Captain's Class

I went into town with Garrett. I had to take a boating safety course in order to get a now compulsory captains license.

The meeting was held in the XXXX building which is described as XXXX. Nobody in town had heard of it. The class was to start at nine. People were still registering at 9:40. When registration was compete a very corpulent man stood up and spoke extemporaneously and rapidly in Spanish, ocasionally discussing something that was related to the slide content.

It was a strange course. Nothing on rights of way, horn signals or buoys.

Compass navigation lessons were completed in less than a minute. Norte, Este, Sud,  Oeste and bearings. It couldn't have been more superficial or less informative. For some reason at least ten minutes was spent discussing how to remove fish hooks. Everything was covered in Spanish by a single man while five other staff members video taped the bored audience. This will have to rate as one of the most uninteresting videos ever.

About 11:30 it was completed and the crowd rushed over to a counter outside. Many people were renewing their licenses and seemed to have a clue. What next? I got some Panamanian, fluent in Spanish to tell me that I needed two passport photos, a medical certificate, a copy of my passport and had to take a boating competency test on a water taxi with a tiller outboard. I looked off the back deck and saw people from the class boarding a flat bench Panga. Nearly thirty people were going to take their test on this boat, playing musical chairs. What a cluster f**k. By the time I had told some gringos I was with where the dock was the boat was full. I figured at four minutes apiece this was going to take at least an hour and a half.

Back to the other end of town to meet the three Czech girls who were to stay with me for four nights.

Two were there, one was making here way from Tamarindo, Costa Rica. How long will that take? Well it's four or five hours from Tamarindo to San Jose, five hours from there to Puerto Viejo and from there another 3 or 4 hours. By then, she'll be too late for the water taxi. No way she can make it here today, regardless of what time she leaves.

Garrett decided to stay in town with the two.

I went home and contacted several local groups on Facebook looking for pipe augers. Within half an hour I had scheduled the only plumber in the area with augers to come to my house and do the work for whatever I thought it was worth.

Then I putzed around, cleaned up the boat and generally took care of some household tasks. While I was gone Jessica entered the house, shredded my foam mattess cover, chewed the fastener off my waterproof boat bag, and shredded a cardboard box.  Thanks, bitch.