Fourth Leg 360 miles - Costa Rica to Balboa, Panama

Departure Date, April 14, 2005

Well, it only took 3500 miles (which seems more like 10K), more money than I care to admit here (or anywhere else for that matter) and the unwillingness to not accept defeat, but Fred FINALLY got his fish.  A few hours after leaving Banana Bay, we got a double hook up, lost one (my line) but Fred reeled in a small, but nevertheless beautiful, yellow fin tuna.  Thank God, can we go home now???

Within an hour, we hook a small dorado.  Normally, we would of let one this size go, but hey, we were in fish deprivation mode, so nothing edible was getting tossed back. 

A couple hours later..."Rrrrrr" goes the reel and another, even plumper yellow fin is hooked.  That's two, anyone care to go for three?  Yes indeedy, three it is!  Each one just slightly bigger than the one before.

With both tuna and dorado in the box, it was like getting what you REALLY wanted for Christmas, having your birthday wish come true, getting to second base on the first date, hell, it was like riding the coolest float in the Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade.  Everyone all together now...who-ha, go Fred!!!

Wasabi, gingerroot and soy sauce at the ready, we dine on Fred's prize.  It doesn't get any fresher than this. 

Lunch the next day is a lovely, little, lightly sautéed, crusted dorado with mango salsa (said with a pompous, snotty accent). WOW, now that's good stuff.  Big thanks to Adam for bringing me my supply of Zatarain's fish fry breading.  I am, btw, hooked on this mango salsa thing.  It's good with fish, shrimp, chicken, pork and probably great with a spiced up grilled flank steak.  I love it!!!  See what happens when you've been out to sea too long?  Fruit gets exciting.

We finish lunch just in time for some rough weather to hit.  Damn, not again.  We had had a beautiful cruising day the day before, but that was all about to change.  Things progress and we start hitting 30+ kt winds and 8-10 foot seas straight on.  The bow is being buried on the down side slope and anything that wasn't nailed, glued or velcroed down has flown off it's perch.  This continues the next 24 hours.  With no sleep and no way to even remotely rest, mutiny among the crew is being discussed.   Personally, I want off at the next available rest stop.  Driver could you pull over here please and let me out?  Our speed drops below 3kts which is going to make this a much longer passage than originally anticipated.  I'm beginning to sense a theme with this cruising thing. 

On top of the weather conditions, this is the busiest and most crowded passage we've ever made.  Normally, you'll get one maybe two targets at night on radar.  At one point, Fred had over 10 targets on the radar all traveling much faster than us and all MUCH bigger than us.  We forget the Rules of the Road and just try to stay out of their way.  Out here at night, bigger always wins. 

The conditions continue and even though the waves lessen slightly after about 12 hours, we are still having 20-25 kt winds all the way to Panama. This goes down as the roughest weather encountered and most uncomfortable passage to date.  Which I'm sure in the scheme of things is very mild, but in my amateur opinion is still more than I'd prefer to endure.  Call me crazy, but I like flat, quiet seas rather than being jarred around like a margarita in a blender.  I derive no sense of accomplishment from challenging the sea gods.  Old Man and the Sea...good book but not a reality TV show I'd want to sign up for.

One interesting thing we did see along the way was a rather large shark floating on the surface near a large log that was adrift.  He was a few feet off the starboard side of the boat when I noticed a good sized fin at the water's surface.  Obviously he had come up to check out the floating log answering the age old question that they really are out there just waiting for you to land in the water :-)

We arrive outside of Balboa just around dusk.  It's hazy and getting dark fast.  It's very weird entering into the area with nothing but huge freighters and ships all around you.  So these are the guys we'd been dodging the last two nights.  We're like a toy boat in an enormous bathtub.  Hope nobody pulls the plug.  Now would of been a good use of that wide angle lens I never got around to buying to really capture the scene, but multiply the picture to the right about 20 times and you'll get the idea.

We get permission to enter the fairway to Balboa Yacht Club.  More freighters are heading out passed us and it's spooky getting that close to something that big.  A little more starboard if you don't mind Captain. 

It's completely dark by the time we reach our mooring at BYC.  We tie off, hail a panga to pick us up and get the boys to shore for a quick walk and some shore leave.  This proves to be a real hassle as the pangas are not designed for ease of embarkation, particularly if you're a dog.  There's a lot of lifting and shoving to get them in the boat safely and not get squashed between the panga and the dock.  BYC doesn't allow use of personal dinghy's so you're forced to utilize their panga services.  Remember what I've said about having a captive audience? 

Back on board, it's WAY past cocktail time.  Parked in front of The Bridge of the Americas is quite an awe inspiring view and at night the bridge is lit up with red, white and blue lights.  It's really very cool.  Unfortunately, I never did get a picture of it at night before we relocated to Flamenco Marina. 

We barely make it through our well deserved cocktails and enjoy fine dining on a bag of potato chips (too tired to cook, we're barely able to open the bag) before we decide to call it a night.  It's only 8:30 p.m., but we've had no sleep to speak of in well over a day.  It's lights out and sweet dreams.  We've made it to Panama.