I think I must begin this blog with the cautionary warning that I am in a philosophical mood today, it seems inevitable it will spill over into the keyboard. Although generally these blogs are where I can share this sailing adventure, be it however good or bad, you must understand that this is also the only place I have to express my thoughts and give them life. I live alone with my Teddy bear and seldom have anybody I can actually talk to, few people know how to listen anymore. Social isolation changes us.

 

 

Sailor Whoopsie

This story is a bit old, maybe a week ago, just before I left Prickly Bay. I was sitting in my cockpit, not sure what I was engaged with at the time, when I looked up and noticed an odd looking scene off my starboard side. Being one of those “YouTubers” I immediately thought of grabbing my camera to film the scene. My footage only caught the end of the fiasco, and later I heard a bit more about it.

About 20 minutes previously I had seen this ketch motoring around and thru the crowded anchorage with its mizzen sail still raised and motored past me at a pretty good clip. Honestly, some old boomers think that because they CAN motor in an anchorage at 7 knots… they SHOULD…! Honestly go slow in anchorages people. This guy was not going too fast, maybe 4 knots, which was a bit too fast for my comfort as he passed over my anchor chain.

 

 

It seems the sailor was coming in under motor and sail and was looking for that perfect spot. Having given up wandering around the nice spots nearer to shore, he was now moving towards the more open back of the anchorage. He had just passed 150 meters in front of me and was moving southbound when he suddenly lost his engine… right in front of that CAT..!

I watched him drifting slowly sideways downwind towards that expensive CAT and wondered why he did not just sail past it? What was the guy doing? I guess… initially his first instinct was to drop an anchor… which did not grab… but now was holding him sideways to wind. So dragging an anchor and with his mizzen sail up (small back second sail) catching air… it kept him dragging into this CAT. I watched as all hands on deck ran up to fend the guy off their shiny anchored boat.

I watched the disaster unfold. The captain did pull out his Genny to try and use wind power to move forward and scrapped himself off the bow of that CAT. Eventually he dragged a little further and put sails away and settled into place.

SHIT HAPPENS

All of us wise old salty sailing Captains know full well, completely random and unexpected things happen out here to us all the time. I once had a new crew comment to me “…geez… you Captains sure are obsessed with spare parts and backup plans huh…!“.    ha ha ha…  🙂       There is good reason us good captains leave wide margins of safety, and are always conjuring up our “what if…” backup plans in our minds.

This is sailing life

 

Sailing to Egmont

I think it was the next day I left Prickly Bay and headed alone out to sea for the refuge of Egmont Bay, where I am currently. The sail was lovely and I am actually beginning to enjoy sailing again, on the calm Caribbean ocean. You can CLICK HERE to watch the videos and see how that all went if you are curious.

 

 

There were three main reasons for my decision to come back here again.

The first of which was the predatory masculine energy in that bay was beginning to make me feel uncomfortable. Once you get to know me you will discover that my biggest emotional need in life is to feel safe, I am very alerted to danger. A lifetime of hurt and abuse has molded this sensitivity into my core. A lifetime of being preyed upon by men has made me very wary of their presence, the evil ones act like good ones, hide in the camouflage of “nice guy”.

The two different men who raped me both really believed they did nothing wrong, believed they were nice guys. The second one was a friend who raped me when I was unconscious. There are too many lonely old men solo sailors in Prickly bay who live there semi-permanently, and they are hungry for pussy. Also there is a side story, I cannot tell you about, that began to develop, that I wanted no part of.

I left to get away from people

so I could feel safe again. 

 

 

The Second reason was to begin writing again. I was halfway thru writing my second childrens book 6 weeks ago and have not been able to focus and get back to it. I need to write and get this book out of my soul and Egmont is like a writer’s paradise. After the publishing of my last Wolf book I got busy with life and social things for a while. This new Rat book though has been lingering awaiting the return of my attention to give birth to it. Egmont is the perfect place to achieve this.

I was ready for the quiet life again. 

 

 

The Third reason was a little boat project that Teddy Bear had been nagging at me to face and conquer. I just finished posting a very fun and silly video of that project that took me 3 days to accomplish. You can CLICK HERE to watch the video and see for yourself.

