SSL665 ~ a place with a VERY DARK PAST...
welcome back guys and thank you, so much for your patience I know we missed another episode last week, but that's because as sometimes I have to remind you, I am but one man, there's no team here, when it comes to most of the filming, editing, producing, and uploading, it's pretty much me, myself, and I, and as some of you also know I've had a lot of new responsibility added to my plate lately, so I'm afraid I have to ask you to do as I sometimes have to do and deal with it, but in last videos you'll remember we went through some pretty rigorous sailing and ended up at one of my favorite places in Panama, Portobello, favorite because I love the history of this particular Bay, it goes back five-six centuries into some of the earliest pirate stories that we know now for some of you that have been following for a while, you'll remember that the last time Maddie and I were here I made a video with the help of my oldest son Brenden that introduced the history of Portobello, and I really like that video, so before I get back to today's video I'm gonna play that portion for you to bring you up to speed, so thanks again for coming out to watch, you know we appreciate it! welcome to Portobello Panama, a sleepy little town on the North Coast of Panama about 20 miles Northeast of the Caribbean side entrance to the Panama Canal, San Felipe de Portobello as it was called when it was founded back in 1597, it wasn't always such a sleepy little community and in fact it endured over 200 years of extreme acts of piracy for being one of the biggest discharge ports of gold and silver in the Spanish main, geographically speaking the bay at Portobello is advantageous to the Spanish because they needed a place to transport all the gold from The Ships coming up from South America on the Pacific side and of course at that time the Panama Canal did not exist, so what they did is built a small Railway that came to 35 miles from the Pacific side to the Caribbean side and then used the mules to transport the gold over to Portobello, here it would be stored in this gold Reserve until such time as it could be loaded into the galleons and head for Spain, I can't tell you how amazing it is to be anchored in this Bay with all these modern cruising boats knowing that just a few hundred years ago it was full of Spanish galleons and pirate ships alike, back in the 1600s this entire Port was opened to anyone and everyone to come in and trade, this open trade eventually backfired on the town because the pirates that would attend all the trading would also be paying attention to the vulnerabilities of the town, and as such learned very well the best times and places to lay attack on the city, 1596 in our old buddy Sir Francis Drake comes in and levels the whole place before it's even finished, well that didn't bode well with the Spanish, so they set to work in building all new forts to protect it like a fortress, a lot of good it did them because next comes Henry Morgan, yes Captain Morgan, and he steams in with nine ships and a crew of over 400 men, he knew the city so well it literally fell in days and he continued on for more than two weeks burning and torturing everyone in his way, holding this Spanish hostage for ransom and when they awarded it he took to sea with all the gold and anything else of value, just to further upset the Spanish while he was there he released a bunch of British prisoners which ended up resulting in him being granted Knighthood by King Charles II, it took almost another Century of piracy and Portobello before the Spanish figured out they just can't defend it, so instead they came up with a new strategy and built many ports all the way along the west coast in this way the extra ports could serve as decoys and the Pirates would never know which port to attack or when, sounds like something they might have considered a couple hundred years ago to me, but well who am I to say, but anyway let's go ashore and check this place out (hi! we are cleaning the windows) (and waxing poetic over here) were you telling a life story?? (it's not a life story) yeah let's hear it (that's going to take a while I'll have to rehearse it) no just what you just said what were you talking about? (oh uh) quitting the day job (yeah yeah yeah I went to business, I study business and marketing also known as corporate brainwashing 101, but it was great, it's good to know your enemy, so that was good um, but then I decided that was not the route I wanted to take, so more of the entrepreneurial spirit, I started taking care of kids because they're energizing to me and that was in alignment with my creative pursuits of music and writing and art, and uh I've been doing that ever since) what's going on? (a lot of laundry, we have a lot of laundry after the travel) (life stories and laundry today) and cleaning day we got a lot of cleanup to do, we took a lot of salt water on that last trip it was a reasonably good sail, but very very wet ride for sure (yeah now you see the beautiful Panorama here) we can see out the windows again look at that, almost this one's still dirty, yeah they come up nice huh? (yeah yeah) they almost have a shine when they're clean (so the trick is first to take this kind of soap with water, wash it first away then dry it then put some extra rain few coat) yeah we got like a polished coat or something (polish coat and then dried again and then this one here?) okay yeah perfect (I need to buy more because it's almost finish) (the link is in the description if you want to buy it) okay perfect, so we got just enough hopefully, glaze them up a little bit and (to be continued) so what happened you quit the job? (yeah I um....) what made you quit the job? (um I I didn't want to sell my soul) I wanted to do what I wanted to do, creatively, spiritually, things that fulfilled my life, music writing, art, uh taking care of kids was good for that, um) it sounds painful, we only have one it's painful (well I'll tell you I used to get paid to take care of other people's