I think the last time I posted anything I was still over in Prickly bay. That was a bit over a week ago I think, time has so little meaning to me anymore. Since then I have sailed back over to Egmount, where I am now, to sit out the rolling storms and rough weather of the past little while. The good news is, nothing too strong hit us, and it looks like hurricane season is mostly over.

 

 

Sailing to Safe Harbour

I hoisted my anchor without incident and got WildChild underway alone, as usual. I think about how much the very idea of solo sailing used to terrify me just two years ago, and now look at me go…  great personal growth and courage. You can CLICK HERE to watch the video of that sporty sail. I started out in super calm conditions, so made a tactical error and decided to fly full main. Later I got hit by a storm offshore and got overpowered by winds into the sporty range.  What can I say… even I still make mistakes…. but I own up to them.

 

 

WildChild is an amazing and tough girl, she took the beating and her amazing Captain did everything necessary to take the strain off her.  While the winds were over 20 knots I luffed the main just a little bit, brought in the genny down to 60%, and eased off from close hauled to close reach for a bit. I still wanted to get upwind, but figured I had time enough to lengthen the tac and still make it in fine.

So many old people buy sailboats and never really bother to learn how to sail properly. I have to say, being sailing smart and experienced has saved my ass many a time.

Last week a post went around on FaceBook and a sailor friend forwarded it to me. It seems this old couple in their 70’s (yes that freakin old) bought a sailboat and thought hey… we are spoiled rich boomers… we have money… how hard can this sailing thing be. I have met many French sailors with this attitude too, its why so many sailing accidents involve french yachts. Well… it seems… they were taking their yacht down the west coast of the USA, heading to California last week.

The conditions on the ocean got a little bit sporty, similar to my solo sail at around the same time, but they had much stronger tides and bigger waves to contend with. All-in-all not very difficult or dangerous conditions but sporty for sure. It required skill and sailing experience to contend with.

 

 

Well… what is now apparent… is they had neither. Sailing is not as easy as rich old boomers think it is. It requires physical strength and experience and knowledge they apparently lacked…. because if they had these things they would not have died wrecking their yacht.

Non-sailors cannot tell by looking at the pictures… but this must have been a ketch, two masted yacht, notice the back mast is completely gone. So maybe they rolled her, old people are obsessed with shallow draft boats for some reason, or maybe they were sailing jib and jigger and overpowered and snapped the mizzen mast off. We do not know exactly how the disaster unfolded and can only speculate.

I am not sure if they were trying to seek safe harbour in the storm but they should have headed out to sea until it passes. The best thing to do in rough conditions is stay away from shallow water or land.

Also the article says Grandma was found near the dinghy washed up on shore dead. Even if you ground a yacht in the dark and are rubbing on the coral or sand, its  best to stay with the vessel until daybreak or conditions subside. As long as the vessel is still floating stay with yer ship. It appears Grandpa fell out or got hurt, and Grandma went for help alone and died trying…. cause you know… trying to land a dinghy in big breaking surf in the dark is a horrible idea for anyone, never mind a 70 year old weak grandma.

Clearly… if they just stayed with the boat they would have lived.

Unwise to leave the yacht

I talk about this stuff all the time out here. I am a real, out in the big blue ocean, sailing Captain, I get spanked all the time by mean old mother nature. The ocean is not a civilized place, its brutal and primal. Every Captain knows that there but by the grace of god (and a little skill on my part) go I. Bad shit can happen to any of us out here. We all know it just takes 3 small mistakes for things to go wrong and ten bad seconds to land in a world of shit fast.

Recent Grenada sailor news

I learned that just yesterday a CAT around the corner from me in Secret Harbour was calling out a mayday from the anchorage there. The Coast guard of course did not hear it and local sailors had to relay it.

 

 

I do not know the details of how the old people managed to sink their CAT at anchor. It is an impressive feat because CAT’s have two hulls and can generally stay afloat even if one hull goes most of the way down. To sink both hulls, at anchor, in calm conditions in a protected bay… takes real effort. Extreme incompetence.

I do not ever hide the fact I sail afraid a lot. I have much fear out here solo sailing because I know just how deceiving things can be. I might make it look easy… but I am always fully cognizant of how easily and how fast things can go wrong. I see so many ignorant old boomers out here who are fully deluded into their own illusion of invincibility. I can only shake my head at their ignorance, smile and nod at the morons.

