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"Hi friends!
This was just too good a thing not to send off to a whole bunch of people and
celebrate. We got through the Panama Canal yesterday without a scratch. Three locks up behind a huge container ship, then 28 miles through a lake
under full sail (the only fresh water sailing we've done since Montreal), then three locks down. It took all day from 5 am to 6pm.
Our borrowed line-handlers were appropriately attentive and I loved them.
Took far too many pictures showing no tact at all. I have this zoom lens now and love this
' take the man on the big ship's nose at 300 metres' thing. Since we were caught in concrete boxes a lot of the time, this seemed the least I could do to escape the
anxiety.
Now we're wandering our way around Panama City looking like two hicks. It's a huge, stinking, city and watching people is endless fascination. The hoity-toity men wear white shirts, beautiful silk ties and dark pants--ALL of them, and the hoity-toity women all wear suits--ALL of them. Ugly as sin if you ask me. They looked at me in my mini and tank-top like I was some sort of American scum and I 'spose I am. But I charged around in my rubber sandals anyway, feeling the supreme individual like Thomasina Carlyle wreaking her personal vengeance against the banking hierarchy of the world. They stare back.
Humph!
I'm having photos processed and looking around at the libraries feeling a huge lure to pore over books in windowless archives. Should've been a librarian instead of all this sailing ...am yearning for the university library. Oh boy, and this trip was supposed to cure me of that. Well it hasn't.
We are making our plans and repairs for our 8 day windward passage to the Galapagos. We seem to go through this delay-stagnation period whenever we have to go on a long trip. No doubt fraught with latent fears and primordial lust that finally has its day when we scream at each other while reefing for a
gale.
So, for a few days, am trying to be a happy goofy tourist that can't speak Spanish--which isn't hard, because I am one and I
don't. I might even go to see the gaudy gold altar at the cathedral and soak in the incense and old wood for an hour. Hope there's not too much light so I can sink into existential
angst...
Am supremely happy to have made it through the canal with no hitches. There are a hundred horror stories, none of which seem to be true, about ruined boats. That's for those
'Club Med' girls with their tans and aspirations to fame, I guess. Instead, everything went smooth as skippy, and I even served food. Ta
da!"
Thanks Fran! It's always good to meet someone even crazier than oneself. Let
us know if you ever do! No, seriously, we were delighted that Fran and John
made it without a hitch - theirs is a very special boat and they are special
people. You may like to read our Multihull
page, edited, in part, by Fran, who will try and fit editing the page in
future issues in with her many other activities.
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