Sail away, sail away, sail away

Chapter Four –South Pacific

On the way to Los Angeles, we made one stop to the island nation of Malta where the Anastasis was registered. Because Malta has more lenient rules, many ship owners used to register their ships there. We needed more lenient rules.

Malta is made up of several small islands located south of Italy. It features in one of Paul’s stories in the Bible when he was shipwrecked there. The native people were very kind in Paul’s account and we found them to be the same. One of my dad’s brothers had actually married a lady from Malta. He met her when he was in the British military. We got in contact with one of her relatives who ended up taking us all over the main island where we were anchored in the capitol of Valetta.

Valetta has a cool old fort from the Middle Ages which was built above some small cliffs. One day, some of us kids decided to cross over from the ship, anchored in the bay, to the cliffs to partake in our passion for jumping off high places into the water. Unfortunately, there were a lot of jellyfish out that day so we were hesitant to begin. But Samuel, who usually wore glasses, didn’t wear them when he was swimming. He couldn’t see the jellyfish so he was our guinea pig. He jumped and seemed to be all right and so it began. We got stung a little but not enough to stop the fun.

Luke was the son of the ship leader, Don Stephens. He was supposed to be taking a nap that day but when he saw what fun we were having, he decided to join us. Unfortunately for him, not only could he see us from the ship but everyone else could as well, including his parents, who were having some kind of reception on the deck. It wasn’t the best day Luke ever had.

From Malta, we sailed across the rest of the Mediterranean, through the Strait of Gibraltar and out into the Atlantic Ocean. We were fascinated by our accompaniment of dolphins and flying fish and waterspouts. We had a fun sport and feast day to celebrate our first sail. 

I had been stamp collecting for some time beginning in Hawaii but it was becoming tiresome. Under the influence of my father’s utilitarian regime, I decided to throw my stamp book out the porthole while we were sailing. It pains me to think of how much that collection might be worth now.

The ship had a small pool on one of the upper decks. It was about 15 by 15 foot in size and about 8 feet deep. It was a saltwater pool filled from the ocean. It could only be filled when we were sailing because the weight of the water would make the ship list (lean) if it wasn’t under way. It was particularly fun to swim at night, especially as we were sailing through the Panama Canal.

The Panama Canal is a 51-mile ship canal through the Isthmus of Panama connecting the Caribbean Sea to the Pacific Ocean. It was built to provide a shorter passage for ships to get from the Atlantic to the Pacific without having to go all the way around the tip of South America through the very dangerous Strait of Magellan. It was one of the largest and most difficult engineering projects ever undertaken and it took 34 years to complete.

The Canal is higher than the bodies of water on either side so each end of the Canal begins with a series of locks. On the Caribbean side there are three locks to get into the Canal. A ship is pulled into the lowest lock, the lock is closed, water is let in until the ship rises to the level of the next higher lock. The next lock is opened, the ship is pulled into the next lock and the process is repeated until the ship reaches the Canal level.

The actual Canal is a series of man-made lakes, channels and waterways which the ship sails through. There is a single lock descending to another short lake, taking the ship to two more locks descending to the Pacific. In the descending locks, the ship is pulled in and the water is let out until the ship descends to the level of the next lowest lock and so on until the ship emerges into the Pacific. 

Our transversal of the Canal was fascinating. Unfortunately, most of it was at night but we got to watch as we rose up the locks and sailed though some of the channels and lakes. When you sail on a ship, land is usually not very close. What made swimming in the pool in the dark so fun was the trees we were passing close by on the side of the canal.


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