# Through the Panama Canal.



## Cpt Dick Brooks (May 13, 2013)

Following an uneventful two days off the Colombian coast, we entered Limon Bay at 1400 hours on 5th May, 1980, leaving the Caribbean Sea behind us. There was a heavy rain-storm as soon as we passed through the breakwater, giving a white-out on the radar screen. The echo-sounder decided to give up the ghost at this critical spot, with shallows and dozens of ships anchored all around us. After finding a clear space in Colon Harbour, we let go the anchor to ride out the storm until it had abated. Three days later, after clearing customs inwards, we got underway again and moved Debut to the Foxtrot Anchorage ready to transit the Panama Canal.
I can only describe Colon as a tip. It rates with Harlem in New York and the slums of Hong Kong for grime and filth. The people are dirt-poor, but still breed like rats in a sewer. Everywhere you look, there are street-kids hustling you for a dollar, or thinking of ways to rip you off. Four people I knew personally were robbed in broad daylight in the crowded street, only a few feet behind their unsuspecting friends. You feel the point of the knife touch your back and you freeze. They slit open your pocket or the bottom of your backpack and grab anything you've got of value. Then they've gone in a matter of seconds, taking your wallet, passport and any valuables they may find with them.
The girls on board were only allowed ashore with at least four male crew-members to protect them. We walked in block-four formation, with a man on each corner of the group... the two at the rear walking backwards. Knives were carried by all the men who knew how to use them. Assault rifles and handguns were kept ready for use on board Debut by the watch, in case the ship was boarded by these thieving s***.
When I had to pay the charges to pass through the Panama Canal, I had to pay in cash... in green, as the port captain told me. I had to change my traveller's cheques into American dollars at the bank, then carry the US $2,000 in cash through some of the most dangerous streets in the world to the Panama Canal Building. I had most of my crew surrounding me, each armed to the teeth with every type of weapon imaginable. The four men on the corners of the square even carried hand guns. Arnie Schwarzenegger would have had nothing on us if we'd been set upon!

At 1720 hours on 27th May, the main engine was started, and the anchor chain was shortened up to one shackle ready for our transit of the Panama Canal. Several of our crew had already been through the Canal on yachts while we were anchored in the harbour, and now a dozen or so yachties asked if they could come with us before their own transit. This would let them know what they were up against, so they could prepare themselves for what was ahead.
We sat around for what seemed like ages, waiting for the pilot to arrive. The late afternoon sky darkened, and the lights on the other ships sparkled in the murky waters of the harbour. We all thought something had gone wrong, until at last the pilot launch pulled alongside the ship. The smartly dressed, elderly American pilot stepped on board Debut, and was shown straight up to the wheel-house by Big-Anna, proudly displaying her bronzed nakedness.
Within minutes, we were underway on the tail-end of the convoy, and at 2000 hours entered the Gatun Locks. It was quite an experience, having four trains running alongside on the dock to take us in tow. The pilot kept me on my toes in the wheel-house, not letting the ship's head go off more than a degree. The eight local wire-handlers the pilot had brought with him soon had the steel cables attached, and the order was given to ring down Stop on the telegraph. The wire-handlers gathered on the fore-deck with some of our crew, and it was soon obvious from their raucous behaviour that the cigarettes they were smoking were not made of tobacco.
The pilot of the ship travelling beside us in the adjacent lock called up our pilot on his personal radio and asked him what sort of ship Debut was.
"It's a hippy-ship," he told him. "With everyone running around butt-naked. You've never seen so many bronze titties and bums in all your life!" he laughed. "It was never like this in my day, on the ships I was on in the navy."
I'd been through the Suez Canal before, but that was a level transit without locks. Other than the Great Bitter Lake, the dull monotony of a hundred miles of endless sand on both sides of the ship was nothing compared to the grandeur of the Panama Canal. Being at night under the floodlights of the canal, made it even more so!
The elderly pilot kept me on my toes all night, giving me small helm changes every few minutes. He had me keep Debut on the lead-marks within a smidgen. He'd served twenty five years in the US navy, then another ten years as a pilot on the Panama Canal. Although he was firm with me, we chattered casually together about our experiences at sea.
The first three locks took us up to Gatun Lake, some eighty feet above sea-level, which we crossed in three hours. When we passed through the Cut, the pilot urged me to make fourteen knots, to clear the way for an Atlantic-bound convoy, much to the exasperation of my chief engineer. He kept calling me up on the ship's Tannoy, complaining about his temperature gauges overheating on the main engine.
At 0300 hours, we entered the Pedro Miguel Lock, taking us down to the Mira Flores Lake. After a short trip across the flat-calm lake, we entered the Mira Flores Locks, taking us down to the Pacific Ocean... some fifty miles south from our starting point on the Caribbean side of the Canal. At 0245 hours, after passing under the Bridge of the Americas, we anchored south-west of Calebra Island in five fathoms of water, with three shackles of chain.
I told the pilot that we were going to celebrate our successful transit of the Panama Canal by throwing a party in the mess-room, and invited him to join us. When I said we had three bottles of 1975 Dom Perignon champagne for a toast... left over from partying with the Green Boat Gang in St. Barthelemy... he asked if he could invite his friend, who had just piloted the other ship through the Canal in our convoy alongside us. As soon as the pilot launch came alongside, they all came on board to join in the party. 
The last of my original crew from England left Debut the day after we arrived in Bilbao. My chief engineer, Andy, was besotted with Big-Anna after she took his virginity in Aruba, and couldn't handle her sleeping around with all the other men on board the ship. As he was in his early thirties, it was even harder for him to understand. When she slept with Dave on the same day that he joined Debut... only an hour after he'd come on board the ship, he'd had enough... he had to get off. He joined a small English yacht, owned by a middle-aged couple, Alan and Sue, who were heading out into the Pacific Ocean for the Galapagos Islands, and then on to Pitcairn Island. She was short and fat, weighing some 250 pounds, while he was as thin as a chip.
We stayed at anchor on the Pacific side of the Canal for four days, visiting the Bilbao Yacht Club and taking turns to see Panama City. Before setting out along the Pacific coast of Central America, we wanted to get our mail posted, and several of the crew arranged for their friends to join us when we arrived in Acapulco.