I needed to paint the hull

 

Boat Projects

It was a tremendous and bold undertaking, something you never see anyone do. Problem solving at its finest. Of course there were also a bunch of other things on the to-do list that needed to be tackled, such is cruising life. Yachts are very needy things.

 

 

I was particularly proud of this repair. It is hard to tell… but if you look in the picture… do you see that steel vertical arm…?  I made that. Originally this 30 year old engine had a plastic arm on it that finally failed. The top section is the choke control knob, the bottom section is the carb bowl fuel cutoff valve. If you push and pull on the outside knob you can open and close the choke on the carb. If you twist the knob you can open and close the fuel valve by transferring the motion thru that arm.

When the plastic arm finally failed, I was really up shits creek. Good luck trying to find a replacement arm for a 30 year old discontinued engine out here in the Caribbean where they have no postal system. We cannot just order things online out here.

I am rather proud of my engineering problem solving. I fabricated that stainless steel arm out of a hose clamp..! Using my trusty dremel tool and a drill, I took materials on hand, and fabricated my own solution onboard. Us sailing Captains are masters of fixing anything McGyver style.

 

Grenada Tour

I will say that life down here has become more bearable as the winter sets in up north. My Canadian friends are cursing the snow and I am relieved the winter temperature down here on my boat has fallen below body temperature. Yesterday I even spent the entire day naked and did not sweat…!  How amazing is that? Can you imagine a whole day not uncomfortably hot and dripping with sweat..?  For me this is a dream come true. Last night I slept comfortably without the bedroom fan running.

 

 

I remember life back in Canada, and I would start to become uncomfortably hot when the temp got above 25 degC. I remember how horrible life was when the temp got up to 30 degC, the government would issue heat advisories and open up emergency cooling centers so people did not die from the heat. Canadians are adapted to the cold.

Now look at me….  I am excited when the temperature is a nice breezy “cool” 34 degC…!   Ha ha ha… does this mean that I am now beginning to adapt to the heat down here? Have I lost my cold adaptation now?        Eek..!     🙁

Two days ago I went on a Grenada bus tour. Some of the other cruisers were trying to organize a private bus tour of Grenada. I knew 3 of the people going, and knowing they are wonderful and kind people I would be safe with, I opted to join them. We sailors seldom see inland of any island, we seldom venture much further than walking distance from the coastline.

 

 

The tour was…. hmm… okay. Basically 11 of us sat in this little red bus for 10 hours of driving around the entire island with few stops. On the left in the picture above we did stop at the Chocolate Factory, which was not doing tours, but the owner did talk to us a little bit about local agriculture. We stopped at the River Rum distillery, which also was not doing tours, but we could buy rum. We did not stop at the Monkey place but drove past it. We drove past almost everything interesting.

I have a camera full of video footage of the Grenada tour, but I think none of it is worth the effort to turn into a video. Mostly it is just me sticking a camera out the window as we zoomed by. It is a pretty place though. Lush tropical jungle inside.

 

 

For me, really the best part of the tour was getting to meet and know some of the other cruisers we shared the bus with. Mind you, I always find people more interesting than places or things. It would have been nice if there were any museum stops or historical fort stops, but we drove right past everything.

My life this past week has been more quiet and boring, but safe is good. Despite what some people think, I am not a drama queen, I do not thrive on drama.

 

Charity

 

Remember a few blogs ago, I spoke about that Canadian guy out here, Kamu? I have been thinking more about him. My empathy and compassion getting the best of me. I have been thinking about donating some money to him, to improve the quality of his life. Maybe I will take him grocery shopping and provision his boat for him. To lift up one among us who is down, to help him not starve to death. Just my love kindness and compassion showing thru.

One of my readers had reached out to me saying he wanted to donate money to help Kamu too. If any of you good people want to contribute to this coming act of charity, find me, let me know, I will work out the details. Maybe us Canadians can show love and kindness to this other Canadian who lives a very hard life out here alone. Maybe you good human beings can do something kind for this man too. We cannot let him starve to death alone out here.

***

Future Thinking

On a personal note, how is life onboard WildChild now..?  What is the latest little things in your life Captain Lexi…?     Last night my little bluetooth speaker finally died, succumbed to the salty ocean air. Very depressing to lose my night time music, I lived for that spiritual hour on deck. This has been a tremendous blow for me personally. I am unsure what to do about this new problem yet. It seems I need to replace it, not sure where or how yet though.

