Page 144 - Michael Frost-Voyages to Maturity-23531.indd

It was a two-day voyage to Acapulco, but the time was not entirely wasted;
the Captain’s cocktail party brought forth a rather charming Sally, small but
perfect, again hailing from Los Angeles. I dallied a bit with her, but after a while
considered her too limited an intellect, my critical faculties now being very well
honed, or so I stupidly thought (she liked Coke as well, this being to me too much
a sign of advanced naivety; it was an immediate signal of unsuitability).

Acapulco constituted an anchorage, with the tendering being carried out by local
boats. Therefore, there was not a great deal for us to do, and a bunch of us, radio
officers, engineers, deck cadets and FAPs put together a smorgasbord of shipboard
delights and took a lifeboat tour of the Bay and its beaches. It would have been difficult
for us to say anything other than that this was a perfect day, with great food, a hot sun
with cooling breezes, good beer and a bevy of comfortable young ladies. Particularly
of note was, of course, the fact that we were being paid for this ‘work’. The evening I
designed to top the entertainment by having Sally up to my cabin for a drink, but for
some unknown reason after half an hour or so of mostly talk, she suddenly recalled a
pressing engagement elsewhere on the ship. Such was my life.

July 17th found us anchored in Balboa, the southern end of the Panama Canal
(curiously, when one traverses the Canal from West to East, topology dictates
that one is actually steaming East to West). Far more complex a canal than Suez,
this was about half its length and included five or six locks. I had been through
locks before (particularly in the London Royal Docks) but never witnessed
anything quite as efficient as the system employed in Panama. Firstly, they were
very big locks, more than capable of handling big ships such as Oriana, secondly,
there was no fiddling about with ropes and ship’s winches, the locomotion being
supplied by tractors (eight or ten of them, and called Mules) that simply pulled
one through without any risk of scratching the corn-coloured hull paintwork,
and, thirdly, once inside the lock, the gates quickly closed and in just a few
minutes the water level was up or down as the case demanded (the ship was
actually traversing sub-tropical lakes high within the isthmus’ mountain range;
the backbone of Panama). The use of time was obviously a significant component
of the operation, for many ships were waiting at each terminal. The efficiency was
mind-numbing in comparison with every other lock that I had experienced.

But my mind was not entirely on the job. I had earlier come across two
girls who were on their first overseas trip to Europe, Scandinavia in particular.
Named Karen and Vicki, they came from Vancouver, were good-looking in an
unostentatious way, were elegant in a manner that Americans were not (at least
in my experience) and mature (which is to say I was two years younger than they
were). Norway was a primary destination (Karen being of that parentage) and
England was to be a passing pleasure. They gave absolutely no evidence of interest
in men, a feature that, in my competitive mind, made them doubly attractive.
Enjoyment of the Canal transit was much enhanced.

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