children, having your own is a whole 'nother story) so what happened after that? you quit the job and then what? did you get a different job or? how do you support yourself? (. o I've been um I've done so many other I've done, so many things I used to Nanny and then I was a swim teacher, I've I do Reiki and energy work for people, I play music, it's like I'm a mixture of things I've never been laser focused on one thing, so I like to learn about something, I have a lot of different skill sets a lot of things that I'm interested, in I've always been able to put them together so I can make ends meet, and still have time for my art and my creativity and also learning traveling, having new experiences, meeting people, that's what fills me up, surfing also and yes we have heard her play and sing, and I think you guys are going to be impressed we got to see if she's gonna be in the mood to do a show later (I've never had uh many complaints ) (Show Must Go On) definitely very nice music I was impressed what you did on Instagram too you did like 90 songs in 90 days (I did my quarantine project, I was uh stuck in Boca Del Toro, Panama during the quarantine and my mom challenged me to do, Post one song a day for three months wow, so it became 90 songs in 90 days, I had an iPhone 11 and a little Sennheiser memory mic, Bluetooth that I could clip to my shirt or the guitar strap yeah and it syncs the audio, so it opened up this whole palette of creativity, and we filmed all over boca's, I filmed we climbed trees I filmed out of caves I filmed on a shipwreck, on off of cliffs, on the beach, everywhere possible and the variety of the landscape and the songs were either covers or Originals, and the whole idea was to Showcase Mother Earth as the main character and um just how music... music can connect everyone
and, so that was one of the projects that I did, yeah) and I did check out that project and I was very impressed, I only got to watch a few of the videos, but I kept watching because it was like wow, we need to have this girl on board because we need some music, and that music was stunning so yeah I'll put a link if you guys want to check it out to our Instagram page all of those songs are still there, so you can go back and review it, it all happened during lockdown and that was how she passed lockdown, it's quite impressive (and put the like on everything) (so now I'm getting my I'm a little camera shy right now, and I'm getting back into the swing of things I've been on like a two-year Hiatus, I've been very much a Hermit) you camera shy? I don't think so thank you, so much guys, nice to see out of the windows again (wax on wax off) what did you see outside the plants will get more sun moms out doing the laundry (yeah I check the wind generator it working amazing) I know I love that thing (yeah look at) yeah if you guys haven't seen it yet, I've been doing my review on this wind generator, and it is phenomenal, so far I have to admit I am super impressed with this product I didn't think it was going to be possible to find a wind generator we could fit on the boat that I would that would actually contribute to our daily energy needs on a boat where we do everything electric, and this thing yeah just our first trip here they put in 4.7 kilowatt hours in 24 hours, I was stunned, I didn't think that was even possible and even yesterday after we got here we arrived and it was averaging you know 15 to 16 knots of wind the whole day and this thing logged two kilowatt hours into our power curve for that day yesterday, that was also amazing so that's just at anchor, I was very super impressed with that, so anyway yeah I'm sure you're going to be hearing more from me about this nature power product and it is a very very phenomenal wind generator for a boat, and it tracks the wind so well I was wondering how that fish tail was going to work, but it actually seems to work really well I didn't understand how it was gonna... if it's weathered out of the wind how is it going to push the vein back, but I guess that's what happens is when it does go out of the wind or the wind moves, it it generates lift on that side and actually pushes the tail of the generator back into the wind that's that's what it looks like to me anyway, but it does work, I can tell you that, it works very well even at Sea the thing was always tracking straight up wind all the time so, but Nature Power yeah good job this is a very good product for a sailboat that uses electricity like we do, and puts actually something we can use back into the batteries every single day well when of course when there's wind, but just like the solar panels they only work when they're Sun, but usually you have sun or wind, not always both today we're lucky we have both, so it's an exceptionally good day, but we're getting good power from that and the solar panels at the same time, so a very good day right here in Portobello, loving it! and on the outside of the boat we've got Sandra working on the dingy, you guys remember we had an issue with the dinghy last night that was kind of kind of stranded no we're getting an error, it's not a battery error it's just some stupid Salt error or something, yeah we're not going anywhere, the dinghy's having a hissy fit let's go see how it's going how are you making out? (well almost ready) got it? (take it out yeah, okay) perfect all right, good, yeah you guys remember we had an issue where it wouldn't start last night we couldn't get it to activate, it just kept giving us an error code, error code six I think it was which I looked up and it says it's some kind of a communication issue between the controller and the motor, so I've already reset the connections between the motor and the wire and the motor and the battery and everything else, still get the error code, so we figure it's got to be this connection underneath the controller so that's why we have to remove it which is just done with a couple of pieces of double-sided tape and I'll just uh hopefully reset it and then we'll test it again, so see how that works