In the Land of the Kuna Indians. Guna Yala /Scars on a coral reef, a shocking discovery, war with mathematics, spearfishing. A squall and running aground at night. Panama, the Caribbean Sea, the San Blas Archipelago.
French Toast, Coral, and How to Get the Captain up the Mast
French toast for breakfast. We need to finish the Colombian bread; it wears out quickly in Panama. Lada, Mishka and Zaika ordered oatmeal—they’ve suddenly grown fond of it. Now we’re waiting for them to appreciate tomatoes and avocados ).
After breakfast, having conquered their fear of the sharks and crocodiles darting about everywhere, the first mate and the young sailor dared to dive into the underwater world. In yesterday’s murk, we anchored a bit too close to the reef (see the previous post); the stern is almost hanging over the coral. It’s a good thing we hauled 20 metres of chain back in, or we’d be stuck here now like a kebab on a skewer. A sad gash left by our anchor chain is visible in the coral cover.
The reef carpet is woven in yellow-brown and lilac hues; grey monolithic heads, also coral, alternate with soft tentacles, ribbons and fans. In places, the underwater world resembles the planet Pandora from Avatar. Dark-blue fish with bright-blue stars dart among the coral branches. A pair of round, flat fish catch Laduska’s eye with the eye-like spots near their tails.
After the swim, the senior sailor and I settled down to algebra. Goodbye, self-reliance—algebra doesn’t surrender that easily; she needs help here, from Mum, that is. The captain takes almost no part in our scholarly investigations into quadratic trinomials. He observes from afar—today, even from the masthead, where he climbed to repair a ring on the sail.
Strike While You’re Still at the Mast
It turned out that yesterday it was the ring that had split at the weld, not the sail itself. Just look at the loads we withstand—the metal tears :)! With the help of a needle, strong webbing and sorcery, the captain fitted a shackle to the sail in place of the ring, of the “hope-it-doesn’t-fall-off” variety.
On top of that, various items of yachting gear, long forgotten by us (though not by corrosion), were extracted from the depths of the forecabin. And the boat smelt of pond weed all day. Among these wondrous objects was an old beige mainsail cover with an unbelievably nasty chemical-industrial smell. A rubberised awning gives off exactly the same stench if it happens to lie in a locker for a long time.
— Now this is the cover we’ll have on the mainsail! — declared the captain, who had, for some reason, fallen out of love with the pretty dark-blue lazy-jack system solely because its zip was supposedly broken. Ignoring the first mate’s sceptical expression, Andryukha sent the cover off for a swim, intending afterwards to hoist it onto the defenceless mainsail.
— The zip’s been broken for two years already, and we’ve managed just fine, — the first mate grumbled. — And this new-old cover is exceedingly hideous and stinky. Don’t put it on the mainsail or we’ll all suffocate; hang it out on the bowsprit to air! Maybe the rain will wash it clean.
And after its swim, the cover obediently went to the bowsprit. Meanwhile, the first mate began plotting ways to return the horrible rag to the locker.
Honestly? At First It Was a Shock
— Mum, look, there’s a huge bag floating past!
— Where? — I run to lower the ladder so I can jump in after the rubbish.
— There’s another one... and another. Oh, what is this, Mum? Did some giant dump all his rubbish straight into the sea?
And I realise that on these paradise islands I have far less chance of clearing rubbish from the sea than I did in the inhabited bays of Cape Verde, the Canaries, the Caribbean....
Towards lunchtime, the current carried so much stuff through the archipelago that even the filthy bay of Cartagena was cleaner. The little islands look as though they came straight out of a holiday brochure, coral beneath them, while on the turquoise water there are old and new plastic bottles, soles, sacks in every colour of the rainbow, pieces of jerrycans and buoys in such quantities that they could not possibly have been washed into the sea by accident.
Subsequent cruises around the archipelago cured us of our shock by the conservative method. And before building sandcastles on uninhabited beaches, we now habitually gather the rubbish into one large pile. Given the number of islands along our route, the captain categorically refused to turn Lady Mary into a rubbish barge.
