Feb 10, 1997-Pangas
Pangas
I don't know why but as I just watched a Panga come into the bay, driver standing motionless in the stern, looking like I was seeing it through a telephoto lens as it came in cutting the chop and with spray flying but not seeming to get any closer, I felt inspired to write to you about the Panga boats of Mexico.
Pangas
If there is any thing ubiquitous in Mexico it is the Pangas. They are everywhere, the universal Mexican work boat. Picture them: A twenty foot long, low, narrow, hard chined open fiberglass boat, universally painted white. They are flat sided and flat-bottomed, with a high, flared, pointed bow and a square transom. They are universally driven by a big a outboard motor manually started and steered by a tiller. These boats seem so well suited to their use that it is hard to imagine any other craft which could serve so well.
Pangas usually have a Spanish name crudely painted on the bow, like Chivato, or Irena, and usually blue painted inside. Pangas have no cabin or interior, just a long, lean, open boat with two or three seat thwarts across them and a distinct lack of decoration or frills. The gunnel is just fiberglass curled down over the side, and the bow always rides high and proud, above the waves.
With their flat bottoms, these boats can only achieve a reasonable ride in rough water by their length and by the fact that the driver and passengers ride at the far rear. While the bow may bounce up with the waves, the rear remains implacable, the pivot point for the bow's motion, and the back of the boat is the platform for people.
We've seen these pangas everywhere.
We've ridden in them as ferry boats.
We've bought fish from their drivers at the side of WINGS, and we saw them run up the beach out of the breakers at Yelapa, motors tilted and propellers racing in the air.
We saw the Mexican Navy patrolling in them and saw them hanging from the sides of the most modern Mexican Navy ships as tenders. They are in every little town and fish camp, just pulled up on the beach or hanging off of a anchor right off the shore. We saw a pair of them heading south down the middle of the Sea of Cortez, late in a sunny afternoon, 100 miles from the nearest town, driving into a steep chop with the bows rising and falling, throwing spray thirty yards with a pounding you could hear half a mile away, but never wavering from their courses, seemingly on an eternal journey.
In every Panga there is the Mexican driver, standing at the back just ahead of the motor, his left hand on the motor handle, facing forward, towards the sea ahead, immobile, going onward.
Often there is just one person, but just as often there are two or three people, frequently they are all standing, like statues, in the back of the pangas. I wonder where they are going. Who are these men? They remind me of the afterguard on a racing sailboat, they just stand there in command, riding the vessel as it goes on it's way, patiently waiting for Godot or something.
They have big plastic jugs, which look like milk bottles or something, for gasoline, with a simple hose out the top to feed the fuel to the motors, and often the owner has stretched a T-shirt over the motor to protect it from the sun. For anchors they have a big rusty hook welded out of re-bar and the only lines I've seen them use are yellow polyethylene.
I have the highest regard for the Mexican Panga drivers. They live in these boats and they are out in all conditions, facing all that the sea can deliver, with an almost fatalistic acceptance of it all, no, it is more like a studied disregard; the conditions just have to be dealt with, not to be made a big deal out of.
The panga drivers are masters of maneuvering too. I heard that they would pile into our side and scratch our paint, and I worried about that, but never, never, have they even come close to bumping into us, even when the driver is trying to stay along side trying to sell us fish or lobsters in a running sea, or making change after I bought some, and he is still keeping a running chatter in mixed Spanish and English and managing to keep his 85hp merc's speed exactly adjusted to WINGS' speed.
They are master boatmen plus they have been universally friendly. They always wave as they pass, and they are polite when you talk to them, and they are absolutely honest, in our experience.
For each of them there is a family back ashore. In Aqua Verde we watched as the Pangas returned. The kids on the beach watched each panga as it pulled in, and looked at each fisherman's catch, but when their father or brother came around the point they cavorted joyously and then were absolutely focused as that boat drew nearer and finally came in. They caught lines, waded into the water to steady the sides and took ashore the catch, and did what ever they could to be part of the scene, obviously adoring the returning fisherman.
Panga Fishermen
It was really the Mexico we came to see, and we love them all.
So when you come to Mexico and you see a sunburned Mexican zoom up alongside in his Panga to offer you taxi service, treat him with respect and remember, these are the seamen of Mexico; they truly represent the best of the Mexican people and the tradition of the sea.
