MORE TALES FROM THE ANCHORAGE
Las Brisas de Amador anchorage, Panamá City, Panamá, Saturday, 22 August 2009
Having abandoned the passage to The Marquesas once more, we have been back here in Panama City for a few weeks now while we figure out what to do about the engine. Henning, a German shipwright and mechanic, initially agreed to do the work, but only after his back has healed so he can handle the heavy lifting. Meanwhile however, he thinks Alexander, a pleasant Ukrainian-born Russian on a cruising boat here, could handle the step-by-step work of removing all the many attachments to the engine (batteries, starter, exhaust pipe and exhaust manifold, fuel pump, oil and fuel filters, etc.), lifting the huge engine off its mounts and turning the motor around within the engine room so access can be had to the rear where the seal has to be replaced. Henning is willing to be a resource and supervise in some capacity without actually taking on the responsibility of the job. I have worked with Alexander before when we did some rewiring; he’s a pleasant chap, a good worker and handy with engines, while Henning on the other hand has the formal training and experience. It should work and we work something out with Alexander.
It takes two whole days to get the engine finally lifted off its mounts. Basically we do it the same way we did it in Bahía de Caráquez, Ecuador, i.e., by re-opening the two-inch hole drilled in the bridge above the engine room; then, once all the umbilicals have been removed from the engine, we brace Vilisar’s solid wooden boom with a block of wood and lift the engine with the aid of a come-along suspended from the boom by rope and with its hook let down into the engine room through the hole. Most of the preparation time is taken up with clearing the engine of all its attachments and loosening the eight bolts holding the engine to the heavy-duty mounts. The saltwater that entered the boat when we went on the rocks in Taboga has made most of the bolts very difficult to remove. Prior to starting to work, I used lots of engine oil overnight to try to loosen the bolts; it still took a whole can of penetrating oil and lots of cursing. In the end, after two days, the engine was dangling from a hook, the transmission is pointed into the cabin and we can settle the whole heavy lot onto two 5”x 2/5” wooden “girders” that we found ashore in the work yard. Alex goes to work dismantling.
Unfortunately, this proves very time-consuming as well. It could be that the overheated engine that we experienced on that eight-hour run out to Isla Pedro Gonzalez somehow semi-welded the various huge nuts and washers together. Eventually, however, we get the transmission removed (it lies rusty and greasy in the middle of our cabin to be stumbled over); the remaining engine oil that I was not able to get out prior to starting the work has mixed with transmission fluid and has flowed out black and stinking onto the cabin sole and into the bilge. The 2¼ -inch nut holding the heavy flywheel in place on the crankshaft takes nearly six hours to loosen. Alex goes round the anchorage looking for a huge pipe wrench that will do the job. More penetrating fluid and hammer tapping. Eventually it comes loose.
The flywheel itself proves to be even more recalcitrant. Just behind it is the engine seal that has to be replaced. So close and yet so far! No amount of hammering and heating with blow torches loosens the flywheel from the crankshaft. At $100 a day for labour, we are wondering if we should just have left well enough alone and simply poured oil into the engine as needed. Henning and Alex confer and Henning says we are on the right track. We use bolts with steel plates to try to lever the damned thing off. No dice!
While we are hard at work one day, a Port Captain representative comes around in a lancha to all the boats in the anchorage to check our cruising permits. Fortunately, we have just received one and are still smarting that a (different) official from the Capitania had ripped us off for a bribe in order for us to get the permit. I immediately assume that, with Christmas approaching, this guy wants some money too. But he seems content that our paperwork is in order and we are relieved that we got it in time. Eventually however, they take away an elderly Swiss cruiser named Jakob (S/V Rapace) with whom we had become friendly. He had apparently never actually even checked in let alone acquired a cruising permit. Later we run into him cooling his heels up at Migración and we are still there when they haul him off in an official truck. We hear later that he has been put into jail awaiting deportation. His girlfriend is a resident of Panamá and she has found a lawyer for him. What he needs, of course, is a ‘fixer’. Half of Panamá’s population – i.e., the half that are not real estate agents - claims to fall into this category, so it might all turn out all right. The question is whether he will be deported with his boat or by airplane, thus leaving his small yacht behind.
More importantly at the moment from our point of view is that Alex, the mechanic, and his wife have sailed away in the night. He came around last night to say that he thinks it is better if he disappears out to the islands for a while. He takes back his various tools and we pay him what money we have onboard that we owe him and this morning he is gone. The Lister engine, of course, is still hanging in the engine room and we are still living in the clutter and dirt and grease. When will this engine ever be repaired and, just as importantly, put back in place?
