The four of us crowded the cockpit smoking cigarettes and sipping rum while contemplating the adventure ahead.  Each of us had ferried water, food, and fuel to the 26-foot boat in preparation for our sail from Panama to Colombia.  Normally a four-day sail, we planned to stretch the trip into three weeks while exploring both countries coasts and the San Blas island chain.

We flooded the tiny boat's cabin with the contents of our backpacks and panniers, stashing our personal books among the cabin's mini-library and wedging our precious possessions into the niches and compact compartments.  Any item deemed unnecessary for our crossing was piled in the "head", destined to spend its journey blocking us from the toilet. The galley of our 26-foot sailboat seemed about to burst.  Each and every crevice had been crammed with papers, seashells, compact discs, ashtrays, sunglasses, navigation charts, tools, and clothing.  Two nets laden with carrots, cabbage, pineapples, potatoes, onions, oranges and bananas swung over our heads to the rhythm of the sea.

We were introduced to "the bucket", a black four-gallon pail tied to the deck rail.  For the next three weeks when nature called we would precariously hover above our receptacle making our skillful deposits anticipating the pitching deck's next move.  Common courteously required that you find an interesting wave or cloud formation when a shipmate was as the bucket, as you knew your turn couldn't be far off.

I had dismantled my bicycle removing the rear derailleur, wheels, handlebars, and seat in order to coat my beloved in a film of heavy duty wheel bearing grease and protect her from the aggressive sea air.  I rubbed fistfuls of the sticky black substance over every part of the bicycle before wrapping the whole mess in a sheet of black plastic secured with duct tape. 

I shuddered at the cleaning job I had created but one look at the unprotected metal aboard the ship convinced me it had to be done.  We lashed my treasured package to the deck at the base of the mast and it became just another obstacle in our traverses from bow to stern.

Samuel, Andrea and I passed two days awaiting the approval from Dominique to pull anchor and get under sail. Our captain Dominique, had made a life into crossing the Gulf of Colombia, ferrying travelers from Central America to South and back again. For nearly four years he had filled the gap left when the Crucero Express ferry service had closed its doors.  Other boats left the Colon harbor for similar routes to ours during our wait and I began to sense a disturbing pattern in our captain.  He seemed willing to cite the worst event possible in any future scenario as a justification for the crew to complete his whim.  Dominique had insisted it was too dangerous to sail with a dirty anchor chain, and I unfamiliar with the world of sailing, didn't have enough experience to argue.  Samuel, Andrea and I worked half a day with coarse wire brushes and rubber gloves in order that we might be able to leave.  To me it looked as if the chain hadn't been cleaned in months, if ever.  I  kept quiet and tried to discover the well-concealed joy in removing sharp barnacles and algae from steel chain.  On the afternoon of our third day Dominique's criteria had been met and I forgot all about my frustration as we pointed our bow out past the mouth of the Panama Canal and sailed into the Caribbean.

I was very excited about our new mode of transport and began to barrage Dominique with questions over the how's and why's of sailing.  I didn't hold his attention for long as the boat's perpetual rocking motion was slowly bringing my stomach to a boil.  Saliva welled in my mouth and I remembered the ending of a night, that armed with a fake ID, twenty dollars and the wisdom you only have in high school, my friend and I had tried to drink two cases of a beer selected more for it's price rather than quality. I found that with my body horizontal the seasickness became manageable and I stayed below deck forcing down crackers and tea.  We were sailing around the clock and Dominique declined to steer, babbling something about the danger a crew would face if the captain became tired from steering. He declared that the three of us would manage the stern. I choked back my saliva and the urge to express how much more dangerous it would be to let someone in my condition manage another cup of tea much less a sailboat and the lives of four people.

When my turn came I forced myself to the cockpit where I listened as Dominique instructed me on how to steer the boat.  It was night and the bright twinkle of a million stars hung in the sky.  I learned that steering worked best when you thought as if you were the sea itself, anticipating the force exerted on the rudder by our little boat's climb up the wave face and subsequent pitch into a trough.  After a while Dominique gave me our compass bearing in his Belgian accented English and left me seated alone, going below to sleep next to Samuel and Andrea.  I fixated on the compass ball floating in its viscous liquid, backlit by an eerie red, which cast a glow over the small cockpit.  All the while I fought the other waves of nausea, the ones inside me, and for awhile I thought I had them mastered.  I was suppressing the urge to vomit with the will of my mind and tried to take solace in the gentle sway of the compass ball.  The hours grew long and I began to tire in my battle of mind versus body.  When I knew I was going to break I hooked my foot over the rudder, hanging my head over the side ready to give my body the release it so badly wanted.  The boat felt as if it were flying over the dark water and the sense of speed was intensified as I brought my face close to the ocean's surface. From my new vantage I was able to appreciate each of the sails proudly filled out over the deck right before  I vomited and watched the contents of my stomach trail out in ribbon along our wake.  And again.  After several more times I pulled my head up from where it lay on the side of the boat.  The ocean spray had wetted my face and as I rolled over to grab the rudder the wind chilled me.  I felt a euphoria as all the nerves of my body rejoiced in my release.  Here I froze in time, enraptured by a strange pleasure, watching the roiling black waves peel off the back of the boat, each one capped by glowing phosphorescent foam.  A million diamond shaped sparks ignited by the moon danced over the black surface of the wave and before this beauty I lost the sense of being separate from any of it. It was one of the most wonderful experiences of my life and it had come from throwing up.