Apparently, in Panama, as in Africa, people simply don’t know that plastic rubbish is bad. Leaves float around and lie everywhere, all sorts of sticks.... So how is a bottle any worse than a coconut? Later visits to Indian villages confirmed this theory.
Beneath the Wings of Sunset
For lunch-dinner we cook a delicious borscht and wolf it down while the rusty sun sinks into the greyness of the clouds that never leave the Panamanian coast.
After algebra and before tomorrow’s geometry, we can unwind with a film, just as the girls and I like to do. Today’s programme is Caesar and Cleopatra, starring Vivien Leigh and, what’s more, with a screenplay by Bernard Shaw. To be honest, neither Vivien nor Bernard impressed us. Lada watched the rest of the film alone. She was the only one who liked the fairy tale.
The Second Day of Mental Gymnastics
Nastya settled down to geometry. Our sailor is a Humanities Person with a capital H, so for now mathematics is winning by the crushing score of 10–0.
Entirely predictable, since she spent the first term of this year following an experimental programme for humanities students, and did no studying at all during the final term of last year, relying, as usual, on “something turning up.” Something duly turned up and whacked her over the head, making her brain creak desperately. The first mate, who always found mathematics easy, has begun to take a slight dislike to purely Humanities-oriented minds and is tirelessly training her willpower, patience and love for her fellow human beings.
Lada settled down to embroidery—she’s decided to establish a club for young embroiderers aboard the yacht. Our girl is growing up.
The Catch and the Grill
While we were exercising our minds, the captain made a hunting foray with his speargun, thereby inaugurating fish day aboard the vessel.
Although the first mate had told him not to shoot the colourful fish, the first two turned out rather more colourful than she would have liked. To me, it’s like roasting a parrot instead of a chicken. It’s hard to enjoy eating something your mind does not regard as food. So the grey fish designated as “edible” were out of luck. The captain caught a large one with a good-natured, round-faced expression on his third attempt.
However appetisingly the catch and vegetables sizzled over the coals, it was only with great difficulty that we persuaded responsible Nastya to tear herself away from geometry. She finally came out to sample the baked potatoes, aubergines, browned carrots and fresh fish with a crisp crust. Tomato rounds and onion rings—mmm... good thing there were plenty of them on the grill.
In between times, the captain dismantled, cleaned and lubricated the winches, confirming the proposition that a real yachtsman is someone who repairs his yacht in a succession of beautiful places.
We Left and Anchored Again. And Then We Grounded
For our next anchorage, we moved to the most beautiful spot in the archipelago, with the sonorous name of Coco Bandero. We were the only yacht there.
Three round little patches of land appliquéd with coconut palms are separated from one another only by narrow strips of blue water and the pale turquoise of the shallows. The triangle is circumscribed by a circle of reefs (time to remember trigonometry).
Two islands are uninhabited; on the third there is just one open-sided hut. A European in green swimming trunks (where did he come from?) and two Indians. Beyond the palms, a fourth little island can be seen, crowded with reed huts. The third Indian must have paddled over from there and, in keeping with Guna Yala custom (they have a matriarchy here), addressed me directly:
— Cargar, — he says, — celular.
My eyes widened...
— Por favor!
(Charge the phone, please! — The captain translated that for me; he’s the crew’s chief polyglot.)
I drew myself up (remember the coachman in Formula of Love, when the carriage had to be taken apart? — “Everything depends on ME...” :)).
— Okay, your celular shall be cargar-ed. — And I accepted a perfectly respectable Samsung smartphone aboard.
Do you know what the difference is between us and the Kuna Indians after two weeks of post-Colombian life? They have mobile service, and we don’t. That’s how we live, like savages. We don’t have visas either, by the way—we still have to sail to where the authorities are, and here there are only palms and pelicans so far.
And during the night, the rain set in. Then the wind picked up. They kept taking turns like that until Lady Mary swung round on her chain and was driven aground.
...
Details in the next satellite report.
Seven feet under the keel to you all!