 

Arrival in Egmount

If you watch the video you can see I safely made my way into Egmount bay last week and found a nice place to anchor my yacht in the back corner. Now that I had local knowledge and knew the charts were wrong about depths in here, plus I had an idea where it was safe to anchor, I chose to anchor in the back corner. Further behind me there was this blue trawler power boat cruiser closer in towards the bridge.

 

 

I know that my penchant for blasting my music on deck at sunset might not please everyone around me so I try to keep my distance from other yachts. I also have a wild impulse after sunset for naked dancing on my bow, which has started again as the heat from the peak of summer subsides. I am always naked when the temperature inside my boat is over 30 deg C.

My thinking is… that even in daylight… if other boats are more than 100 meters away they really cannot see much detail if they catch a glimpse of me naked. So at night, under the faint blue steaming light half way up my mast, I figure the neighbours cannot really see any details of my naked night time dancing sprees.

What I did not know, my first day in here, was that the old boomers on that blue yacht behind me were cigarette smoking alcoholics. Some human beings are more prone to raw hedonistic impulses, live a life of doing what feels good, and they usually end up as chain smokin drinkers, they think this is the meaning of life.

 

 

That first night in here, I had a bit of wind after sunset and the heat abated a little bit after dark. I was cranking the tunes for sunset while sitting naked on my deck to cool off. After a few songs I transitioned up to my little dance studio on the bow… changed the music to dance tunes… and blissed out. I am the center of the universe and do not care in that moment about the existence of the rest of the planet. It is a spiritual time between me and the stars.

As I was dancing away naked and free, wild like an animal, and feral as can be, I began to hear some drunken shouting in the darkness. It was feint at first and I ignored it. I took a short dancing break between songs, as I was soaked in sweat again, and heard the shouting was coming from this blue trawler behind me.

The drunk alcoholics had gotten in a drunken argument, as drunks tend to do. I could hear the old lady screaming occasionally with slurred words, things like “…YOU ARE SUCH AN ASSHOLE..” OR “… YOU ARE SO MEAN YOU ASSHOLE…” and she descended into tears. Clearly Grandma was pissed off with Grandpa.

None of this was any of my business and honestly I didn’t care at all. The next fun dance song came on and I stood up naked under the blue light and continued to dance my heart out. Grandma’s drunken rage seemed to be escalating in the background.

Not my monkey not my circus

They left first thing the next morning before I woke up….!

ha ha ha…. so funny….  whoops… maybe I had an audience peeping on me in the darkness last night huh. Maybe Grandpa loved the free show and Grandma hated him for watching.

Good thing Teddy Bear assures me I am the center of the universe and I don’t have to care about other people anymore.

🙂

 

Second Spray

Remember a few blogs ago, when I first found this place… and that old man came up to me and told me to move “… because I was ruining his view…“? What has amazed me a little bit upon my second return here is that all the same boats were still here and none of the old people moved an inch.

I knew coming in, when I spotted my nemesis on Second Spray that I did not like those old boomers and specifically anchored as far away from them as possible.

 

 

Well the next day, several new yachts came in here for protection from the coming strong winds. I watched with glee as this half million dollar motor CAT plunked its anchor down right beside Second Spray. They were anchored much closer to the snotty boomers than I was two weeks ago. I waited for the grumpy selfish old boomer from Second Spray to launch his dinghy and tell the rich people to move and “not block his view” just as he had done to me previously.

I waited and waited…

Shockingly… no such event occurred.

Now why do you suppose two weeks previously he felt it okay to come and push the young lady around but did not feel empowered to push the rich old people around for parking even CLOSER to him…?

Is this a little bit of a double standard I detect here?

I am not sure why old people often feel entitled to push me around. Why do old people think they have a right to dominate and push around young people? Behaviour they would not dare force upon their peers. Is it because they think their age makes them superior to me…  the little girl.  Why do they feel superior to younger people?  

When people think they can push me around…

it always goes badly for them…

The new and improved Wild Captain Lexi is one tough chic and no longer eats shit from anybody. I used to be easy to push around… but not anymore. There is nothing about you short of a gun or violence that will enable you to push me around people. And if you do bring a gun or violence… I will hunt you down eventually.