here in a second, just getting the old glue off (it's gonna take a little) yeah here's the other wire here that goes into the motor, so that's the one from the controller, I've already reset that and checked the connection and it's very good it's clean, no corrosion, now there is another cable in here, but it goes directly to the head of the motor and that's the one that comes from the battery system, so I'm not sure if that would be an issue, but of course to get at that one you have to take the whole motor head apart, which we're not prepared to do at this particular moment, so hopefully we can resolve it with this controller, you know there is our culprit cable right there, so unscrew just like so, and pull looks very good, there's definitely no corrosion no signs of water intrusion, all the posts are perfectly clean and sparkly all right well let's just try reseating it a couple of times just I find a few on and off it a couple of times just to freshen up any connection in case there is any you know invisible corrosion or something we just can't see, this at least just causes friction between the metal components and gives them more surface area to conduct again, in case that's the issue, but it doesn't look bad so I don't know if this is the problem or not but let's find out all right, let's turn it on so we would get this startup screen in this screen and then it would go, oh no more error okay it's working! okay, so if we put the key let's give it a test put the key on and forward it's definitely working! all right good news, so hopefully that's the only issue all right well I guess we'll put it back together then, so that's the only thing we can do under here but at least we know it's not the controller if it is the controller I always have a spare one of these also, I can get it out of spare parts but I don't think we need it, so it's hopefully just a bad connection, all right, so we're just going to put another strip of tape back down here another piece here and put it back into position but yeah you can see we got a little bit of dirt accumulated here over time, so we'll clean all that up first before we stick it back down (he looks good on camera) so I wonder how many of you have ever heard the legend of the Cristo Negro, or Black Christ, this is another piece of History right here in Portobello with its roots embedded deep in the 17th century Cristo negro was a wooden statue originally carved in Spain that was sent on a ship from Colombia to be displayed in the New World, The Legend has it the ship from Colombia got detained in Portobello due to a storm, this happened repeatedly every time they tried to leave the dock a storm would move in and the ship was stuck, the crew being very superstitious believed the problem was the Cristo Negro and they took the statue and dumped it in the ocean the next day the weather cleared and the ships sailed off, a fisherman found the statue and brought it to shore where it was originally put on display in a small church after Iglesia de San Felipe was built, the Statue was installed here here where it has remained ever since Cristo negro has developed such a huge religious following that every year there is a pilgrimage from all parts of Panama, some walking over 60 miles, but all walking the last mile on their hands and knees seeking blessings at The Shrine there's our new friend Art (yeah tell us) we just met Art, he's down here buying a boat (yes uh I'm buying a 54-500 that's at uh at Linton Bay Marina, it's my dream boat, I'm gonna stay here in Panama for a couple of months and then sail for Florida and eventually to my home in Fort Washington, New York) nice (spent six months a year there and six months...) on the boat doing whatever (now I'm going south) (so you've been following sophisticated lady for how long? you said) (seven or eight years, not sure how many and a source of inspiration to me to pursue this dream) oh that's excellent very nice to meet you sir! thanks for saying hi! yeah we'll see you around anyway we'll see over in Linton Bay we're going to be over there in the next couple of days, are you just visiting there are you staying on the boat once you buy it? (uh have to go home today) oh okay (but I'll be back) (cold weather) (it's 20 degrees) (and high winds and gale warnings) oh no best to stay here (it would be, but I've overstayed five or six days because I I really like to get the keys while I'm here and put a toothbrush on at least everything is slowing up, all these people are usually in a huge rush to get your money or whatever, I can't get the insurance company take the payment and send a binder) oh really (and other little details oh it's Christmas week you know people want that we're going to parties and stuff) I hope it works out you get it all looked afterwards! good to see you sir! (safe travels) you as well! (documenting Portobello town Ricardo sleeping, for lucky) it's amazing to see this tiny little town in its present form, so quiet, so peaceful so still, in such a stark contrast to what it was just a few centuries ago imagine being here back then when a normal day was guns blazing and the Thunder of cannons everywhere, ships sinking people screaming and running for their lives as the settlement Embraces its most recent cultures the biggest sounds you hear now are music, and of course that was music to Adrian's ears because she was more than curious to learn something about the local culture and its music (hi!) (hello!) (hi Richie!) just imagine what it must have been like to live here three-four hundred years ago with all these cannons in your backyard, knowing that they're here not for if somebody comes for you but when they come for you, that must have been a difficult thing to live with every day, just knowing that at some point they were gonna start to Fire and at the other end of them somebody's firing back, and as if that wasn't unnerving enough you've got a big flock of vultures that still live here just as a constant reminder that hey yeah we know somebody's gonna die
2023-02-20 00:24
