Surviving the Panama Canal in Record Time

“We are clear for the last set of locks, missed the record by 20 minutes!”  Uncle Jim shouted from the PA system of his 90-foot super fishing yacht.

In 2008, Uncle Jim, as we called him, had driven his 90-footer down from the Florida Keys and invited me to try and cross the original Panama Canal in record time. Speargun in hand, I met up with the boat on the Atlantic side of the locks and with special permission and our hired ship’s pilot aboard, Uncle Jim went hammer down on the throttle and blazed through the isthmus of Panama. During the painfully long period of flooding the lock gates, Uncle Jim took time to service his two Colombian working girls that he brought along as company.

By 2008, I had been four years in country fighting to get Nicky, my German born wife, back to the US after she said the wrong thing at the border and got nailed with “expedited removal.” Panama had turned me into a wild man, hunting every great fish that Panama had to offer, drinking like a fish, smacking Colombian girls on the ass at every turn and throwing caution to the wind with reckless disregard for safety or consequence.

Once through the final set locks, Uncle Jim throttled up and we zoomed 40 miles off shore to Isa San Jose, a perfect gem of an Island with fresh water lakes, every ecosystem and throngs of toothy, giant dog tooth snapper. The fish are sensitive and smart, they turn even after you fire your spear at them often causing a glancing blow that tears off.

I was using a very long, thin gun made by a man I called Papocho, Hernan Arias, my Panamanian father who taught me everything about the ocean of Panama.  Hernan’s family were among the founders of Panama and this was key in the movement to sack Noriega. We were 30 years apart in age but alike in every other way.

Uncle Jim was rich, but he managed to leave the boat denuded of food- and we were all starving – so I literally had to feed us through spearfishing.

As we anchored I could see abandoned U.S. gunnery sites and makeshift camps likely made by the Colombia FARC rebels who often used the island to run drugs.

As I suited up, I could see Uncle Jim having fun with his working girls, he had them washing the windows with their naked breasts while he sat inside the galley watching.

Near some rock out croppings, I dived in. I took some breaths and dove down 80-feet where I scoured the massive boulders and holes- no fish until I turned around to find a monster snapper staring at me like I was bait. I swung my gun around and took a pot shot at the snapper, hitting it mid body, I was sure it would tear off.

Gagging for air, I let the fish strip all 300-feet of line off the gun’s reel.  I held the gun in my hand as I raced to the surface to avoid blackout and death. The line in the reel snagged before I could surface, so I had to ditch the gun. I turned around and watched the line and the gun get sucked into a massive hole 90-feet below. My heart sank as I was sure I had lost my trophy snapper, my favorite gun and our only means of food.

I made a dozen dives to 100-feet over the next hour, finally I accepted my fate and started to kick back to the boat empty handed.

“Hey what’s that?” yelled one of Uncle Jim’s buddies who had come along for the ride.

I turned around to see my gun, all 300-feet of yellow line and the snapper floating on the surface. The odds of the fish floating free and not tangling the line in the cave were a million to one. I quickly swam over and grabbed the fish fund. I figured it sensed that it was going to die in the cave. The fish must have made one last attempt at freedom and swam out just before meeting its maker.

Exhausted, I handed the fish up to the guys on the deck.

That night I made a massive bowl of snapper Ceviche. I later found the Colombian girls cooking my raw fish masterpiece as they said that eating citrus cooked fish was just too weird for a couple of high maintenance gals from California who had never even been on the ocean before, let alone eaten raw fish.

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