A Wild Child is unconformed and uncontrollable

You have been warned

 

Covid Restrictions

I have only shared with you guys very little of how hard the Covid house arrest hit me a month ago. It was very unfortunate timing for me personally. I got thru it with prayers and angels as usual.

 

 

I do understand that Covid is a horrible thing, really… China should be ashamed for unleashing this upon all of us. They owe us all retribution payments, but this is a political thing beyond my purview. The lockdowns for the last month have been hard for me to deal with, but I did survive it.

What was interesting is that this tiny island with 112,000 people on it had only like 12 Covid deaths up to the end of August and now has 170 deaths a month later. Covid hit the old age homes here pretty hard as it has everywhere. That was a lot of deaths in a short time for the dirt dwellers, I understand why they clamped down so hard.

The exciting news is… last weekend was the last total lockdown weekend. This weekend we are allowed to move again….    YAY….

Remember I warned you before about the new word “BIOSECURITY” as the death of freedom…. well here it is in Grenada now. Things have begun to open back up but only for the “fully Vaccinated people“. Yep the rights of 80,000 people here have been permanently swept away that fast. Only the “fully Vaccinated” people may work or go to restaurants or return to freedom with their Covid passport.

The rest of you… well fuck you… stay home without a job and wait to die…. or submit and do as you are told. No freedom of choice over your body anymore.

The idiocy is …. even fully vaccinated people can get… carry… transmit…  and get very sick from Covid…  they are only slightly less contagious carriers of the illness. Vaccination does not prevent you from spreading Covid. People who have had Covid and recovered are actually better off with their natural immunity but their rights are denied in favour of the jab.

Science and logic and reason were the first casualties of Covid.

Whatever…  I am vaccinated already…. because without it you cannot change islands.

Not my Circus

We can move around again a little more. We still cannot socialize or visit the homes of other people, limited return of limited freedoms… (big surprise there huh). The chicken wing marina is back to doing Wednesday night cheap (perfect) chicken wings again. So I think tomorrow I will lift my anchor and move back to Prickly bay to get those wonderful wings on Wednesday.

Also I ran out of milk yesterday. So Tuesday I will catch the shopping bus and try to find milk again. There is not much chance of me finding milk again… but it’s worth a try.

 

Cruising Life

I had told you that I have hired a yacht broker to sell WildChild for me, I wanna go home. So for the last week here I have been doing a photoshoot of WildChild. The broker said to take pictures of her that do not look personal. That look like nobody lives in here. A tall order for sure. If a home is not supposed to look personal… what else should feel personal…?

So I did as she asked and spent every morning moving my stuff out of a spot, cleaning it up all shiny like and taking pictures. Then I would move all my stuff back into place and repeat the process for the other area.

 

 

I am not entirely sure what possessed me… but I decided to get out my pretty pink label maker and go hog wild with it. It makes me happy and makes me smile so why not. I am constantly getting crew onboard and the biggest part of their training is just learning the language of sailing and what things are called. This will make things easier for future crew.

There are small things about cruising life on the ocean that you dirt dwellers would never think about.

One of them is that my nails have gone soft. I cannot grow my nails long anymore because due to the salty ocean air and water my nail beds are soft. When I was in Canada for a short break last hurricane season my nails went hard and grew long and strong right away. Within a month of returning to the ocean they went back to being soft and weak again.

Another small part is the skin on the bottom of my feet. I generally take very good care of my feet. I scrub them often with a  pumice stone and keep the dead skin under control. On the salty ocean, with my feet getting wet everyday, that dead skin on the bottom of my feet grows worse than ever. Like the bottoms of my feet are always rotting away. I need to pumice my feet like every week or more now. I used to be able to do it once a month on land.

Another small thing you dirt dwellers do not think about when buying a boat, is that the salt water stinks. The sink drains, which are drain pipes directly connected to the salty ocean, are sitting with salt water in them all the time. This salty drain water stinks up the boat.

 

A problem on cruising yachts is that food particles and cooking oil and grease tend to float on the salt water in the drains. This floating mass inside your sink drains becomes the foulest smelling zoogeal mass imaginable. When you wash your dishes the little food bits just get stuck floating in there.

