Still Flying to Panama

Day 3: Offshore to Panama

The original title of this post was going to be: Still Flying (a Spinnaker) to Panama. The title was changed because that is a lie. The spinnaker is currently down, due to calamity. Of course it is.

Whenever Mel goes offshore, a little part of her never relaxes or goes to sleep. Because of all of the exploding. Well, the ever-present threat of something exploding, anyway. All of this exploding is a byproduct of the reason why so many brave adventures are drawn to this mode of transportation.

Sailing is quite a bizarre thing to do, when you think about it. Imagine living on an alien island, say, where the atmospheric winds are so powerful that you eventually develop fiber technology stronger than steel just to hold up a six-story pole. Surrounding the island is a cold, dark, inhospitable substance that constantly moves the ground, making it impossible to walk unassisted. This deadly substance is so powerful, you die if you fall in, and it could flip you and the island upside down. Above this island hovers an atmosphere that can eject not only water but also high-powered electricity into your island on a whim. Dystopian sci-fi, right? So what did humanity decide to do with this scenario? Build the island out of lightweight but strong GLASS, weave sheets with fibers made from PLANTS or CRUDE OIL, and then attempt to MOVE the island through that morass, amplifying the forces threatening to squash their tiny, fleshy, sunburnt bodies into a bird splat.

No wonder stuff explodes!

Despite this meandering preamble, the spinnaker did not explode. Instead, it is resting in its locker because the Burnetts were once again experimenting. They wanted to see if sailing with both main and their medium A2 asymmetric spinnaker would speed things up once the wind shifted forward, from 160 to 120 degrees. (Typically they do not have the main up when flying the spinny and on a deep broach reach. Ah, catamarans.) This required dousing the spinnaker, raising the main, and then raising the spinnaker once again. Unfortunately, when we attempted to fly the spinnaker again, the dousing sock caught on some knobby rope in the dousing line.

During Greg’s multiple attempts to free this snag, with the sock half deployed in mid air, the free bottom of the spinnaker managed to wrap itself several times around the dousing line.

You won’t see any YouTube videos of this, since Mel was at the helm managing the lines, but with great effort, Greg managed to stuff the half-flying spinnaker into the forward cockpit. Another benefit of the forward cockpit!

Whew! Time for a rest!

Nope! Bam! There’s the explosion of the day! The outhaul on the main chafed through and exploded. Alas! We had ignored one of the prime tenets of sailing on a second-hand boat: Everything is there for a reason. When we had taken down the sail for repair earlier, the words: “Why is this extra strap on the boom?” were muttered. The issue was explored no further. Well, question answered. The strap was securing the outhaul and protecting it from chafe. Then followed more fiddling with lines. All fixed!

We are now motor sailing with only the jib because the wind died anyway.

And now finally, we return to the title of this post. Mel made the mistake of googling the word “Panama“ in an attempt to learn about the country she is soon to visit. Right after she realized that she should probably be on prophylaxis for malaria, she stumbled upon a song that is her new earworm. This song, Panama by Matteo, is of course about going to Panama, sung in Romanian, with a viral dance created by dancers in Thailand when it hit the charts there 10 years ago. It’s a small blue marble we live on, folks!

Don’t watch the video unless you are really looking for a song to be stuck in your head for the next eight hours.

Selected lyrics with English translation:

Fly to Panama
Zboară-n Panama

What the hell, ah-ah, ah-ah
Ce până mea, ah-ah, ah-ah

Still flying to Panama, ah-ah, ah-ah
Mai zboară-n Panama, ah-ah, ah-ah

Fly, what the hell, ah-ah, ah-ah (?)
Zboară, ce până mea, ah-ah, ah-ah (?)

Still flying to Panama, ah-ah, ah-ah (?)
Mai zboară-n Panama, ah-ah, ah-ah (?)

Come on, keep flying
Hai, mai zboară

Love it!

Dinner: Reheated frozen meatloaf
Entertainment: watching a zoom webinar called Pua Hana for cruisers heading to the Pacific about provisioning and learning that Skippy peanut butter is worldwide, but Mel is going to have to find a place to store a giant wheel of cheese.