when it came down to the nitty-gritty of it we were sitting in a sea-side bar that was straight out of 1962. we were drinking a pitcher of beer that cost $3.25, a fact that left me with very few complaints when all things were equally considered. the early evening’s cast consisted of the following: your two favourite semi-retarded travelers – barnes & noble – a peppering of panamanian dock-workers, with red-faced wealth and ocean fanatics rounding out the ensemble. the workers were sitting near the door and appeared to be unwinding after a long day of labour in the bleating sun, an occurrence that i now know transcends many a culture, not just the one in which i was raised; they told jokes and periodically removed their sweat-stained baseball caps only to put them back on the very next moment, perhaps this time giving the backwards look a try, depending on said hat’s previous cranial location. when these labourers were out of beer, one in their midst would be nominated to make the short trip back to the bar where fresh pitchers of ice-cold lager would be quickly produced.
but this was not the crowd that stole the majority of my glances on this peculiar bar-room voyage. that honour went to the centre table which was a boisterous and heavily-drinking crowd, members of the retired community needless to say. i would catch snippets of their conversation when noise levels in the bar permitted, things like, “…on the passage from Cartegena,” or “…we were riding a series of even North-West tradewinds and moving at twelve and a half knots…”.
i was intrigued. this was exactly the kind of talk Noble and i wanted to be a part of. our mission for the day had been to survive the murder-happy city of Colon, to find the town’s marina, and from there to secure a ride aboard a comfortable sailboat bound for the beautiful nation of Colombia. this table was our ticket. i could feel it. one of them had to be headed that way, if not now…then how about in six beers?
confused as to what move we should make Noble and i hung around the edges of the scene, drinking our economic pitcher of beer like creeps at a nightclub hovering the dancefloor…waiting for stragglers. and come they did, marine stragglers, come they did. a guy who referred to himself only as “Fishhook” told us he would be more than willing to have us aboard his boat even though he wasn’t leaving for Colombia until February, effectively useless when you thought about it. he even offered us to stay the night on his “Thirty-six foot super-cruiser”, which was weird and was the point at which i faked a call from mother nature and left Noble to fend for himself as i sought out the toilet in this wild and apparently lonely tavern.
“Excuse me sir, where’s the washroom?”
“Where’s the what?!”
“The washroom sir, you know, el bano?”
“Ah! You mean the pisser! Starboard side once you’ve passed the bar. Don’t bother flushin’ neither.”
right. the turn i would need to make, past the bar, if i were to find “the pisser”. a starboard turn. returning to my seat i passed a suave, fit young fellow of about thirty-five who gave me the classic nod instead of opting for a wave or verbal greeting, a social move that i totally approve of. i imagined him to be the captain of the white, clean (but not to the point that it was an obsession), medium-sized catamaran harboured a few rows from the bar. and, in retrospect, i’ll bet my guess wasn’t too far from the truth. for one thing i came to know as the night went on and the beer flowed like, well, beer in a harbour-bar, was that in a place as described you can pretty much tell what kind of boat a man owns judging by his get-up and how he consumes his liquor. for instance, the well-groomed couple at the end of the busy table, drinking white wine for reasons unknown, were clearly the proud owners of one of the dazzling, white and silver, forty to fifty feet boats parked in the hundred thousand plus row directly in front of the marina. their striped polo shirts and new deckshoes screamed it. on the other hand the red-faced fellow three spots to their left, who was working on beer twelve or thirteen (i couldn’t be sure at this point as his bottle graveyard was now growing without distinction), with a face full of a scars and moustache nastier than them all, was definitely roaming the seas on either the all-yellow thirty-nine foot masterpiece with “Homer” scrawled across the side, or the equal parts black and green catamaran with the Rottweiler roaming freely near the bow amongst what looked to be piles of trash. after five minutes these things seemed obvious. just as it was obvious that the bartender had been at his job for way too long and had zero motivation to leave; that the paintings on the wall had never been changed (freely peeling edges gave this one away); and perhaps most obvious that this worldly hole represented rock-bottom for unmarried individuals possessing two ‘x’ chromosomes. case in point? there were three ladies in sight and they all kept a death-grip on their husband’s arms due to the overwhelming fear of being swept away into the ravenous pack of sailors, like barnacles desperately clinging to a rock when the tide comes in.
later, when we had left the bar, and Noble and i were once again searching for a boat, this time via an internet crew site, what i had learned in the dockside scene came flooding back to my senses and i couldn’t help but let a smile crease my lips, as, shaking my head in humorous disgust, i read the yachting community’s “wanted section.” the intentions were clear. i quote:
“Female crew members preferred, aged 28-46 years is ideal, especially those with a mind open to romance…”
it was a tough straight to navigate. we replied to a few posts, albeit hesitantly, saying things like, “Well hey there Cap’n, while I won’t be able to solve your romance issues, not in the slightest, and i mean that with every ounce of truth my soul possesses, i’m still a great person and eager sea-traveler…”
so, will one of these seamen take the bait? i don’t know. am i interested to find out more about this inebriated subculture that wears its heart on its sleeve? maybe in small doses. will i ever go back to that sea-side bar? happy hour starts at five.
