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Records broken in season's first cayuco race
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Chava takes the inside track across the finish line, in record time

Records shattered in cayuco season opener

photos and story by Eric Jackson

Long before the boats made their way back to the finish line at the Balboa Yacht Club, we knew that this year's Balboa Yacht Club Regatta would be one for the record books.

"This is notable," said race official Sue Stabler. "I remember when we thought that 50 boats in the ocean-to-ocean race was a big deal. Now the ocean-to-ocean race is in the 80s." And after some confusion caused by a mistaken double entry and a few scratches, it was determined that there were a record 53 boats in this, the seventh race from the yacht club to the end of the Amador Causeway and back.

The original cayuco event, the annual race from Cristobal to Diablo, is more than a half-century old and now draws international participation. Over the years first the Gamboa Regatta, a series of sprints, and then the Balboa Yacht Club Regatta were added, and now there is also the Atlantic Cup in Gatun Lake, sponsored by the Hotel Melia.

The Balboa event has taken on various second names, sometimes of a corporate sponsor. This year it was officially the Enrique Kochman Cup, in honor of the oldest living founding member of the Balboa Yacht Club. Kochman found a shady spot near the finish line to sit down and enjoy the action.

                                                      Enrique Kochman

In less than an hour the boats started to come back. As in years past there were two starts, first the teenagers in the trophy class and then the older participants in the open category, with the faster crews in the latter finishing among the also-rans of the former.

Chava got back to the yacht club in first place, almost half a minute ahead of Fast2Rass, and at 52 minutes and 13 seconds in the male trophy category the first record of the day to fall came crashing down. Fast2Rass was second at 52:32 and No Slack at 53:10.

When the trophy boats of the mixed category started coming in, another record fell. It was Anacardium at an unprecedented 56:06, followed by Aptus at 56:30 and Rapid Transit at 57:44.

The leading female trophy boats were also faster than ever, with Catalina setting a new record at 1:00:19, followed by Jungle Crew at 1:02:34 and Banana Channel at 1:04:03.

Now the best open category boats were mixing in with the youngsters at the finish line, so it was only in post-race retrospect that it was realized that the men of Extreme Effort had made it to the end of the causeway and back in the fastest time ever, 52:01, way ahead of Arpia (59:10) and Barracuda (1:03:14). That was the last of the records to be set for the day.

This year the National Police boat, Expreso Commando, had a policewoman on the crew and thus ran in the open mixed category, which it won with a time of 54:38. Runners up in that division were Bruised Reed (1:03:59) and Satisfaction (1:04:06). In the open women's category it was Deja Vu BLITZ at 1:06:11, followed by HudTaRoCo (1:09:02) and Meracho (1:12:01). The final boat to straggle in was Coiba.

The next event in Panama's cayuco racing season will be the Atlantic Cup, on February 10 in the waters adjacent to the beautiful Hotel Melia into which the former US Army School of the Americas has been converted. The Gamboa sprints will take place in the Chagres River in front of the Gamboa Rainforest Resort on March 10 and the Ocean-to-Ocean Race will take place March 30 through April 1, the weekend before Easter as always.

Cayuco racing started out as a Zonian pastime sponsored by the Boy Scouts of America but is now a Panamanian tradition organized primarily in Spanish by the Club de Remo de Balboa (Balboa Paddle Club, for those of you who are unilingual). The big three-day race through the Panama Canal attracts crews from several different countries and ever more foreign tourists as well as Zonians from the diaspora on their pilgrimages to see how things have gone in the old country.

Despite the existence of several nearby competing marinas, the Balboa Yacht Club seemed to have a lot more boats anchored out front than usual, but so far the bumper crop of yachties has not yet translated into international crews competing in the race to the end of the causeway and back. That may reflect the reality of what cayuco racing has become for the young men of the Chava and other leading crews: it's an institution whose organizational meetings begin while the heavy rains are falling in October, but by then those who hope to win will have been in training for many months. This is a serious sport now.