THE PERLAS are a low, thick-wooded group seemingly at anchor in the southeastern quadrant of Panama Gulf. A scattered mestizo population of Indian, Negro, and Spanish inhabit its quaint semicivilized villages. They eke out a meager living from the uncultivated tropical fruits and vegetables, and abundant fish off the shores. Their “pueblos” lie on the leeward sides of their tangled islands and usually front small bays.
I had anchored for the first night in Perry Bay at Pedro Gonzáles Island.
The next morning early, I made sail. A brisk wind, wetted by torrents of rain, sent me east on my quest for a safe bay that I could work into and drop my anchor. Close by, in the lee of Señora Isle, I found a sandy spit and maneuvered up close to it. I guided myself in by standing on the stern, manipulating the tiller by foot, and sounding the depths, as I crept closer with the hand lead line. When I thought it fit I brought the bow into the wind with tiller hard alee, and sails luffing. I pushed the anchor off the rail and freed the chain to rattle out the hawsehole. I loosened the peak halyard and clawed in the main. I threw staysail and jib halyards loose and doused the staysail with a jerk, and teetered out on the bowsprit to pull the jib into a neat lump. I was anchored . . . and it had been easy, I felt confident. I thought I would go below and enter it in the log. Then it happened: I could sense through my bare soles on the deck that the keel was thudding against something.
In the tight anchorage I had neglected to stop off the chain; it veered out full length, putting me stern first ashore. The rain poured so heavily it stood solid on the decks before it could run off. The sea gurgled with its patter. When I saw I was aground in this bleak, uninhabited little island, the rain for the first time felt cold.
The tide was ebbing speedily. Two hours later Pagan was on her beam ends. I sat on the top rail, drying in the new sun, trying to picture a solution. My kittens moped about my feet, wet to the skin and small as rats, echoing my hopelessness as they scratched along the canted decks.
I saw my voyage at an end where I sat. I could hear voices saying, “I told you so.” I thought of my wife, and I thought of going back to Panama without my boat. I watched for hours, hoping a boat would round the bend and tow me off. The tide was coming back and the bow was beginning to waver about. She would either fill with water or ride higher on the beach. I watched the tide seep higher around her, licking and exploring. I got angry, and though I wasn’t sure what to do, I resolved to fight back.
I piled much of my heavy gear on the shore with the kittens. When the bow floated, and she righted a little, I shored her up with a water barrel. The tide marched higher. I heaved tight on the anchor chain and fired up the noisy little engine, gunning it at high speed.
The tide crawled upward and I hoped it would crawl on till it floated her. I jumped into water up to my thighs and strained against the heavy sternpost. The bow was buoyant but the stern was fast in the sand.
I shifted weight from the afterpeak into the forepeak. Still no change. The tide had stopped rising—it was now or never. I put the throttle full down and jumped in again, pushing against Pagan’s three and one half tons with every last ounce of strength.
She eased an inch, two inches—and stopped. I rested a minute and tried again. Another inch and another, then she slipped two inches. I was amazingly tired. I threw my back against the stern, pushing till my heels dug in. She stirred and slipped, then slid clear. My boat was saved.
Running aground was not my only blunder as my practice sailing continued that first week in the Perlas Islands. I made errors of navigation such as the time at dusk I mistook a sand cay off Viveros Isle for a smudge spot on the chart, and put Pagan bow first high and dry on it, where she lay on her beam ends for two tides before I finally hauled her out to deep water.
Then there was the time at Casaya. I saw a good spot to cast anchor for the night, just under the village, in the lee of a grassy spit, in two fathoms. Here is where I erred: in waters where the drop of tide was sixteen feet, I anchored in two fathoms!
At a monstrous hour of the night I was tipped gently from my bunk. I struggled over the sloping floor, through a jumble of strewn stores to the hatchway—then I knew. Pagan lay slumped over, her beam deep in the stinking mire.
All I could see was an eerie mass of shadows, except where a faint moon glinted in the morass. There was work to be done. It meant stamping about knee-deep in smelling slime and fetching and carrying to make my boat tight against the returning flood—and at the same time make her light so that she would float before she would sink.
Three hours later found me naked and mud bespattered, checking by flashlight the result of my emergency labors. I had nailed down the cabin door. I had dogged all hatches and ports. I had dug away from under the rail and lashed my two purposely emptied water casks close against the bilges. Inside I had shifted heavy lockers of food from the port side, on which she lay, to the starboard side. Much of her heavy gear I had carried ashore.
Later, when the lapping water licked upward on the planks, I slogged about in the slush and hip-deep water, straining my back as my jaunty little craft strained hers in sucking from her fast grip as she rose to the occasion.
But the most humiliating blunder I made came off in the bay fronting the junk lumber village of San Miguel on Del Rey Island. I let my anchor go when its chain end wasn’t made fast to the deck and it flew out and disappeared into the harbor as I stood there watching it. Pagan was adrift, heading for the rocks. For some unaccountable reason I couldn’t start the engine. Then Pagan was knocking against a shallow ledge, and that left me only one thing to do: hop in my dinghy and tow Pagan, by rowing, away from the ledge. But row as I would I couldn’t fight the current, so I set up a wild scream to the villagers for help and they came out in their cayucos and hitched on, and together six boats of us towed her off to mid harbor, where I leaped aboard, filled my sea bag with tools, and used it for a jury anchor that night.