***

The other thing I have been toying with, is find crew. I am unsure of myself. This involves gazing into the future to make future plans and allow schedules to evolve, not a realm I currently live in.

IF… WildChild, by some miracle, does sell in the next 4 weeks, great… I am free to return to being  a dirt dweller. The odds of probability on this are very slim though.

NO CREW NEEDED

IF…. WildChild does not sell by Mid January, most probable, my VISA expires here and I gotta start moving north. Now this plan is loosey goosey. I CAN sail alone, I still refuse to solo sail alone overnight though, but do I want to solo sail to the Bahamas?

Crew might be nice

I will probably just be Q-flagging the entire Caribbean, as the COVID fees are unreasonably expensive and very cost prohibitive, the bureaucracy insane. Will a crew want to just sail past every island with me? Is it fair to them?? We could stop at any island they want, IF… they pay for it, and this is usually hundreds of USD per stop. For my poor budget paying $400 usd for COVID and Gov fees to stop on an island for a few days is simply not worth it. Mind you, there is hope the french islands might be reasonable about this.

Getting crew is always a gamble for me. I average about 50/50. Half are wonderful new friends, half are too crazy and selfish and fail. I have had 1 mutiny, 1 manipulative person abandon me badly, and 1 person removed from the yacht by the police. Crew is such a gamble for me, an unknown variable.

Soon I need to decide if I will place an ad on CREWBAY looking for crew in January…?  Should I..?   I am unsure yet. Getting crew though does involve future planning, flights have to be booked, bad people vetted out.

I don’t know yet…

***

 

okay… warning again… this next part is the Philosophical part. If you are only here for Cruising life you should stop reading now. My feisty nature is about to show thru, my rebel spirit coming to life.

 

Thinking about Freedom

I live a very isolated life rather cut off from the larger world around me. This is sort of the lure of the cruising life isn’t it. To escape a world gone mad. I am beginning to appreciate the benefits of my life lately, beginning to value my freedom.

 

 

I fear it would almost be offensive if I try to tell you, the reader, how crazy the world has become. You live in it full time with no escape, it surrounds you, permeates your everyday life. In the mornings, if I have a good data connection and some extra data on my phone, I log in to YouTube and watch some videos for a short while. This is my only contact with the outside world. This and I still read smart books.

I recently read a book about The Origins of Covid… if you are interested in freeing your mind so your ass can follow. I also just finished reading an intelligent and interesting book called A GENERATION OF SOCIOPATHS …. which you should click on the link to find and read it for yourself too. It is a very difficult book to read, rather long and boring, as all sciency factual reporter books tend to be.

The problem with the book is that the author does a very good, fact based, job of proving his case. If you ever wonder where my boomer bias comes from you can read this to get your first clue. Right now the world we live in… is controlled and created and caused by the Boomer generation. The world is a mess because of this spoiled class of sociopaths.

I will openly lament one of the biggest sources of my social isolation, even in crowds of people, is my very high IQ. Very few people can speak with me at my level about things that interest me. This “gift” is both a blessing and a curse. The blessing is seeing me conquer things as in the sections above, smart girl. The curse is being able to comprehend the big picture. Seeing your world gone mad does not improve my personal happiness.

IF YOU HAVE BEEN PAYING ATTENTION…. there is currently a war against freedom being waged by the elites. You are being enslaved and are too dumb to realize it. YET…. somehow… so few of you are upset… so few of you are enraged… so few of you have the balls to stand up and fight for your freedom back. Why can you lemmings not see what the world will be like in ten years…? or twenty years from now…?

THE SHIP IS HEADED INTO DANGER…!

Why do you fail to realize, being totally under total strict government control with no freedom to resist at all, will be a bad thing? Elon Musk has tried to warn all of you about the coming dangers of artificial intelligence yet so few of you understand the warning.

 

The human condition

There is an interesting, true, old story about world war two, I had read about. As a train load of hundreds of jews were being sent to the concentration camps for termination they all complied easily. They all submitted and peacefully and easily were rounded up and sent off. Nobody could fathom the horror about to come so they were so compliant.