Our boat took three weeks in all to make the crossing from Panama to northern coast of Colombia. Only five of those days were really about sailing. The rest we moored off Panama's coast in the San Blas Islands, which are inhabited by the Kuna Indians.

Each day we spearfished and collected conch for the evening dinner.  Samuel constructed a tool for hunting lobster from a television antennae and a large fishing hook and brought home two small but tasty lobsters on his first outing.  We collected coconuts off the islands filled with palm trees but quit when Dominique informed us it was the only source of income for the local Kuna. 

The translucent blue waters fulfilled every fantasy I had about travelling in the Caribbean.  Each day we went snorkeling with the spear gun and hunted one of the dozens of varieties of fish we saw.  I was caught between marveling at the incredible beauty of the colors and shapes of the fish and my wanting to eat them.  I reflected upon my position in the food chain and considered my dilemma a luxury not everyone could afford.  Certainly the Kuna that fished these waters each day in dugout canoe understood what a gift the sea brought to us. I doubt they were saddled with my dilemma, it was simply the fish or them, meaning the fish.  Later a large manta-ray and a run in with a tiger shark would help me crystallize the idea that humans were not the kings of every realm.

One day we left with a Colombian coconut merchant for a five-hour ride in a motorboat to a remote Kuna village south of our mooring.  Dominique was looking for a dingy that had been stolen off his boat a few months earlier and we took advantage of the merchant's business trip to investigate.  The entire village filed out of their grass huts to greet us on the large beach alongside their canoes, visibly their only connection to the outside world.

Washed ashore on this incredibly remote beach were gross amounts of trash, mostly plastic.  In the piles of ugly refuse Samuel and I found a Frisbee. We started a game and quickly had the attention of forty or so villagers. Half naked with thick symmetrical tattoos marking their noses they were mesmerized by the back and forth rhythm of the Frisbee. Finally my brain clicked and I threw the Frisbee at the feet of the villagers where it sat for a moment.  It was a historic moment.   One brave boy stooped down, gathered the Frisbee from the sand and lofted it.  Not an Olympic throw but it broke the tension and we began a triangular game with each of the villagers taking a turn on their end.  When we boarded the coconut merchant's boat and motored off Samuel and I were still able to see a game of Frisbee being played on the beach fading from our view.  We congratulated ourselves for introducing Frisbee to the Kuna's Indians.

Not everything about the crossing was so pleasant. Living on a boat with four strangers which was really designed for two began to wear on everyone. I found my three European boat mates habits to be quite different than mine, many of them fitting the stereotypes I had been trying to ignore.  I am sure my American attitude did not go unnoticed either. 

Each day Dominique started his day, joining the sailors' radio morning meeting and requesting information on a possible sighting of his missing dingy.  He performed this task with such obsession it would had been difficult not to appreciate it if you hadn't been in complete awe of the demolition of social protocol.  Every time he commented he somehow turned the conversation toward the dinghy.  Not everyone can bring the subject of tropical weather fronts to stolen dinghies so smoothly. 

Usually after each morning's detailed description of the dingy there would be a long radio silence while the other sailors searched for something to say on the exhausted topic.  I could almost hear the sailors' screams of laughter and frustration as they signed off on the channel.

Our substitute dinghy was made of flimsy plastic and folded for storage.  A wood rib slotted from side to side gave the boat it's structure, I quickly christened it the "Yogurt Lid", for it floated and steered with all the maneuverability of just that. 

The tension between Dominique and I nearly boiled over in an incident involving the glorious craft.  We were returning from a trip to the nearby island after our laundry and water-gathering chores.  I had brought my expensive Nikon 35mm camera to the nearby island in the hopes of getting some pictures of the sailboat from shore.  In the choppy waves of our return, the Yogurt Lid overturned, sending my beloved camera to a distant sea bottom. The four of us were forced to swim for the sailboat.  As I sat quietly dripping in the cockpit stewing over my own stupidity for bringing such a valuable item Dominique came out of the water and up the boat's ladder.  He retold the story of our capsizing casting me responsible.  At that moment I imagined funneling all my strength born from months of biking eight hours daily into choking the living shit out of another human being, something that I found very difficult not to do.

I was ecstatic when we sailed into the Cartagena harbor. We had passed a great trip on the sea and I had learned something about sailing and each of the countries, particularly the Kunas.  My dream sail had been that, but it also had been a test of wills between the captain and myself, and I was glad to be getting of the boat.

Ahead of me lay Colombia and the decision whether or not to cross the country on a bicycle.  The alternative was to skip a section or the whole country by flying direct to Ecuador.  Colombia's civil war had been heating up again and each day brought a new report of a kidnapping of foreigners or a bloody clash between the guerillas and the military.  I felt I needed some time to think, and to get a feel for the Colombian atmosphere before I made my decision.  I made arrangements with the wife of the marina owner to rent one of her abandoned sailboats as temporary lodging.  The boat had been stripped of every item of value on the possibility that it might have been seized by the authorities. The boat was involved in her husband's cocaine-trafficking case for which he was now serving an eight-year prison term.  I settled into the boat acutely aware that I had a hard decision to make about the road ahead.