The following article illustrates what happens when, as our ex "Just-Us" minister Allan Rock once said, "only police and the military should have guns"...
======== Due thanks and references ===========
The following story was OCRed from the sailing magazine
"Latitudes & Attitudes"
Mar/Apr 2000 issue # 19, from the "Flotsam and Jetsam" section, page 77.
Bob Bitchin', the lovely 300+ lbs, bearded and tatoo-covered ocean-roaming editor of Lats & Atts gave me express written permission to distribute his article.
Lats & Atts is a cruising lifestyle-oriented magazine, and IMO is the best in it's category. A must-read for people with a knack for freedom, humor and the sea.
Have him make a few bucks by buying his magazine; his rag is fun, it's instructive, it's got nice pictures of paradize :-) I just renewed my subscription for 2 years! :-) Go make him rich! :-)
Also, visit his site at http://www.latsandatts.net
========= notes about the OCRed text ============
Only quick proofing has been done after the OCR process and many spelling or
word errors might still be present in the text. To have the exact wording of
the article, you'll have to make Bob Bitchin' rich by buying the magazine ...(it's probably still available in stores).
========= Begin OCRed article ====================
Latitudes & Attitudes # 19, p.77
Port With An Attitude
by Louise Pearce
The yachts Astron was travelling with were fast-tracking northwards and hence,
had cleared out of Panama in Colon before transiting the canal, or Balboa
after the canal. As we had thoroughly enjoyed the Atlantic side of Panama, we
wanted to linger a while on the Pacific side. Some people still do this having
cleared at Balboa, but we thought we would play by the rules and clear out at
the last port, Puerto Armuelles, near the Costa Rican border.
We arrived at Puerto Arnmelles mid- Sunday afternoon so we could visit the
authorities in office hours on Monday morning. The port, which used to export
bananas until the Panama disease wiped out all the crops in the 50's, prove(]
to be extremely deep even when we were too close to shore for comfort, A large
swell was barreling across the only shallow part near the very high
dilapidated wharf. making it unsafe. So after calling the Port Captain several
times without an answer, we moved a mile away and anchored.
Two hours after dark we heard a fast approaching panga [small boat]. Before we
could get out of the cabin, it hit Astron hard in the side and several armed
men tumbled on board. They were shouting, wet, dirty, and without uniforms.
Two had hand guns. two with automatic rifles and another a shotgun. One man
showed us a card in a plastic holder that was too faded to read. MY Spanish is
not very good, but I gathered he was from Immigration. The rest were
supposedly Customs officers, two policemen and various assorted others. One
Policeman kept a Kalashnikov trained on us while the other continuously
clicked his handcuffs open and closed.
All eight men kept yelling at us in Spanish for twenty minutes or so, then
calmed down enough to let the one "Immigration" man speak. They wanted us to
move Astron to the shallow spot on the south side of the wharf. Because it was
dangerous for the boat, we kept refusing. They got very hot under the collar
when we wouldn't obey. They called their chief on the VHF who then ordered
thern to make us, and thus, we had a standoff. Brian was handcuffed and
threatened with jail for the night. Then the panga arrived back with
reinforcements. Three of these seemed to be armed and heavily armed.
The fourth was an interpreter of sorts. He was as high as a kite, soaking wet
and unable to stand. We could not understand his English and the others
couldn't even understand his Spanish! One army man made them take the
handcuffs off Brian when he started demanding his Ambassador, but we were no
nearer a solution.
Our passports, yacht registration, cruising permit, visas and zarpe were
thoroughly examined and declared to be all in order. The chief was still
yelling on the VHF and getting madder and madder. Now they wanted us to tie up
to the 30 ft. high wharf and again we refused. After two hours they decided to
take all our papers and leave us alone. I hadn't let go of our passports and
wouldri't relinquish them.
It was such a relief when they left. It is very upsetting having a wild-eyed
man pointing a gun at you while yelling in a foreign language. I tried to get
Brian to leave at 2 a.m., but he figured they would have calmed down by the
morning. Besides, Costa Rica is known to send back yachts that (to not have an
international zarpe, which is all we had stopped for!
Early in the morning, Brian and I went into town while Hedley stayed to guard
Astron. I joked with Brian on the dinghy ride that I wished I was one of those
women that could turn on tears at will, as that may have moved those macho
gun-toting Panamanians.
We were greeted nicely in the first office and all was well until the chief
turned up. It seemed we had wounded his pride by not asking to anchor. Was our
Kiwi accent over the VHF at fault, or was he at the noisy parade we saw in
progress in the little town when we called in? Eventually he went and shut
himself in his office and the second-in-command started
on us in good English. "Woman," he kept saying and pointing at me, "Woman, you
are in trouble. Maybe we put you in jail." My crime was said to be snatching
all the papers off an officer. I indicated that he had all our papers except
our passports which I had not snatched, but had let two officers examine one
at a time. Then he
thought up another charge or two and things started getting heated again. When
even non-official people began cramming into the room and started yelling, it
really became too much and my tears genuinely started to flow. Brian did not
improve my outlook by saying "That effort deserves an Oscar." My hanky got
wetter and wetter and everyone kept patting me on the shoulder and murmuring
"tranquillo" Whether it was my flood or not, they sent Brian off with the
Immigration man. I was not allowed out of the room, Forty minutes later he was
back with an exit stamp on each passport! That was progress.
We were then sent on the rounds of various other offices. They first made us
out a local cruising permit and charged us $8.40 which we paid. They were
deciding whether to make us buy a new Panama cruising permit at $90, even
though ours was good for more than another two months. Next was Customs, who
wanted $10 and a present, then Quarantine, who demanded $20 and a $10 bribe,
then two more offices we could not figure the purpose of. We went back to see
the English speaking chief who said if we did not pay everyone the police
would have to search our boat for drugs, and that would cost $100 an hour.
Things were not looking
good! I caught Brians eye and he nodded, so we grabbed our yacht papers lying
on the desk, informed them they were all bandits, and left.
We scooted down the very long wharf as fast as we could without running,
jumped into the dinghy and prayed she would start (she'd been playing up for
several days). She knew we were desperate. We. covered the mile to Astron,
hoisted her on board and left at our full 1000 revs. It was 18 miles to Costa
Rica and we were scared. Prison in Panama was not an option we favored. A
yachtie who had lived in Panama for many years stood by on the SSB so he could
alert our embassy if they caught up with us.
Boy, did Costa Rica look good. We missed the first port and entered at Quepos.
The poor guy had been in his new job only 3 days and didn't know what to do
with us as we did not have a zarpe. It was very lucky we had the stamps in our
passports. In the end he decided that, as we were already in the country, he
would make us legal by giving us a national zarpe. Thank goodness for some
common sense.
Don't let this put you off Panama. It's a great country. But please avoid
Puerto Armuelles. To avoid hassle, get your zarpe as our friends did in Colon
for $1.40, accompanied with a smile. If you are. sailing south, go to Pedregal
or Balboa.
To add insult to injury, the sods stole all our fishing lures!!
=========End of OCRed article =================
criminals. Well, when there aren't enough criminals, then one
makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes
impossible for men to live without breaking laws. Who wants a nation
of law-abiding citizens. What's there in that for anyone. But just
pass the kinds of law that can neither be observed nor enforced nor
objectively interpreted and you create a nation of lawbreakers
- and then you can cash in on their guilt."
-from _Atlas_Shrugged_ by Ayn Rand
PGP keys:
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PGP 5.x DH ID: 0x6CBA71F7
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