There was a woman on one of the trains who had escaped from a concentration camp, and was being sent back. In the train car she was in she was screaming in rage and horror at what she knew was to come, she knew where the trains final destination would be. She told everyone in the train car about what she knew, her own personal experience. She warned all of them of what was to come. Her terror and truths made the other people on the train uncomfortable so they ignored it.

The human beings on that train could not mentally tolerate this idea. They simply refused to believe her despite the rumours and evidence. Their human need to cling to a happy ideal version of reality was so strong they could not see what was right in front of them. The human brain somehow refuses to believe bad things can happen. Human beings are biologically designed to be intolerant of unpleasant ideas or thoughts or emotions.

this story was later retold by one of the other people on that train who survived the camp

Humans are remarkably easy to round up for enslavement or termination in large numbers because of this biological weakness.

The noose of total government control over every aspect of your life is being placed around all of your necks and so few of you realize the creeping evil is upon you. The germans were slow to understand creeping evil in the 1930’s as well.

I love my freedom out here.

I fear returning to being a slave

 

My freedom

 

 

Few people know this, but the two necklaces I always wear, and I am never without, actually have deep spiritual meaning to me. The choker collar is my reminder that at some level I will always be a slave. There will always be powers controlling me. I am a slave to the laws of physics, I cannot fly. I am a slave to old men forming governments using the violence of young men to force me into submission. I am a specifically enslaved to the god of money, economics control everything.

Money is the most brilliant tool of enslavement the elites have ever invented. Why MUST we spend our lives at some stupid job that wastes our life away…? Before you were born, it was decided you will have no choice but to submit and work. Rich people do not work, do not produce or contribute anything worthwhile to the world around us. Industrial automation has changed the face of the world so that only 10% of us need to work to provide everything we all need. Most jobs are make work bullshit to keep you enslaved. Universal Basic income terrifies the oppressors.

I am quite afraid to go home and return to the control of the system, afraid to surrender the freedom I now enjoy. With the cost of living skyrocketing. Why must I work several full time shitty jobs just to exist, just to rent a room and barely be able to afford bills and food..?  Spend the rest of my life paying off the debts the boomer generation are now accruing for the next 200 years to pay off.

(Read this book called Generation Screwed to understand the details)

Sounds like slavery to me. BUT… I wear my slave collar to remind me I can never escape it totally, the knife always hangs over our throats.

We are all slaves to the God of Money

The other necklace is my Christian cross. I keep Jesus close to me to always remind me to choose the good path. My ass belongs to GOD. My body may be enslaved to the god of money but my spirit is free.

There is a beautiful freedom in the idea of let go and let God. I need to remember there are spiritual consequences to actions. I am far more interested in the spiritual realm than the material world. Knowing my soul matters, I am not so afraid to tell the slave masters “no thank you” and just refuse submission.

My Christian cross reminds me not to focus on the material world, not get caught up in the stupidity of things. I try to focus on what is important.

I exist in the balance between the two necklaces

 

What is important then…?

FREEDOM

PEOPLE

Virtue, Honour, Integrity,  and Respect. 

Goodness, Kindness. Love. Patience, Tolerance, Forgiveness. 

 

Freedom on the Ocean

Out here, on my off grid mobile yacht, on the ocean, away from people, separated from society, might actually be the most freedom left on the planet. I do not have to pay rent. I have no bills to pay. It costs me nothing to have a place to sleep at night. My existence does not have to be justified to anyone. There are very few police (bullies with guns) out here. I mostly can be left alone. My time is my own and is beholden to nobody.

If you live on land they tax and control the land. They do not yet tax and control the ocean. The god of money has less control of me out here. My expenses are food and boat repairs. I feel less enslaved out here, I feel more free.

maybe…. and I have been thinking about this a lot lately… maybe my cruising life is not so bad. Maybe I should be grateful I am not nearly as enslaved as you are now. Maybe I should be appreciating that fact that I wake up when I want to, sleep when I want to, eat what I want to, do what I want to, go where I want to. Maybe I should be more grateful that nobody really ever tells me what to do anymore. Maybe the fact that time is irrelevant to me is a blessing of freedom, I have no schedule controlling me.

Thank goodness we do not live in Australia huh….!

Those poor bastards…

 

Wild Captain Lexi

 

…  the thoughtful …