I used to just let my drains sit over night full of vinegar to kill off the bacterial mass and try to keep the smell down. I discovered these little stainless steel sink drain screens and installed them over a month ago. What a difference. I have been amazed at how much food I was actually putting down the drains. I clean these everyday but now the sink drain smells are waaay down. It works.

Clever solution to a common cruiser problem.

 

I will extol the virtues of a keel stepped mast any day of the week if you ask. It is structurally smarter and better from an engineering point of view for sure. The problem that comes with it, for all of us, is that over time…. as the mast sways around and the decks shift… eventually you get water leakage around your mast seals.

I had rebuilt my mast boot a few months ago… and it helped a little bit. I was still getting water leaking down from my ceiling around my mast during heavy rains though. It puzzled me for a while. As I was studying the problems though… I realized my deck around the mast had sank a little bit. This warping had allowed tiny cracks to form in the seals to the deck fittings above.

I thought about this problem for a while. It would be a lot of work to take the ceiling down to remove all the deck fittings around the mast and rebed them. My clever solution was to go up top… clean it up, remove all 5200 that I could… and pour fiberglass resin around the base of the mast plate and deck fittings. Being almost as viscous as water it also leaked into every crevice and crack but then hardened. Thus sealing up everything in a simple procedure.

A little Gel coat paint to protect it and voila… mast re-sealed water tight again. Problem solved easier and better than the traditional way.

Engineers… such smart squishy sexy brains huh…  🙂

 

How do we Define Safe…?

A few blogs ago I had mentioned I was worried about my safety being alone out here. I was assured do not worry at all… it’s perfectly safe out here. No crime against cruisers at all. I felt better.

 

 

Last week, as the Covid restrictions lifted a little bit, I decided to go to shore and walk over to find LaPhare Bleu marina by road. My understanding was it was a short walk from here just up over over yonder hill. I needed some exercise and wanted an excuse to get off the boat after a week of isolation.

I had turned on my google maps and was walking along the road it told me would lead to the marina. This silver SUV passed me very slowly with a local man staring at me hard. It made me feel very uncomfortable but what could I do? I waved a friendly hello, put my head down and kept walking.

The SUV goes up over that hill in the background, turns around out of my sight and comes back towards me a few minutes later. The guy slows down as he approaches me head on and stops beside me, window down. He wants my attention.

The local guy starts chatting me up in a friendly way. I have no idea the bad man has found me and my danger radar does not go off. Predators are good at hiding behind veils of niceties.

 

 

At first he is just feeling me out, what’s my name, where am I from..? that kind of thing.  I get the impression he wants to hit on me at first. I am uninterested but this is the first human being I have spoken to in a week. He also kind of has me captive, there is no way for me to avoid him.

Then the conversation turns to… I can sell you a dinghy engine real cheap. Do you need a dinghy, I can get you a good dinghy real cheap. I get a nervous feeling, oh fuck, I just told him I am alone on a boat out in the bay. My dinghy is locked to a thin mangrove branch and is out of my sight. I am sure he knows where cruisers in this bay put their dinghies in the mangroves out of sight of witnesses. Fuck the guy is going to steal my dinghy. He was probing me for useful information to his criminal mind.

I did not catch on in time…

I change the subject. I am pretty sure the Marina I want to go to is just up and over that hill but I have never been here before. So I innocently ask him, “hey… do you know if I can get to LaPhare Bleu marina by this road?… is it over that hill..?” I ask innocently already having a fair idea what the answer is.

“oooh nooo… you can’t get there that way…” he tells me. “no no no… you have to go back and all the way around the mountain to get there..” he states matter of factly. He then begins telling me that if I have a drivers license he can rent me a car real cheap for the day. “how much money do you have on you…?” he probes.

By now my defenses are up. I have clued in that the criminal is trying to hustle money out of the white chic out here alone. The wolf has found his sheep to prey upon. I look around for the nearest place I can run to if he tries to get out of his car. I am fenced in with security fences on both sides, I am in an alley with no escape.

I realize that just my luck the first human being I encounter or speak to in a week is a criminal up to no good. I say “well.. have a nice day… ” and I just walk off. I head away from where my dinghy is hidden and towards where I am pretty sure the marina is, as was my plan.

