sports

Of course, the main event doesn't happen until the weekend of Palm Sunday, as it does every year. However, the Ocean-to-Ocean Race is only one of four events in the 2004 cayuco season. The first races will take place on February 15 off the Amador Causeway, starting and finishing at the Balboa Yacht Club and racing to the end of the causeway and back in between.Then on March 6 there will be the youngest of the events, the seven-kilometer Hotel Melia Regatta on Gatun Lake.

At the Diablo boat launch, where these pictures were taken, you will find kids and adults working out in the afternoons. Cayuco racing may be a local thing, one of the old Zonian contributions to isthmian culture that has survived and even thrived since the canal's final reversion at the end of 1999, but to its participants it's a serious sport, one at which a team does not win without plenty of practice.

In Panama we have soccer moms too. But if you are reading this from somewhere else, the odds are that you don't have cayuco moms like we do down here.

...and if you presume that what cayuco moms do is assist their sons' athletic pursuits, you'd be wrong nearly half the time.

John Husum, a veteran participant and one of the organizers of the cayuco racing scene, shows some novices a few strokes.

And then the boys take off to work on them.

Attention, all you maleantes out there: don't even THINK about it! The police are working out on their boat, the Expreso Comando, so unless you are an exceptional athlete you have very little chance of escaping the scene of a paddle-by shooting when they're hot on your tail.

It's a different set of muscles, but a very thorough workout.

Also in this section:
First cayuco race is February 15 at Amador
Outstanding talent in this year's junior baseball tournament

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