Another error I made: I offered a dollar in the village next morning to the man who would dive for my anchor. Seven men pulled out onto the bay to search for it, and strangely enough, despite the fact that they were scattered in their quest over a hundred-foot circle, all seven discovered the anchor at once; and they all claimed the dollar! It was worth seven dollars to have the anchor and chain again.
Hardly a day passed that I didn’t make some sailor’s blunder. But the more mistakes I made, the more skillfully I learned to sail, and the better I came to know my boat.
In the end I lost my anchor. It happened in the ideally protected little basin off Saboga. A great haziness surrounds the loss of that anchor. I entered it in the log as “The mystery of the missing anchor.” The mystery is still unsolved. This is how it all happened:
I made an early afternoon approach to the village. I was sighted when still well out—and boats put off from shore to meet me. This welcoming party rather aroused my vanity, and I found myself shooting into their presence with a daring maneuver or two in the offing. The Saboga anchorage is windless; I pointed in under full power, with all sail up. I saw where I could sail between two close lying boats and impress the islanders with my skill at the tiller.
Pagan was footing it fast. The stem parted water with a satisfying gurgle. I grinned beforehand over the neatness of what I would do. But in the final moments, as I bore closer, my enthusiasm for the trick fainted away and I decided too late I didn’t want to do it. Sailboats don’t stop with brakes, nor do they make hairpin turns that greatly resemble hairpins; at least Pagan didn’t.
I pushed the tiller hard over and screamed inwardly for a ready response. When the natives saw my bow waver, they too began to waver. Their paddles churned the water, and instead of spreading they closed, and instead of avoiding me, they drove into me.
Or so it seemed. I couldn’t see. The headsails hid everything. I felt the thud when we struck, and heard the wood splintering, and heard the swearing in Spanish.
I ran forward expecting to see one of the boats badly scarred, but when I saw them both stove in and sinking, and their occupants thrashing in the water, I didn’t know what to think.
The first of the natives pulled himself aboard. His face was candid with severest pain; a pain of hugest inconvenience. The others came and stood dripping beside him, fumbling their small pouches of wetted tobacco. Then the words flew. I was cursed and ranted at as only the Latin tongue, waggled by an outraged Latin, can do it. I could only stand flat-footed and mumble.
They demanded ten dollars for each boat. It was like asking a hundred dollars for a broken shoestring. It was especially heartbreaking to me because I was down to my last twenty-five dollars, what with paying for the anchor and purchases of bananas and smoked fish and a few lopsided pearls, the only kind found in the group, for Mary.
I offered them five dollars for the two cayucos, and they were ready to revolt. We quibbled back and forth with our limited language, refusing to understand each other till dusk was gone and dark come. Finally they left in a huff, taking with them my little clinker-built dinghy given to me in Panama as compensation for their “hollowed logs.” I gave it to keep peace in the village, and to ease my conscience.
It was that night the anchor disappeared. How it disappeared, I don’t know. All I know is it was gone when I went on deck at daylight.
I made the usual preparations to sail, then heaved in the heavy chain, heavy enough in itself to hold Pagan in a quiet haven such as Saboga. I knew the anchor was gone when I first pulled, but I thought it had merely slipped its shackle. I started the engine and moved back and across the air-clear water, peering over the gunwale, seeing the same moss-grown rocks and coral formations. About midmorning some of the natives rowed out and helped me.
By noon my suspicions were wakened enough to suspect thievery. There was no anchor on that bottom. It was a mystery I could best settle by getting under way before something else disappeared. I readied Pagan to sail.
I dumped my tools back into my sea bag and made it fast to the chain as a jury anchor. I ran the sail up and shoved off for Pedro Gonzáles Island.
It was June 1; I had completed my first week of practice. I had visited bays and inlets on all islands of the Perlas Archipelago except San José, which was quarantined by the Army. I had flogged my boat through narrow channels. I had fought upwind and upcurrent in tight waters. I had sailed my boat on every conceivable angle to the wind. I had lain flummoxed in the long, recurring calms and had made errors enough to win a give-away checker game.
My confidence was sharpened. I was learning. I could say I was beginning to understand my boat. In every emergency I had got myself out of what I had got myself into. I had now the feeling of a sailor—if not the prolonged actual experience.
Through it all my sprightly little cutter had proved herself a stanch sailor. Whether on her beam ends ashore or butting clumsily into a reef, she bore an unaffected decorum and grace.
My boat could take it. I liked her. I was beginning to think of her as an individual. However, despite my liking for her and confidence in her, I couldn’t move myself to make the jump off into the Pacific with her quite yet. I thought of it, but shrank from it. I needed more training. At the same time I realized I couldn’t prolong the preparation much longer. Another week, or ten days at most, was all the time I could spare. I had less than four months to race the hurricanes to Sydney.