Fred & Judy, SV WINGS, Mexico
I don't know why but as I just watched a Panga come into the bay, driver standing motionless in the stern, looking like I was seeing it through a telephoto lens as it came in cutting the chop and with spray flying but not seeming to get any closer, I felt inspired to write to you about the Panga boats of Mexico.
Pangas
If there is any thing ubiquitous in Mexico it is the Pangas. They are everywhere, the universal Mexican work boat. Picture them: A twenty foot long, low, narrow, hard chined open fiberglass boat, universally painted white. They are flat sided and flat-bottomed, with a high, flared, pointed bow and a square transom. They are universally driven by a big a outboard motor manually started and steered by a tiller. These boats seem so well suited to their use that it is hard to imagine any other craft which could serve so well.
Pangas usually have a Spanish name crudely painted on the bow, like Chivato, or Irena, and usually blue painted inside. Pangas have no cabin or interior, just a long, lean, open boat with two or three seat thwarts across them and a distinct lack of decoration or frills. The gunnel is just fiberglass curled down over the side, and the bow always rides high and proud, above the waves.
With their flat bottoms, these boats can only achieve a reasonable ride in rough water by their length and by the fact that the driver and passengers ride at the far rear. While the bow may bounce up with the waves, the rear remains implacable, the pivot point for the bow's motion, and the back of the boat is the platform for people.
We've seen these pangas everywhere.
We've ridden in them as ferry boats.
We've bought fish from their drivers at the side of WINGS, and we saw them run up the beach out of the breakers at Yelapa, motors tilted and propellers racing in the air.
We saw the Mexican Navy patrolling in them and saw them hanging from the sides of the most modern Mexican Navy ships as tenders. They are in every little town and fish camp, just pulled up on the beach or hanging off of a anchor right off the shore. We saw a pair of them heading south down the middle of the Sea of Cortez, late in a sunny afternoon, 100 miles from the nearest town, driving into a steep chop with the bows rising and falling, throwing spray thirty yards with a pounding you could hear half a mile away, but never wavering from their courses, seemingly on an eternal journey.
In every Panga there is the Mexican driver, standing at the back just ahead of the motor, his left hand on the motor handle, facing forward, towards the sea ahead, immobile, going onward.
Often there is just one person, but just as often there are two or three people, frequently they are all standing, like statues, in the back of the pangas. I wonder where they are going. Who are these men? They remind me of the afterguard on a racing sailboat, they just stand there in command, riding the vessel as it goes on it's way, patiently waiting for Godot or something.
They have big plastic jugs, which look like milk bottles or something, for gasoline, with a simple hose out the top to feed the fuel to the motors, and often the owner has stretched a T-shirt over the motor to protect it from the sun. For anchors they have a big rusty hook welded out of re-bar and the only lines I've seen them use are yellow polyethylene.
I have the highest regard for the Mexican Panga drivers. They live in these boats and they are out in all conditions, facing all that the sea can deliver, with an almost fatalistic acceptance of it all, no, it is more like a studied disregard; the conditions just have to be dealt with, not to be made a big deal out of.
The panga drivers are masters of maneuvering too. I heard that they would pile into our side and scratch our paint, and I worried about that, but never, never, have they even come close to bumping into us, even when the driver is trying to stay along side trying to sell us fish or lobsters in a running sea, or making change after I bought some, and he is still keeping a running chatter in mixed Spanish and English and managing to keep his 85hp merc's speed exactly adjusted to WINGS' speed.
They are master boatmen plus they have been universally friendly. They always wave as they pass, and they are polite when you talk to them, and they are absolutely honest, in our experience.
For each of them there is a family back ashore. In Aqua Verde we watched as the Pangas returned. The kids on the beach watched each panga as it pulled in, and looked at each fisherman's catch, but when their father or brother came around the point they cavorted joyously and then were absolutely focused as that boat drew nearer and finally came in. They caught lines, waded into the water to steady the sides and took ashore the catch, and did what ever they could to be part of the scene, obviously adoring the returning fisherman.
Panga Fishermen
It was really the Mexico we came to see, and we love them all.
So when you come to Mexico and you see a sunburned Mexican zoom up alongside in his Panga to offer you taxi service, treat him with respect and remember, these are the seamen of Mexico; they truly represent the best of the Mexican people and the tradition of the sea.
Fred & Judy, SV WINGS, Mexico
posted by wingssail at 2:31 AM
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