Wow has it been raining, the wet season is in full swing. There is a low-pressure system hanging around that just wont give! The rain has been coming down in sheets for the majority of the past three days. I also caught the flu about three days ago and I’m just getting over it. I haven’t been shopping for a while and I’m out of everything. I need to go to go to Colon on Monday to get money, food, and a few parts for various projects. I’m hungry for some protein. The streams and rivers are dumping copious amounts of mud into the water and it is too murky to spearfish, not to mention I’ve been too sick. I want a burger or a steak! I usually crave red meat after being sick?
Colon really is the pits. Remember the Haitian town in “007 Quantum of Solstice”? Actually it is Colon Panama and the water segments were shot by shelter bay marina. It really is a dangerous place, and the worst I’ve ever visited. I got mugged by a kid with a knife there 5 years ago. I pulled out a longer blade (Cold steel Tanto) in one hand, and a can of mace in the other. I had just visited the ATM and didn’t want to give up the little money I had. If the guy hadn’t been so “twiggish” looking I would have just handed it over. After he took a look at the mace and ominously long knife he was off like a shot. I’m hearing Colon is much worse these days and everyone is getting stuck up by gunpoint. The key is not to have anything valuable on you and take cabs everywhere. I go to the Ray super market, Chinese market (good dried mushrooms), internet cafe, and hardware store. It’s about an hour and forty-five minute bus ride to Colon. Sabenetas is about an hour and a ten minute bus ride but the supermarket isn’t as good and supplies are limited. If I go to Panama City its about a three hour bus ride and everything is fantastic but 6 hours on a bus is just too much for me to do in a day. I usually spend the night at my friend Roger Olson’s Apartment or in a hostel for fifteen bucks a night. Roger used to own a ship yard in California and build Bristol Channel Cutters, my favorite of all little cruising boats.
Any hopes of painting Splendid will have to wait until the worst of the rainy season is over and I’m hoping to get some paint on her the end of December. I have a friend coming to visit at the beginning of November and we are going to take off to the San Blas for a while. The outer islands are far enough away from the mainland that the water stays clear enough for spear fishing, and spear fishing is my main agenda these days.
Before I take off to the San Blas I’ll get my new (used) laptop and start getting some video cut. My friend David, the master mind behind the Project BlueSphere website, is sending me a terabyte firewire drive to go with it. I really want to get into the habit of getting one or two videos up a month. He’s convinced me that I should charge something for the videos and is building a system where you would have an account and pay .99 a video. The whole process is supposed to be easy for the user and only take a few seconds. If this works it should bring in enough for me to start covering the costs of the website. For me living on a few hundred bucks a month is really easy. The hard part is maintaining the computers, still and video cameras, and internet connections to get everything posted. He also pointed out that by making few bucks per video it will motivate me to get videos up more often, he’s probably right. We’ll see how it works out?
I got all the fittings for my scuba tank/air tool/spray painting rig. I still need to get a pressure regulator (about $60), and a spray gun (about $40). I read that I might not need the pressure regulator between the 1st stage on the scuba tank and the gun. I did plumb it into the low pressure side of the first stage. If I need less pressure I’ll get the secondary regulator. This would allow me to adjust the pressure and may allow me to get a better spray out of the gun. I’ve never sprayed with any other paint then out of a can. If anyone has any suggestions please let me know. One of my friends said to get a decent gun as the cheepies kind of blow, no pun intended.
If I ever needed to I could go for a dive with air tools, how cool is that? It brings a whole new dimension to wreck diving. There was a wreck (sailboat) I wanted to dive in the Tumotos (near Tahiti). The owner left it where she sank in about 60 feet of water a few days after I arrived. He returned to France heartbroken, but it seemed like the kind of boat that would be insured. I wanted to go strip it but didn’t have the tools, hummmmmm? I could have got the winches, windlass, windvane and tons of other goodies. With an impact wrench and a cutting wheel I could have gotten a lot done on one or two dives. I’m thinking eventually to get a setup so I can dive with two tanks, one dedicated for air tools, the other for myself. There are a few recent wrecks around here that I wouldn’t mind trying to salvage parts and equipment from. I left all of my dive gear on Namaste when I sold her. I happened to have a regulator as I bought it from a guy in Florida for twenty bucks. I’m going to start hunting for a BC and tanks.
I made a mount for my flip video camera’s underwater housing this morning. I can mount the camera to my supergun, pretty awesome eah? I’m hoping to get some good fishing shots when I get out to the San Blas.
Well I’m off like a prom dress. It looks like I may have enough of a break in the rain to make it to shore to post this log today.
Xnay on getting this posted today. I just tried to go to shore and there is a huge swell coming from the west, no way to make landfall today. Hopefully it will have laid down so I can get ashore tomorrow (Saturday), or Sunday.
Saturday, barely made it to shore today, I had to surf in on some big waves :)
Cheers.
Peace, Love, and Coconuts.
– Alex
Well its monday morning 7:15 sitting in my office and wishing I was unpluged and crusing. Hope your feeling better.
I for one will pay the a buck or two to see your videos not because I’m cheep or poor but because I’ve spent far too much money on my little 27 footer and my wife keeps and eye on me.
I will gladly trade your 6 hour bus ride to Panama City for my daily rush hour commute.