It was at the Bilbao Yacht Club that I saw a familiar face across the crowded bar. I'd last seen him at the meeting of the Syndicate on board the Dutch Treat, in St. Barthelemy. He cautiously nodded to me, then went over to the window and casually looked out. I wandered over to him and made out we were strangers... just talking about one of the smart yachts tied up at the moorings in front of the clubhouse.
"What on earth are you doing here, Dick?" he surreptitiously asked me. "Haven't you hear?"
"Go on!" I encouraged him. "There's been whispers."
"Most of the Syndicate have been arrested, and the rest have dispersed on the wind."
"What about Carol?" I enquired, not letting on that I'd seen the Dutch Treat in Curacao.
"She split on board the Dutch Treat. Michael got busted over in St. Vincent with ten tons of gunja."
"How come?" I asked, a little curious about the news.
"One of the mother-ships had engine trouble, so they unloaded the stuff on to the island and were going to hide it until they could call in later. One of the overloaded trucks broke down, and the other did in its back axial while trying to tow it on the rough, unmade road."
"Bloody fools!" I swore, shaking my head in dismay." What brought all this about?"
"Robin squealed... sang like a nightingale when they turned the pressure on him in jail. He thought you'd shopped him when he was arrested in Anguilla, and told the Feds you were the big-boss in charge of the Syndicate." We both laughed at the very idea. "I'd vanish in a cloud of smoke, if I were you! Both you and your ship are red hot... the Feds are out to get you over this. The US Coastguard cutter based in St. John even challenged you to engage in open combat on the High Seas."
"They can look all they like, but if they try and touch me, they'd better come with a destroyer... at least! I have a 190 feet of three-quarter inch hull-plating, weighing-in at over a thousand tons, and an 18 foot high re-enforced ice-bow... plus another 12 feet under the water. There's 75 tons of engine thrusting it forward, with a 12 foot diameter propeller. I could easily chop through that Coastguard Dauntless like a fire-axe through a beer can." I looked at him for a minute to make my point clear. "And my deck-mounts will take care of any survivors swimming in the water." I laughed along with him at the thought. "Where are you off to now?" I asked.
"Hawaii... I'm on that fancy ocean-racer down there." He pointed out the yacht riding at anchor beyond the moorings. "I've joined her crew as a cover, to get clear of the Caribbean. We're taking part in this year's Transpak Race across the Pacific."
"And then?" I eye-balled him.
He grimaced. "I'm gonna bury my butt in the West Coast ocean-racing circuit."
"Good luck to you, mate... you'll need it!" I nodded and walked back to join my crew at the bar.
All the best, Cpt Dick Brooks.


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