Well life in the Caribbean is moving along slowly as always. I thought I would write a blog anyway to share my life with friends and family again. Not that there has been anything exciting in particular. Today I want to share some random bits with you to get your mind off other things for a few minutes.
Crew Commentary
I forgot to share this before. If you remember I picked up a random crew guy Joe from the UK a few weeks ago. We sailed around together and had a lovely time until he had to leave to continue on his way. He met me out of the blue and lived with me for 10 days. I asked him to write an open and honest (genuine) comment about what it was like to crew for me on WildChild. He promises he is not just being nice or hiding the bad stuff… he swears this is genuine and honest feedback for future crew…
From Crew Joe
I can honestly say that the 10 days spent on Wild Child with Captain Lexi won’t soon be forgotten.
Lexi is a fantastic person, honest, intelligent and good company. She is not the socially awkward person she will tell you she is. Over the course of the 10 days I spent with her she was very open and honest about her past and present challenges in life, but is a strong and very self aware person who has things under control more than she believes.
Wild Child is a fantastic yacht, a race horse on the water. Accommodation on board was comfortable if basic but I had all I needed and Lexi was quick to give up her space (and cabin!) and made me feel at home. I mean Wild Child was bigger than my last yacht and had enough power for a fridge and a freezer for a start!
We shared a lovely little adventure around Antigua and to Barbuda and I already miss Wild Child and of course the friendship I fast established with Captain Lexi.
If you are thinking of joining as crew don’t hold back, you won’t find a better yacht to sail on or a more interesting, kind and clever Captain!
This is completely unedited and exactly copy and paste what he wrote unmodified
The Cost of Antigua
Here this is an interesting one. I was in Falmouth for the last 5 days or so visiting my friend Peter onboard sv Bershert. Well a few days ago we went for a lovely hike on the goat trail between Pigeon beach and over to English Harbour. On the way home we stopped to buy some provisions. WildChild is well stocked with food, and I do not eat very much, but my milk supply was running low. It sounds simple enough… I wanted to go the store to buy some milk. An everyday transaction for you guys.
I was with Peter and he wanted to stock up on liquor. I almost choked when I saw the price of half a gallon of milk was $16e.c. To give you some idea of relative value of this…
$1 e.c. = divide by 2.7 for $usd
$1e.c. = divide by 2 for $cdn
$1e.c. = divide by 3.28 for Euros
So half a gallon of milk cost me $8 Canadian…! Interestingly my friend Peters Brandy only cost $6 cdn…! Yes its true… Milk is more expensive than alcohol down here. I have been speaking with locals about how expensive the cost of living down here is. They tell me flat out… the only things that are cheap in Antigua is cigarettes alcohol and drugs… food is unaffordable for us.
It seems my little Chocolate milk addiction is more expensive than an alcoholism problem down here… 🙁
Welcome to Antigua
The Middle Ground Trail
So as I mentioned my friend Peter and I wanted to hike the middle ground goat trail the other day. He came by in his dinghy to pick me up around 11am and we dinghied to shore. We walked up and over the hill over looking Falmouth bay and enjoyed the spectacular views. The view from the top of the hill you have a beautiful vantage over the whole bay.
The weather down here is always great and ranges from hot to way too hot. Its funny to me.. but its winter time here.. and some days the temperature gets below 30 degrees Celsius and the locals put on sweaters and complain about how cold it is. I think I am finally not sweating in my bikini…. but I have Canadian blood I guess. 🙂
Peter is a wonderful human being but is simple like a kid. We hike all the way up and over the hill to Pigeon beach when I take a drink from my hydration pack when Peter says… “ohh I didn’t bring any water…“. Sigh… like a kid you have to remind him of every little thing… he is not a think ahead kind of guy. Who goes hiking in the tropical heat with a backpack on that does not have a bottle of water in it..? Wonderfully a local guy gave us a ride back to our start point to buy water at the store then back to Pigeon beach to begin the trail hike.
The hike was lovely… truly lovely. It is only about a mile long hike up and down the hills but with so much history along the way to enjoy. Nobody should ever come to Falmouth and miss this wonderful hike.
Peter is an old guy, not in good shape, and a smoker. I am young and in wonderful physical condition for the hike but I have a heart condition that slows me down. The two of us are great hiking companions as we both need about the same slow pace. I did not pass out once during the hike but Peter did have to call me to rest a few times I got breathing heavy and kept pushing. With his help I did not fall once.