Loose boat
Did I report that we were damaged by a large steel ketch that dragged down on us in a recent squall? This 16-ton steel sailboat with beautiful lines is the property of an 82-year-old American living in Panamá. He has neglected it terribly however; everything about her is sad and bedraggled or simply broken. We are on shore when the storm comes up and I witness Henning on his S/V 2 Captains trying to fend off the maverick boat. As it slowly works its way down the side of Henning’s boat, lifting his storm anchor, doing paint damage dpown the side and trying to snatch his furling rig right off the bow, I realise that the next boat in line for attention is going to be Vilisar.
I jump into the dinghy and row out in heavy rain to clamber aboard. By this time the steel boat has already arrived alongside and caught itself on our starboard (upwind) side. She is pitching and crashing against us. I see her press heavily against the caprail, popping some boat nails. The heavy bronze fixture holding the wire-rope bowsprit whisker-shroud is compressed and broken, the bronze bolts sheared off; everything falls into the water, still fortunately attached at the tip of the bowsprit. With the large waves that have by now built up, the much bigger attacker is now pitching up and down and rubbing against our mast shrouds and caprail while I try to hold her off with just one small fender. As she rakes down our side, her high bow smashes into splinters the wooden lightboards about ten feet above the waterline. The wooden bits fall into the water leaving the copper navigation lantern squashed like a beer can but still somehow lashed to the boat.
I notice that the visitor’s anchor line has crossed my own anchor chain. If it keeps dragging it threatens to lift our Bruce anchor and we shall both be dragged onto the rocks about 500 yards behind us. I notice that the maverick’s anchor is attached using only rope; I tell Henning, who by now is on its foredeck, that I intend to cut that anchor rode and let the vessel pass clear. Since this boat has been dragging in nearly every squall in the past week, it is basically a hazard to navigation. If the owner can’t take care of it, I don’t see why I should sacrifice Vilisar in a probably-vain attempt to rescue us both. But Henning says they are going to try and put out a heavy anchor and pull the boat off Vilisar to windward. I am sceptical that that will be possible during the storm, but Henning himself has already thrown the anchor line over to me. I tie it off over our spare anchor roller and return to pushing off the visitor and letting her go astern. In the meantime, the wind has in fact dropped quite suddenly and the sea is beginning to smooth. The attacking boat is now clear of Vilisar and they are towing it over to the dock with a couple of motorised dinghies. Eventually they tie her up there and the Port Captain (where did he come from?) impounds her.
I inspect our damage and am thankful once again that Vilisar is so strong. Yes, the lightboard is destroyed but Ali, our German welder-friend, thinks he can repair the lantern, and I can cut us a new lightboard once I find some wood. Maybe I shall replace both of them while I’m at it. A few days later, I go into town to the Centro de Tornillo (Fastener Centre) to buy replacement bolts and two days later I have refastened the bowsprit shroud. It is pretty wet these days so I put off paintwork until things dry up a bit. Anyway, with engine work going on with lots of grease and oil around, it’s not a great time to be starting paint projects.
Kathy, on the other hand, is emotionally upset by what appears to be one more bad omen. Clearly there have been too many things threatening to cripple our long South Pacific passage. For two days we talk about our plans and finally decide just to put off any thought of going to The Marquesas at all for the time being. We can sail west and north towards beautiful Western Panama, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Guatemala and even Mexico when the winter NE Trades arrive in November or December initiating the dry season that will last until May next year. At any time we can decide to push off for The Marquesas. We now have lots of time and without the big passage bearing down on us, it takes the pressure off. Curiously, the farther north we go, the closer we actually get to The Marquesas anyway: how many people realise that San Diego is closer to Hiva Oa by a thousand sea miles than Panamá City? If we want to make the Coconut Milk Run (South Pacific) we can decide later and even leave in late winter. If we prefer to spend more time in Central America or Mexico however, no big deal. With that decided and our immigration and cruising papers for Panama now in proper order covering at least three months, we both feel terrifically relieved and we can now take a breather to get the engine repaired.
Through another cruising couple, Yoel (from Haifa, Israel) and Patricia (from Colombia) we learn of a choral society conducted by the leader of the National Symphony Orchestra. They invite us to join them to sing. Now we shall have some other interests that have nothing to do with the boat and we can meet some non-boat locals and possibly improve our Spanish some more. (Yoel is by the way a concert-grade pianist and even has a real baby grand on board. If you want to see him and us at work during a party on their sailboat called “Johannes Brahms”, visit http://zeglarz.net/English/index1.html The website actually belongs to interesting Polish sailors who were at the party.)
That’s the news from Lake Woebegone for the time being.