The marina was 500 meters away and he must have known that. He deliberately was lying to me. He drives off towards my unprotected dinghy. I admit, I was praying my dinghy would still be there when I got back.

This incident got me worried again. When I got home later I looked up the crime stats for Grenada on CSSN. I was curious. I was reassured recently about how safe Grenada is for cruisers. So was this just a freak encounter?

Imagine my surprise when I find like a dozen crimes against cruisers just this year alone here in Grenada.

 

 

Sure there have been no violent crimes, nobody stabbed or beaten, but that is small consolation. Read thru some of these… the local bad men snuck up to boats in the dark and robbed them while the cruisers were sleeping onboard…! I am a girl who sleeps naked and alone on an open boat in these same bays. I have no way to lock myself in. The very idea that local criminals are sneaking around our boats at night looking to board us and rob us in the darkness does not  feel safe  to me.

How exactly did that other cruiser define “don’t worry Grenada is totally safe..”  ?   What is her definition of safe?  She is not sleeping alone on an open boat knowing there are many criminals circling around her at night with bad illegal intentions on their minds.

I talk about it all the time, the difference between safe and unsafe among people is often defined by intentions. We cannot see the intentions inside other people’s minds so we hope  they do not have bad intentions, many people need  to assume such. Now knowing that many local men with bad intentions in their heads are around me… I feel much less safe.

I got lucky that guy in the car decided not to steal my dinghy or hurt or rob me.

LUCKY... is not the same as safe

 

Define Hot

It always just astonishes me and amazes me when I hear the official weather forecasts for the temperatures here in Grenada. The temperatures they tell the tourists…   BECAUSE… the recorded temperatures inside my boat are NEVER that cool.  Where the heck do they get this official temperature reading from?

 

 

This is for today. Look at what the official temperature says for St. Georges and what I am actually experiencing on the boat. They just are never the same.

I have been wondering about this difference lately.

I was once on a bus ride thru the tropical jungle mountains of Grenada a few years ago. I admit… it was in January and it was actually a nice comfortable temperature up there, I had to wear a shirt for warmth.

I think the difference is elevation and wind plus the distance from the ocean.

 

 

I am sure there are rich old boomers here living in these big mansions at the tops of these hills around me that would say “ohh… poppycock that little girl is exaggerating the heat… it’s not nearly so bad in Grenada..” as they sip their margaritas beside their pools in the hill tops.

What I realized is that the ocean is now very warm. How can they say the air temp will be a low of 26 degC when I live on top of an ocean that is a steady 33 degC..? At night as the air temp goes down the heat and humidity rises up out of the ocean and sits for about ten feet above the water’s surface like an invisible fog.

 

 

Those of us that live in that ten feet of elevation above sea level are having a different experience than those that live 100 meters above the ocean on hill tops. Where… I suspect… the government’s official weather station lives in St. Georges.

 

Visa Renewal

I have almost been here three months now. It will be time for me to go and figure out how to renew my VISA for another 3 months this week. The good news… keeping an eye on the ocean forecasts… is that it seems like hurricane season is probably over now.  The ocean is disorganized right now. The highs and lows are spread out all over and destructively interfering with each other. This is good for us because hurricanes require organization to form.

So mostly the danger has passed now.

 

I ran out of milk yesterday. I am running low on veg. I think tomorrow I will sail around to prickly bay. Visit my boat parents and catch a shopping bus Tuesday. Wednesday get chicken wings at the marina. Then Thursday I will probably sail around to St. Georges again.

I am told… and this is not my stupidity… that I need to go to the customs and immigration at the marina to renew (aka pay them) and update my cruising permit. But… those customs and immigration people who can check you in and out of the country… cannot do a visa renewal…? For that I have to wander around and go up the hill and find the botanical gardens…. ?    and pay those customs and immigration people for my VISA renewal.

Why exactly can the marina officials not do it …?

Government stupidity and job creation is likely the answer.

Whatever… not my circus

I am safe and okay again down here alone in Grenada…

Dreaming of my escape from the ocean back to dirt life…

and a very fast motorcycle… a YAMAHA R6

 

cheers sailing fans

 

Wild Captain Lexi

 

…  I am okay again …