It was a lovely day of hiking together.
Every evening Peter and I hang out together, either on his boat or mine. He is usually drinking booze and I am usually drinking water. I love to play chess and have this wonderful chess set from India with magnetic pieces that stick to the board well and do not roll around. I have such a hard time finding people to play chess with me. I seem to intimidate people. I am not even a very good chess player. I do not study it or read about it or play online. I just enjoy watching the string of causality play out. I do not even care if I win or lose. Peter thinks secretly I am a chess shark though.
Peter has been a wonderful friend and he plays me every evening even though I kick his ass every time. He never complains or gives up. We have fun together, two lonely solo sailors. Peter’s engine completely failed on his way in here and he is getting it rebuilt. The engine block is in the middle of his galley floor. Without an engine he prays his anchor doesn’t drag.
Men Suck
I have mentioned before that the cruising community is a sea of grey hair. Only old baby boomers have enough wealth right now, time and money, to afford to come out and do this. Honestly probably 95% of all cruising boats down here in the Caribbean are crewed by grey haired boomers over the age of 60. Young people like me are very rare. Some boats do have people in their 40’s with kids on board, sometimes you can find crew wandering around who are in their twenties.
Sometimes I have a hard time dealing with boomers, I admit. I do have a personal anti boomer bias…. but… I think we have to take people as individuals and I have met many wonderful old people out here. I am friends with some of them. Really I do not care much for a persons outside appearance but rather look inside their soul and find their character and go from there.
I am alone out here and far from home. I am happy to make new friends. I have made many friends and most of them are old people. No worries its all good.
names have been changed to protect the privacy of others
About ten days ago my friend Sherry came to visit me and brought me to visit a secret cool place onshore. Sort of a campground style hang out with a pool and a food place. Wonderful people run it and they welcome cruisers. I have to remain vague here
I met this old man (like maybe 70 years old) who is the father of the men who run the place. He seemed like an interesting character and a charming man. We will call him Bob. He was very nice and seemed very interested in being friends with me. I chatted with him in the kind and human way I chat with everyone. We exchanged Whatsapp numbers and he began texting with me.
He was just too forward with me. I get that he is from a different culture (I will say near Greece) and maybe in his culture he is acting normally towards me. In my culture he was always just too forward… too aggressive. The day he met me he invited himself out to my boat. The next day he invited himself on board with a nice bottle of wine to watch the sunset with me. The next day he is calling me beautiful by text and begging to see me again. I was always very clear with him just friends and he always said yes of course he agrees… Lexi I am only being your friend… I am not hitting on you…. but… I did not get the feeling Bob was getting my message.
I have about half a dozen other old men friends who are wonderful kind and civilized and treat me like a human being… but I was unsure this man could see me as a human being. This is the burden of being a young lady out here alone that the rest of you never think about. Stuff I have to deal with all the time.
This is a copy of my text message with my friend Joe yesterday… with a direct copy and paste of part of the message between Bob and myself from that morning… (yesterday for me now)
The man is as old as my grandfather…!
I was very clear with him from the beginning “…just friends only… nothing more…”
But he only ever saw me as a vagina… not a person. So many men dehumanize my gender like this. It is sad and horrible and terrible for us women to ever have to deal with. I wish I never had to deal with this stuff but it happens like every week, some man wants into my pants and pushes himself on me. Often men are very sneaky and deceitful and will lie and say anything to fool me. Many men prey on women like predators.
I have enough stress in my life without this shit…
men suck 🙁
Solo Sailing Again
I am supposed to have crew flying in from the U.S. on Monday to come join me as crew for two weeks. This lady form North Carolina named Kyndy. She wants to learn how to sail so I will teach her for free and then we can go sailing together. We have been chatting via Whatsapp for a few weeks now and her plane ticket is booked for Monday Feb 1st.
I needed to sail back up to Jolly Harbour yesterday to be here to get her Monday. There is big north Atlantic ocean swell coming down to the Caribbean starting today and will last a few days so I wanted to make my jump up here yesterday while the ocean was calm.
I am proud of myself. My fear of solo sailing is going away the more I do it. It is still very hard and very dangerous. The risk level has not changed. Maybe my tolerance for facing the risks has gone up. More probably my decent into crazy only deepens. You have to be a bit crazy to solo sail out on the ocean. All ocean solo sailors sailors are characters and all of us are a bit weird… a bit wild… and a bit crazy.