Las Brisas de Amador anchorage, Panamá City, Panamá, Saturday, 22 August 2009
Having abandoned the passage to The Marquesas once more, we have been back here in Panama City for a few weeks now while we figure out what to do about the engine. Henning, a German shipwright and mechanic, initially agreed to do the work, but only after his back has healed so he can handle the heavy lifting. Meanwhile however, he thinks Alexander, a pleasant Ukrainian-born Russian on a cruising boat here, could handle the step-by-step work of removing all the many attachments to the engine (batteries, starter, exhaust pipe and exhaust manifold, fuel pump, oil and fuel filters, etc.), lifting the huge engine off its mounts and turning the motor around within the engine room so access can be had to the rear where the seal has to be replaced. Henning is willing to be a resource and supervise in some capacity without actually taking on the responsibility of the job. I have worked with Alexander before when we did some rewiring; he’s a pleasant chap, a good worker and handy with engines, while Henning on the other hand has the formal training and experience. It should work and we work something out with Alexander.
It takes two whole days to get the engine finally lifted off its mounts. Basically we do it the same way we did it in Bahía de Caráquez, Ecuador, i.e., by re-opening the two-inch hole drilled in the bridge above the engine room; then, once all the umbilicals have been removed from the engine, we brace Vilisar’s solid wooden boom with a block of wood and lift the engine with the aid of a come-along suspended from the boom by rope and with its hook let down into the engine room through the hole. Most of the preparation time is taken up with clearing the engine of all its attachments and loosening the eight bolts holding the engine to the heavy-duty mounts. The saltwater that entered the boat when we went on the rocks in Taboga has made most of the bolts very difficult to remove. Prior to starting to work, I used lots of engine oil overnight to try to loosen the bolts; it still took a whole can of penetrating oil and lots of cursing. In the end, after two days, the engine was dangling from a hook, the transmission is pointed into the cabin and we can settle the whole heavy lot onto two 5”x 2/5” wooden “girders” that we found ashore in the work yard. Alex goes to work dismantling.
Unfortunately, this proves very time-consuming as well. It could be that the overheated engine that we experienced on that eight-hour run out to Isla Pedro Gonzalez somehow semi-welded the various huge nuts and washers together. Eventually, however, we get the transmission removed (it lies rusty and greasy in the middle of our cabin to be stumbled over); the remaining engine oil that I was not able to get out prior to starting the work has mixed with transmission fluid and has flowed out black and stinking onto the cabin sole and into the bilge. The 2¼ -inch nut holding the heavy flywheel in place on the crankshaft takes nearly six hours to loosen. Alex goes round the anchorage looking for a huge pipe wrench that will do the job. More penetrating fluid and hammer tapping. Eventually it comes loose.
The flywheel itself proves to be even more recalcitrant. Just behind it is the engine seal that has to be replaced. So close and yet so far! No amount of hammering and heating with blow torches loosens the flywheel from the crankshaft. At $100 a day for labour, we are wondering if we should just have left well enough alone and simply poured oil into the engine as needed. Henning and Alex confer and Henning says we are on the right track. We use bolts with steel plates to try to lever the damned thing off. No dice!
While we are hard at work one day, a Port Captain representative comes around in a lancha to all the boats in the anchorage to check our cruising permits. Fortunately, we have just received one and are still smarting that a (different) official from the Capitania had ripped us off for a bribe in order for us to get the permit. I immediately assume that, with Christmas approaching, this guy wants some money too. But he seems content that our paperwork is in order and we are relieved that we got it in time. Eventually however, they take away an elderly Swiss cruiser named Jakob (S/V Rapace) with whom we had become friendly. He had apparently never actually even checked in let alone acquired a cruising permit. Later we run into him cooling his heels up at Migración and we are still there when they haul him off in an official truck. We hear later that he has been put into jail awaiting deportation. His girlfriend is a resident of Panamá and she has found a lawyer for him. What he needs, of course, is a ‘fixer’. Half of Panamá’s population – i.e., the half that are not real estate agents - claims to fall into this category, so it might all turn out all right. The question is whether he will be deported with his boat or by airplane, thus leaving his small yacht behind.
More importantly at the moment from our point of view is that Alex, the mechanic, and his wife have sailed away in the night. He came around last night to say that he thinks it is better if he disappears out to the islands for a while. He takes back his various tools and we pay him what money we have onboard that we owe him and this morning he is gone. The Lister engine, of course, is still hanging in the engine room and we are still living in the clutter and dirt and grease. When will this engine ever be repaired and, just as importantly, put back in place?
