Well, WildChild is has been just waiting around in Prickley Bay Grenada for a month now. This is a nice place with great access to civilization, a great grocery store and wonderful Budget marine, so I have been knocking off boat projects.
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Sailing School
My new crew Kolja arrived to me with an Atlantic crossing under his belt but actually very little understanding of how to sail. Babysitting the helm twice every 24 hours on a 22 day downwind run involves precious little sailing skill. To become crew on WildChild I need him to be more useful, I need his sailing skills to be much higher, and thus… Kolja has spent the week attending Captain Lexi’s sailing school.
As you guys may remember I just did this less than a year ago when Elena first came to the boat. I have been teaching people how to sail for quite a while now and I am very good at it. I can actually do it off the top of my head. Kolja was a great student, being so young his squishy brain has lotsa room in it and remembers things easily and well.
One of the things I expect of my crew is that WildChild holds herself to a much higher standard than most other boats, and this necessitates her crew understanding what to do and why. I realize it takes a while for people to get there but Kolja is doing great.
In my own personal experience sailing out here for so long now, I have found that in any given anchorage 80% of the other boat captains are terrible and rather incompetent. Which is probably why 80% of sailboats do not tend to ever raise their sails and just motor between ports.
So when I am teaching my new Pada-wons young Jedi Knights I really give them a very broad and deep understanding of all the sailing theory they will need. I go over everything from naming parts and ropes on a boat to sail trim to anchoring techniques and knot tying. They need to understand the physics of force loads when sailing and how to balance their CLE with their CLR so they understand why they are weather helming and what to do about it. The secret to sailing really comes down to understanding how to listen to your boat and hear her when she talks to you, feel her in your core, let you and the boat become one.
So I explain everything to the students on paper and in theory all of the mental ideas I need them to hold, but of course, this is only a small part of the learning process. If the learning remains only in theory it will be quickly forgotten, thus next we need to get to the practical part of the classes… we have to actually go sailing and practice this stuff. As we sail I can keep up with the instruction and keep quizzing my student and feeding them answers and understanding as we touch feel and do.
I am actually amazed that teaching this has become a very profitable business in America. There all kinds of stupid paper sailing “Qualifications” you can pay for in the US and sometimes I get sailors listing all the stupid blah blah blah courses they have paid for. Sailing is a personal thing passed on tribal knowledge from one sailor to another. I suppose though… given that 80% of the sailors out here are incompetent you just have to be careful who you are learning from.
The theory part of Captain Lexi’s sailing school with Kolja is done now, we have to move onto the practical part soon. The delay has been sort of three fold;
Kolja has seriously medically injured his toe working for another boat and is on antibiotics for the first time in his life and he feels icky, they are kicking his ass making him super tired and icky tummy so he is not in good shape right now;
the winds this week are horrible here, I am not sure exactly why but we have 30 knots of wind gusts down here for this whole week, not exactly ideal conditions to learn sailing in;
and Elena is returning Feb 5th we have to wait for her.
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Boat Work
Of course given that I have access to a great marine store and a reasonably safe stable anchorage I have been working on those boat projects I have been putting off for a while now.
One of these projects has been the spot light on the bow. I am not sure if I have ever told you this but… the ocean is a NASTY place and beats the living crap out of your boat. If you can imagine the lovely spot light I had used to have on the bow has been taking a beating for about 2 years now and has finally given out. Every time you see the bow underwater in a wave trough or being smashed by huge waves slamming into it you have to think that the poor spot light is taking a nasty beating. I do forgive the light for failing eventually but it does pose a problem for me.
My Texas friend Bryan was supposed to bring me in a suitcase full of parts to repair things on WildChild and a replacement light bar for the bow was on the list. Given that they never arrived I was forced to bend over and pay the local marine store $289ec for a marine work light. It is not as good or bright as a light bar or spot light but it will suffice. My concern was the beating it will take from the ocean. Since I have a fiber glassed wooden mount on the bow I figured some modification would be in order. I found a small piece of old 2×4 in the anchor locker and cut it into 2 triangles and fiber glassed them to the platform. Then I used these as mounts for piece of plexiglass to be an impact shield for the light, something to take the beating from the waves but still breathes and releases the water.
Not fancy looking but it should work…. it is pink and that really is all that matters right…?
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Although I give this place great credit for the water NOT being as bad as Luperon poo water, there is still many boats in this bay dumping their heads direct discharge creating fertile growing water for all the slimy little marine life.
After only 3 weeks of my anchor down here you can see my anchor chain is getting so thick with growth I will lose it soon. Replacing anchor chain is a $2000 – $3000 usd proposition I would rather not face. So saving the chain has recently become a high priority.
Given that I have an injury on the bottom of my foot (Kolja left a tether on the bench seat and I stepped on it puncturing my foot) and Kolja’s toe injury neither one of us can go swimming. Swimming and scrubbing the chain in the water is the typical way to fix this problem. We needed a new idea and thus I decided to lift 30 feet of chain into the anchor locker then as we slowly play it out 12 inches at a time we could dunk a scrub brush into a bucket of water and hand scrub every link of the chain. Both of us had to wrap our cut feet in plastic to prevent infection from the organically very alive water from entering our blood stream and causing infection.
We did destroy a brush doing this terrible dirty work and had to go to shore and buy another one for $38ec ($14usd) which is painfully expensive but… cheaper than replacing the chain huh.
Kolja and I took turns doing this yucky job. We each worked until our backs started to get sore and then we would switch off. Kolja is a great crew, always willing to help his team. So although this was definitely not fun work that took us 2 days to finish, we did hopefully save the chain. I am however going to be very curious how my anchors look when I lift them up in the next few days.
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Everyday I have been diligently adding and removing things from WildChild’s eternal to-do list. I have been very productive and healing all the little things on her long term repair list. Another project I have not talked about is that I have been also replacing some of the instruments on the engine panel. Today I am debating replacing the Tachometer… they have a nice one here at Budget marine for $389ec ($144usd) but that is kind of expensive. Not sure if I will spend the money or not.
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Company and new friends
I recently made friends with the wonderful young american couple that Kolja crewed for last, Rob and Anna I have mentioned previously. Anna knows how to make bread. This magical and valuable boat skill is something I personally am lacking (I used to depend on the evil monkey for this) , and Anna was willing to come over and visit and teach me how to make bread. She is from a family of bakers and this is something she knows how to do well.
I was delighted when my new friend Anna came over to visit with me a few days ago. Together we drank wine and worked on making bread for most of the afternoon. Kind of had a girls day. I am pleased to report that the home made fresh bread turned out great and was delicious.
I am unsure if I mentioned this before but one of my best and most favorite toys on WildChild is my Oculus Quest VR goggles. I have been living on this boat / prison for about two years now and sometimes I am desperate to not be on a boat for a while. Virtual Reality is the perfect solution. So I was delighted to let Anna try out the VR and fight some space pirates for a while. She loved it.
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Now What is Next…?
Well… my Texas friend Bryan abandoning me has left me in a terrible position but I am making the best of it. The universe brought Kolja to me and this has worked out well for both of us. The universe has brought some wonderful people into my life to help me thru this low period.
For some reason the universe has also brought Elena back to the boat. Her plane arrives today and I will go welcome her back. I am unsure if this is a good thing or the continuation of a bad thing getting stretched out… only time will tell.
So I am keeping Kolja and adding Elena back again. We will see how this goes.
As soon as the winds calm down we will begin the adventure ever North… to bring WildChild HOME…
WildChild has to return home…
Captain Lexi is tired of this hard life out here on the sea…
Cheers Sailors
Captain Lexi…
. ……… the nervous.
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