I am no exception.
A few days ago some woman made some nasty comments about my blogs on one of my YouTube videos. I never allow any comments on my website as I have no interest in what the trolls have to say. This women wanted to poke at me thru my YouTube videos. I always delete all the nasty things trolls say so they never get public.
I will not get into what her beef was… just suffice it say she thinks I should stop trying to get sympathy… but… what has struck me is how badly she has misread and misunderstood the entire point of my website. I get that all readers bring their own shit and bias to the table. I’m fine with it… I accept it.
I do want to be a bit more clear though…
The whole purpose of my videos and website is to share the open genuine raw reality of my life. To show you the ups and downs. To inspire other women to understand they can do this stuff too. I want you girls to believe you can do it too. You can be strong and brave too. You can go live your dreams too. Sure nothing ever works out according to plan but hey ladies… I am a big chicken and I am doing it… why can’t you. Look at all the problems I have but I face them. Look at all the bad shit that lands on me… but I face it. I have a fucking heart condition and I persevere anyway. When I tell you about how hard things get for me hunny… it is not to elicit sympathy but rather to inspire you to face your own shit with bravery and courage. Bad shit lands on everybody… this is life.
If Lexi can do it you can do it too
Yesterday I lifted my anchor alone around 11am. It was dead calm up until then and I was unsure if I was going to make the jump at all. Finally around 11am some small amount of wind came up and I thought I could use it to get north to Jolly Harbour. I hoped there would be a bit more wind once I got offshore.
Lifting my anchor alone went well. I did not feint once and did not drift into any other boats anchored very close behind me. I was rather pleased that I did so well.
I motored out of the anchorage and just out into the bay. The ocean was calm under the grey skies and there was a light breeze blowing in over the cliffs. I turned WildChild into the wind and was trying to use the cover and wind protection of the cliffs to get my main sail up. This is a common strategy sailors sometimes use.
This was my mistake… turning in too close.
I set Auto to hold course and I ran up on deck to heave my mainsail up at the mast… then run back to finish it from the winch under the dodger. It took longer than planned, a line got stuck, and I had to keep moving quickly to finish hauling up the sail before I hit the cliffs.
I had just gotten the boat turned off the wind away from the cliffs when my lights went out. No harm I fell over on the bench and the boat sailed itself out into deeper waters until I came to again. The second feinting spell was getting the genny set. Nothing special happened but I had to move quickly and physically exerted myself more than my heart could take, down I went again.
I am proud to say I finished the rest of the sail without passing out anymore. The winds were very light and the ocean was very calm (my favorite type of sailing). It was mostly a light down wind run with only about 2 hours upwind at the end.
Weirdly… in grey rain and gloomy conditions… as I was making my way up towards Jolly Harbour this other dark blue yacht, about the same size as WildChild, sailed out to me.. and kept crossing back and forth in front of me. Following me around for over an hour. It was a bit weird and worrisome.
Right when the boat first cut in front of me and went behind my Genoa into the grey murky fog a few hundred meters ahead of me I got a hit on my fishing rod. So suddenly what was a nice boring sail got a bit hairy quickly. I suddenly had to deal with a fish on the line at the same time a mysterious boat cut in front of me in the fog and then turned to head in the same direction. I could not see him and he was not on AIS.
Sailing is like this.
It took me a few minutes to get the barracuda free as he was kicking up a fuss and I often had to duck and look ahead to spot the other yacht to make sure we would not collide. I had no idea why he was playing around directly in front of me and I didn’t want to run up his stern.
You cannot risk eating the barracuda because they eat reef fish who have a toxin (Ciguatera) in them and the apex predators accumulate the neurotoxin in their meat. You cannot cook it to kill it and if the barracuda has the toxin you will get “the fish sickness” as the locals call it. Some people do gamble and eat the barracuda but I have spoken to people who have had the sickness for months and heard their descriptions of how painful it is. No thanks.
I am like an expert at catching the only fish here you cannot eat. I would love to someday catch a nice Tuna or mahi mahi.
I made my way into the mostly empty Jolly Harbour anchorage yesterday around 4pm and got my anchor set in the rain and fog alone and without passing out. It was an easy enough sail there was no risk of breaking anything. Mom was calm. That’s always good.
Today the sun is shining again and it is a new day.
Cheers sailors
Captain Lexi
………… the wild child ……….