In the Kevin Kostner film a small, mixed race group of survivors eked out a meager post-apocalypse livelihood on a flotilla of old boats and buoyant garbage. When I walk the decks of our own little floating pueblo I can easily imagine such an existence.
To begin with, our band of unfortunates is just as colorful as those that Kostner encountered. The Captain is everything you would expect from an old-school Russian mariner. He prefers straight vodka in the evening and sports one of the most poorly healed broken noses I’ve ever seen. There are two other Kaliningrad sailors on board and neither of them stray very far from the stereotype.
The engineer in charge of repairing these two ships, which have been tied and anchored together off the coast for over a year is a Kiwi who after decades of repairing fishing vessels has come to hate fishing. I’m the only American and spend most of my time doing odd technical chores among the pumps and generators on the bottom plates or drinking rum and ginger ale with the only Jamaican.
The rest of the crew is a typical medley of a dozen Panamanians. Hard working young chisslers from the interior who make triple what they would back in the village and a gay cook who is quite fancy about it. We even have women on board and a cat!
Daily life on the ocean can be trying at times. Each of these ships are about 100 meters but when someone is getting on your nerves you inevitably see them at every turn. Hot is the only temperature on board and the fan in the cabin feels like a hair dryer at night. If it’s not raining you usually end up grabbing your blanket and heading up top to sleep under the stars or having a shower in the head under cool, rust colored, desalinated water.
Like most ships the one thing you can count on is eating good. We have our groceries launched out to us once a week and every meal is all you can eat. The downside is that our cook has never been out of Panama so his culinary imagination is somewhat limited. This is particularly distressing to the Russians.
The only other concern on the ship is how to occupy your free time. We do a full work day, so there is little time for boredom between 8 and 5 but at night it can get pretty quiet around here. There is a t.v. room but if you don’t like watching novellas you will steer clear of it. We’ve got satellite for internet but being so close to the equator seems to make it difficult to keep the system tracking.
What you wanna do is grab a bottle of Anejo and your cd player and go up to the deck with one of the girls to practice Spanish. They smile and blush a bit when you invite them up and pout when you don’t.
Sweating in engine rooms and climbing in and out of ballast tanks on two 35 year old vessels isn’t the normal occupation for expats residing in Panama. Most of them are living well off their meager retirement funds or taking the high road with attractive expatriate packages from the big companies back home that sent them here. I see them congregating in the laid back, outside bars around Vera Cruz on the weekends, when I’m blessed with a little shore leave.
They always try to buy the first few rounds of beer. It must be a tradition to try and get a man drunk if he has just walked onshore. I have to remember that while I was cussing the crane operator for slamming me into the hull as he tried to pull the launch back on board, they were probably sitting right there, still having a drink. I envy them for their leisure time but I think they envy me too.
For life on the currents appeals to men from all walks of life. While describing to them the adventures of my latest 10 day tour I must try to remember that there are sad little office men back home that would probably trade anything for a few weeks of water world.
Adrale broke ranks with his Texas tribe and set out to wander the earth. Years later his passport is much thicker than his wallet but the adventure continues. He has spent considerable time on every continent except Antarctica and is newly arrived in the middle American nation of Panama where he hopes to provide readers with a sense of whats exciting on that little stip of land between Mexico and Colombia.
Read All Articles By: Adrale Holland
{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
Hey,
Holland really knows how to turn a phrase.
I know him personally from Panama. He tells it like it is.
Or at least as well as we remember.
Most expats in Panama are not rockstars but there are a lot of soggy folks.
Looking forward to more from Holland.
Just wait until he gets on land again.
Great read, Mr. Holland. I envy you a bit. I’ve never had the stomach for boats……….literally, I get motion sickness. I’m very anxious to hear of your on-land exploits as soon as you get the chance. Cheers.