Loose boat
Did I report that we were damaged by a large steel ketch that dragged down on us in a recent squall? This 16-ton steel sailboat with beautiful lines is the property of an 82-year-old American living in Panamá. He has neglected it terribly however; everything about her is sad and bedraggled or simply broken. We are on shore when the storm comes up and I witness Henning on his S/V 2 Captains trying to fend off the maverick boat. As it slowly works its way down the side of Henning’s boat, lifting his storm anchor, doing paint damage dpown the side and trying to snatch his furling rig right off the bow, I realise that the next boat in line for attention is going to be Vilisar.
I jump into the dinghy and row out in heavy rain to clamber aboard. By this time the steel boat has already arrived alongside and caught itself on our starboard (upwind) side. She is pitching and crashing against us. I see her press heavily against the caprail, popping some boat nails. The heavy bronze fixture holding the wire-rope bowsprit whisker-shroud is compressed and broken, the bronze bolts sheared off; everything falls into the water, still fortunately attached at the tip of the bowsprit. With the large waves that have by now built up, the much bigger attacker is now pitching up and down and rubbing against our mast shrouds and caprail while I try to hold her off with just one small fender. As she rakes down our side, her high bow smashes into splinters the wooden lightboards about ten feet above the waterline. The wooden bits fall into the water leaving the copper navigation lantern squashed like a beer can but still somehow lashed to the boat.
I notice that the visitor’s anchor line has crossed my own anchor chain. If it keeps dragging it threatens to lift our Bruce anchor and we shall both be dragged onto the rocks about 500 yards behind us. I notice that the maverick’s anchor is attached using only rope; I tell Henning, who by now is on its foredeck, that I intend to cut that anchor rode and let the vessel pass clear. Since this boat has been dragging in nearly every squall in the past week, it is basically a hazard to navigation. If the owner can’t take care of it, I don’t see why I should sacrifice Vilisar in a probably-vain attempt to rescue us both. But Henning says they are going to try and put out a heavy anchor and pull the boat off Vilisar to windward. I am sceptical that that will be possible during the storm, but Henning himself has already thrown the anchor line over to me. I tie it off over our spare anchor roller and return to pushing off the visitor and letting her go astern. In the meantime, the wind has in fact dropped quite suddenly and the sea is beginning to smooth. The attacking boat is now clear of Vilisar and they are towing it over to the dock with a couple of motorised dinghies. Eventually they tie her up there and the Port Captain (where did he come from?) impounds her.
I inspect our damage and am thankful once again that Vilisar is so strong. Yes, the lightboard is destroyed but Ali, our German welder-friend, thinks he can repair the lantern, and I can cut us a new lightboard once I find some wood. Maybe I shall replace both of them while I’m at it. A few days later, I go into town to the Centro de Tornillo (Fastener Centre) to buy replacement bolts and two days later I have refastened the bowsprit shroud. It is pretty wet these days so I put off paintwork until things dry up a bit. Anyway, with engine work going on with lots of grease and oil around, it’s not a great time to be starting paint projects.
Kathy, on the other hand, is emotionally upset by what appears to be one more bad omen. Clearly there have been too many things threatening to cripple our long South Pacific passage. For two days we talk about our plans and finally decide just to put off any thought of going to The Marquesas at all for the time being. We can sail west and north towards beautiful Western Panama, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Guatemala and even Mexico when the winter NE Trades arrive in November or December initiating the dry season that will last until May next year. At any time we can decide to push off for The Marquesas. We now have lots of time and without the big passage bearing down on us, it takes the pressure off. Curiously, the farther north we go, the closer we actually get to The Marquesas anyway: how many people realise that San Diego is closer to Hiva Oa by a thousand sea miles than Panamá City? If we want to make the Coconut Milk Run (South Pacific) we can decide later and even leave in late winter. If we prefer to spend more time in Central America or Mexico however, no big deal. With that decided and our immigration and cruising papers for Panama now in proper order covering at least three months, we both feel terrifically relieved and we can now take a breather to get the engine repaired.
Through another cruising couple, Yoel (from Haifa, Israel) and Patricia (from Colombia) we learn of a choral society conducted by the leader of the National Symphony Orchestra. They invite us to join them to sing. Now we shall have some other interests that have nothing to do with the boat and we can meet some non-boat locals and possibly improve our Spanish some more. (Yoel is by the way a concert-grade pianist and even has a real baby grand on board. If you want to see him and us at work during a party on their sailboat called “Johannes Brahms”, visit http://zeglarz.net/English/index1.html The website actually belongs to interesting Polish sailors who were at the party.)
That’s the news from Lake Woebegone for the time being.
posted by rjb @ Saturday, August 22, 2009
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