You may have to close your ears…
A Post by Julie. (Enhanced by crew in blue italics- except Lucy who refused to participate)
So, the long overdue Day 2, (delayed due to some legal issues with which we were involved).
Saturday, of our Panama Canal Experience began around 8:00am. We thought we were leaving around noon, so when we saw the advisors showing up, we hurried to get ready for the day. Sadly, we ended up with a whole new crew of advisors. We loved Carlos on Day 1, so we were hoping to see him again today. Our new advisor arrived, (said one word, which we assume is his name) had some breakfast with us, and settled in to his seat in the rear of our cockpit snoozing and looking at his phone. We had about a 5 hour ride through the Gatun Lake, a crocodile infested lake which supplies all of the drinking water to Panama City. There were a few resorts along the banks, but mostly Panama Canal traffic—huge container ships, cruise ships, 2 other yachts and us.
The kids fixed lunch prior to our reaching the 1st lock. Soon after, we were told to get ready to raft up. No problem—should be a lot easier in daylight (or so we thought). However, the middle advisor decided to change the way we rafted up from the night before. Our advisor deferred to him, so we changed our lines all around and finally got rafted up. Now, the midship advisor wanted all of the captains to practice steering with his commands. Unfortunately, the advisor never was able to get the boats all in sync. We went to the right, to the left, right, left (when we were supposed to be going straight)…Instead of waiting for the lock to be ready and figuring out how to control our raft of boats, he directed our raft to tie up on the wall prior to going into the lock ON OUR SIDE. Julie was not very fond of this idea, and let our advisor know, (we think Mom woke him up from his YouTube trance) but to no avail. We ended up docking on the wall very quickly with a bang and a scrape. The advisors were not concerned in the least, (YouTube was still more important) but we took a chunk of fiberglass out of the back of our sugar scoop (which is at the back of our boat). Now, we understood what those big round fenders are for. The actual locking down was quite easy. Unfortunately, the lack of communication between us and the midship advisor did not get any better throughout the rest of the day.
For the second lock, we again rushed up to it before the lock was ready for us. Again, we docked on the wall ON OUR SIDE, and again we scraped and bumped against the wall prior to the lock. (Note: the normal process of locking is to stay in the middle of the chamber, never near a wall.) Again, locking down was easy.
Locks 2 and 3 are connected and as we were already in the middle, we just needed to move directly forward slowly. As we started moving from lock 2 to 3, we ended up going too fast, but the advisor kept telling us to keep going forward. The line handlers on the side of the canal were running to try to keep up with us as we swiftly headed towards the closed front door of the lock. We were going TOO fast—and now we were aiming for the wall ON OUR SIDE – again. Mark yelled to the advisors that we were going too fast, Julie also yelled we were going too fast and we were going to hit—in 10 feet, in 5 feet, and then bang. The advisor once again wasn’t worried about a thing. We scraped the wall going forward with our fenders squishing, sliding up, sliding down, and eventually tearing loose from the boat (with a very loud BANG) and bending our stanchion (the post that holds up our lifelines). Then, the advisor ordered the raft in reverse which sent our back corner fast and furious into the lock wall, causing a pretty big crack in the fiberglass along the waterline. Mom was yelling. She now has Panama Canal words that rival Dad’s engine work, bilge work, and head work words (This statement does not do the linguistic explosion justice. It was quite the spectacle. I (Mark) have never been prouder, Heidi’s ears are still recovering, Lucy is still annoyed by all of this (especially our re-telling, as she thinks we’re not being nice), and Sally is still in shock. Fenton was a bit shocked and began questioning all of his life’s decisions that led him to that point. Along with our advisors, a guy on the lock wall got quite the earful when he tried to tell Julie ‘don’t to worry about it, it’ll be fine’.). Again, locking down went fine…The advisors looked at the damage, shook their heads, and took selfies of themselves with a big cruise ship in the background (funny side note: the clientele of the cruise ship were largely European – and not to reinforce any stereotypes, but, there were a lot of guys in speedos and tighty-whiteys waving at us from their cabin balconies – it was quite the sight). Argh!
On the way out of the 3rd lock, we were greeted with the beautiful Pacific Ocean. We picked up our lost fenders, called our agent, and began the process of filing a formal complaint against the Panama Canal Authority. Our agent was amazing, showed up within a few hours of our incident, and helped prepare us for the process to follow. On Sunday, we had multiple visitors photographing our damage and taking statements. (While everybody was courteous and professional, they all told us we didn’t have a chance of ‘winning’ our case). We went to a court hearing on Monday morning. The process was amazingly efficient, professional, and quick. At the hearing, the advisors definitely showed their inadequacies and we came across well (at one point, the attorney for the Panama Canal Authority had to tell the advisers to stop talking, as they were making fools of themselves). Mark did a great job showing what happened. Our hope was that this group of advisors would not be able to lead another raft down the way we went down—bumping and scraping the whole way. We would find out the results in about a month…
So, it has now been a month. The decision was made. The advisors were at fault for their general incompetence. We were also at fault—not for anything we did or didn’t do, but for being a small boat that needs to be handlined through the Canal (vs the big ships that are pulled through the canal by large locomotives). Every boat like us has to sign a waiver saying that they accept this risk. We are now getting estimates for the work to be done and we will move on. The repair is really not large and we’ve done a temporary fix, but the fact that the advisors really didn’t care about the damage to our boat and didn’t listen to us made us feel the need to make sure something was done. We hope this decision will lead to better advisors for all.
Over the month of February, we had a great visit with family and friends back in the states. While we were originally planning to head west to French Polynesia and New Zealand, we have changed directions and are now heading northwest to Costa Rica, El Salvador, and Mexico. We plan to spend hurricane season in the Sea of Cortez and likely do a camping road trip through the western National Parks in the US and Canada during the hot months. We also will be doing much more research on Galapagos, French Polynesia, the Cook Islands, Tonga, Fiji, New Zealand, and Australia. We still plan to go west and will spend some time figuring out what job opportunities await us in New Zealand and the best places to visit with Willie—our Portuguese Water Dog. Dogs are not so easy to bring through the South Pacific.
Now that the Panama Canal chapter is finally closed, we expect to be back up and running with our blog. The kids have lots of stories to tell of new friends, surfing, bioluminescence, and hopefully a hike or two in the not so distant future.