, more alligators, myriads of colourful parrots, and the occasional researcher's hut. Elena cooked up a stack of French toast. All on deck gobbled it down, while pointing out sightings in the trees.
The Pedro Miguel locks lowered us gently from the Culebra Cut to the tiny and tranquil Miraflores Lake. From there we entered the last set of locks. With that final lock chamber flooded, we had our first glimpse of the Pacific Ocean beyond.
Concrete walls rose on either side of us as the lock drained to the level of the Pacific. That last gate, now looking like something from Lord of the Rings, really was a giant portal to another realm. Ponderously, it opened, I throttled up our wee motor and in silent awe, we passed through the great gate to the other side of the world.
