Pangas, fishing, safety

Varieties of things seem to happen when you are just hanging around on a boat for part of the day. The day starts with determining how get coffee into us while watching and listening to the pangas coming by the boat to cast their nets for bait fish to go out with their long lines later in the day. Sometimes the pangeros sing while they work and while their antics can be irritating to some it is a wonderful experience if you are open to it. These guys can handle their boats like they are extensions of themselves. Normally there are two or three of them per boat and when they are screaming through the anchorage going to or from the netting they are ready to cast a net or already cutting up the bait to put on the lines. They seem to work with a smile on their faces almost all the time. A panga is a well engineered craft with a thick fiberglass hull and typically has a 50 to 70 horse power Yamaha outboard motor on it. They are fast and, if the water taxi guys are any indication they can get up on a plane with a dozen people in them. They turn on a dime and the feeling of changing direction has got seem very much like a jet fighter banking under full “G” force. It is exhilarating!!

While Mexico does have a fleet of larger boats that fish further off shore I have concluded that Mexico is largely fed from the efforts of these more solitary fishermen. If you have a concern about the weather and you see a bunch of these guys heading for shore you are well advised to hunker down and prepare for a blow. A panga can move easily at 30 to 45 miles per hour (or so it seems to me) and can cross large bodies of water so long as they have enough fuel. We move at between 5 to 7 knots so we definitely watch for signs of panga flight!!



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Construction here in Barra de Navidad is still underway but at a snails pace compared to where they have the use of cranes and solid scaffolding. Recycling takes on a different meaning here as well. Combining the two is a sometimes colorful extension of the culture. I have no idea if there is a similar organization to the United States’ OSHA but I suspect it has a different slant on things if there is. The pictures are of things that you see pretty much everyday. A few innovations the U.S. insurance industry is extremely likely to be thankful have not made it into practice there. I do not say this to make fun of how things are done here, however. There is an underlying assumption of known risk that is just part of the system. Perhaps the legal system here is not as whiny as in the U.S. and if someone accepts that risk it is not second guessed as much as we do it. In any case, the bottom line of this is that things still get done and I have no statistical knowledge of the results of that.