The Big Picture: On the Panama Canal
Some crossings are more essential than others: Matt Trulio discovers perspective while slicing through the jungle.
September 2, 2009
My editor wasn’t taking no for an answer. “Listen dude, I know this is last-minute, but I need you to do this for me,” she told me over the phone from her office in Connecticut. “You’re the only one who can pull it off. Please.”
Container ships transiting the Panama Canal. Kim Kavin photo.
That she had to beg and flatter me into taking an article assignment about transiting the Panama Canal on an 85-foot-long yacht spoke volumes on my state of my mind. It wasn’t the short notice—it was Monday and I needed to be there Wednesday, and I’d gone all over the world on short-notice. It wasn’t the pay—the money was good and all expenses were included.
My marriage was falling apart for the first time—it would fall apart for good three years later—and I had moved out of my home. The thought of adding another 3,000 miles to the distance between my two kids and me seemed unbearable. But my editor was relentless.
“Please do this for me, Matt,” she said. “I really need your help. I’ll owe you one.”
I gave up, said yes. And then she tipped her hand.
“There is beauty in the world, my friend,” she said. “Go find it.”
Three days later in the middle of the night, I was in a cab in Panama City and thoroughly pissed at myself for taking the job. My cab driver had never heard of Flamingo Marina. Repeating the name to him over and over wasn’t getting me anywhere, but it was getting him as pissed off as I was. Finally, in desperation, I remembered the name of the boat I was supposed to be on.
“Black Gold,” I hollered. “You know, Oro Negro?”
Of course, I said “Oro Negro” in the slow and extra loud way that only American tourists do when they believe that slower and louder makes bad Spanish translate better.
“Si, Oro Negro,” said the cabbie, as he whipped his vehicle into a U-turn, cutting off a half-dozen or so cars, and stomped on the gas. “Oro Negro! Si!”
I cannot explain how he knew the name of the yacht, which had only been in the country for three days, but not the name of the marina, which had been there for three years. I still can’t. My Spanish wasn’t good enough for that kind of detective work and, frankly, I really didn’t care enough to ask. I was just relieved to be headed in any direction other than circles in Panama City.
About 20 minutes later, we were at the (very well-marked, by the way) Flamingo Marina just a few miles from the western opening of the Panama Canal and the famed Bridge of the Americas, and I was stepping onto Black Gold. Troy and Bonnie, the owners of the boat and my hosts, were still up. Bonnie took one look at me and asked me what I needed—not wanted—to drink.
Rum and Coke never tasted so good.
I woke late the next morning in my own stateroom, threw on a pair of shorts and a shirt and crawled upstairs. I was greeted by Palmer, the captain, Chris, the assistant captain, and Jennifer, the first mate. All three offered me coffee, as did Troy and Bonnie. I must have looked like I needed it.
During breakfast, Troy and Bonnie told me their story. They’d wanted to take their new yacht on this voyage themselves—they’d never had a crew before—but Troy’s heart attack a month before departure ended those plans. So they were “muddling through,” as Bonnie put it, with a crew. She said muddling through because Troy and Bonnie weren’t comfortable having people do things for them, and Palmer, Chris and Jennifer weren’t comfortable letting yacht owners do anything for themselves.
The atmosphere wasn’t tense. The owners and crew were genuinely fond of one another. It was just—strained—because no one knew where the lines were drawn. Like Black Gold’s new guest, the lines were a little blurry.
We were scheduled to transit the Panama Canal—it’s not a waterway you motor through at your leisure—sharing the locks with a 650-foot-long Hanjin freighter on Saturday. A cab tour of Panama City and lunch at one of the locks took up one day. The rest of the time we spent on Black Gold lost in our own trivial pursuits. Mine was listening to my iPod on the top deck under the strongest January sun I’d ever felt.
Each evening at 5 p.m., we’d meet in the saloon for cocktails and, later, dinner on the rear deck. Eventually, Troy and Bonnie told me about their personal lives. They’d seen their share of hardship, which surprised me since as I was pretty well convinced, in truly self-indulgent fashion, that I’d cornered the market on it.
“Whatever happens, Matt, you’re going to be OK,” Bonnie told me on our last night. “You really are. And your kids are going to be OK, because you love them more than anything. I know you do.”
Of course I cried.
We transited the Panama Canal the next day. No question, the scale of the locks, especially with a huge ship about 50 feet behind us the entire time, was mind-blowing. But it was the jungle through which the canal had been cut that captivated me. The jungle was harsh and severe and frightening and full of bizarre screeches and shrieks.
I had never seen such intense shades of green before, and I have not seen them since. It was breathtaking. It was—beautiful.
The scenery rolled by and I remembered what my editor had told me: “There is beauty in the world, my friend.”
She was right. And for a few hours on a canal that slices through the jungle, I found it.
Editor’s Note: Matt Trulio is the editor at large for Powerboat magazine. He has written about boats and boating for more than 14 years.
