Sometimes I find myself unsure what to write about in a blog, there is often so much to possibly say, what is it that I really want to share? Today I think there are a few different directions I want to go in.
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Three of us…
Well I do not want to get into too much of the details here, but as I alluded to before in the last blog… Elena has rejoined the boat. Of course my closest friends know the complicated story there… but for everyone else… let us just suffice it to say that forgiveness goes a long way to healing deep wounds.
We do still however, also have our new young German traveler Kolja (Cole-ya) with us for a while. For me having three people on the boat is actually rather interesting and dynamic, constantly introducing new variables to my mind for consideration. Kolja is very mellow, emotionally properly repressed like a good German and generally bright and optimistic in his outlook on things. He is very excited to go out and explore the land everyday. He says compared to his life in Germany everything is so new and different he is hungry to explore and see new things. Do you remember how excited you were to explore the world when you were 21 years old?
While we were in Prickley Bay Kolja went thru about 4 days of Captain Lexi’s Sailing school, all theory on paper… just the real fast deep no bullshit approach taught as fast as the student can absorb. Yesterday (Sunday Feb 9th) we sailed from Grenada north to Caricou, which became Kolja’s first part of applied sailing classes with Captain Lexi.
I will say Kolja did pretty well remembering and recalling and applying that theory stuff we learned on paper. The winds for the sail yesterday were a bit sporty 15-28 knots as we sailed from a run (first run in months) around to a beam reach… thru close reach… all the way to close hauled for most of the sail. The weather guessers lied to us as usual, as we needed to sail north east and the forecast said the winds would be ESE… we really had winds ENE which put us sailing 35-45 degrees into the wind most of the day. Meh upwind sailing is nothing new for WildChild…. but… Mr. Kol did start to get funny in the tummy for half the day, as he said… downwind sailing is so easy compared to upwind sailing. He both dehydrated, did not drink any water all day sailing, and he starved himself and did not eat anything all day either. I have to work on that with him.
I do however want to tell you the one little highlight story of Kolja’s first sail at the helm on WildChild. With the help of all of us yesterday we got WildChild out of the bay and set her up to go sailing north. We were sailing with reefed sails about 5 miles offshore of Grenada in clear blue skies and maybe 3-5 foot waves. Elena had gone down below for a nap and Kolja was at the helm. I was in the cockpit supervising Kolja but I was sitting with my back to the bow and facing him on the helm.
Kolja was all cocky confident… yeah yeah Lexi this is no problem I have got it. So Kolja was at the helm and standing… and looking forward and paying attention… and I was getting him to check and report to me the AIS contacts and explaining to him the importance of being aware of other boats that might be in the water around us, and watch the CPA info.
All sailboats have a few common basic RULES about being at the helm… Do NOT fall asleep… DO NOT hit the bottom… DO NOT hit other boats… DO NOT break anything.
Well… Kolja almost broke one of those rules…
As I was laying there quietly watching Kolja at the helm I suddenly hear human voices beside me… startled, as one does not expect to hear voices beside your boat when sailing 5 miles offshore, I look over my right shoulder to the port side of the boat and less than a boat length away a small fishing boat with two guys on it slips past. OH SHIT…. I jump up to see…
Somehow Kolja almost ran these poor guys over with WildChild…! The interesting part is that he was standing at the helm and looking forward…! These guys were kind of pissed off as they quickly had to start their motor to get out of our way and WildChild narrowly (by 30 feet or so) missed running them over. I was just shocked… as I am both trying to apologize to these guys and at the same time try to figure out how Kolja almost ran them over.
Always the captain is responsible for everything that happens on the boat and everything the crew does is the captain’s responsibility… I was responsible for almost running these poor local guys over. My bad. This was the closest call WildChild ever had to ramming another boat. Eeek.
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An interesting Viking Story
Two days before we left for this most recent sailing jump we were on board WildChild in Prickely Bay Grenada in the morning getting ready for a day exploring the land when we heard someone knocking on our boat. As none of us were expecting visitors I was a bit surprised. I came up on deck and there was this young man in a crappy torn up old dinghy he rowed over to us asking if he could sell us some home made fresh bread he just baked.
It took me a moment to work out that he was not a local boat boy trying to raise money for his family. He has long blonde dreadlocks and the most bright piercing blue eyes I have ever seen. His english was pretty good and I engaged him in conversation. We did not need any bread but I was curious… “are you on a boat out here somewhere…?” He replies oh yes this is my boat over there, and he points 2 boats over towards the east of us.
I am now just dying of curiosity on this story… it is very rare for other cruisers to come up to your boat to sell you something, and he is rather young to be a cruiser. You have to understand that it is all old retired baby-boomer white people out here cruising. My boat of young people is very rare to find out here.
Given the sorry state of this young vikings dinghy I suspected he was trying to sell bread as a means of creating an income. As I engaged him in conversation I confirmed my suspicions and discovered he lived on the most sparse of diets even worse than Kolja. He was out here sailing alone and poor. Out of Christian kindness I gave him a hundred e.c. (Local dollars) just out of compassion to buy food with.
The interesting part of this story comes from the stories he began to share of himself. His name is Martin, he is from Sweden and has been sailing all his life, he was raised on the sea. Sailing the nasty north Atlantic is nothing new to him. He tells me he loves the ocean and he never felt afraid on the water, on land sometimes he tells me he can be afraid… but never on the water.
Martin says when the wind gets below 50 knots it is no longer interesting, you no longer feel alive anymore. It is possible he is an adrenaline junky or just being a young man has no sense of his own mortality.
He tells me he just sailed here alone from Gambia west Africa. He tells me the pirates almost got him there and it was a close call. Most people sail across the Atlantic from the Canary islands (further north where it is safe) Martin tells me he skipped the Mediterranean sea because it was too expensive for him.
Martin tells me he got his boat back in Norway a few years ago and lived on it while fixing it up to go sailing. He lived on it thru 2 winters up there..! He said he worked as hard as he could to make and save money for his boat and his trip. He tells me he did not spend $1 Euro of his hard earned money on food for that whole 2 years… he lived eating rescued food out of dumpsters and garbages.
He tells me on his first sail with this boat, his real sea trial on it, the boat had some holes and was not sealed up very well. He was sailing alone and the boat began taking on water… a lot of water… he said his batteries were under water… most of his engine under water… the wind was 50 knots and the waves 5 meters he tells me… he says he has a keel stepped mast and the wedges that hold it in the deck hole fell out… so his mast was flopping around and he could not sail… without the ability to sail or motor he was still 60 miles from the nearest possible port… Martin could only bail with his bucket for the whole day waiting for the winds to die down and hope his boat does not sink… It was fun he tells me…
The young guy tells me he wants to pass thru the north west passage this summer…! He says this like it is no big deal. For those of you unfamiliar with the magnitude of this simple statement… this is the arctic passage thru the north of Canada from Labrador to Alaska… 5000 miles of ice thru the arctic tundra that some summers does not even thaw out. The window for passable by small boat is not very long… measured in a few specific weeks…. and if you get it wrong or mother nature has a mood swing that year you get frozen in…
I am Captain Lexi of the sailing Vessel WildChild, aptly named because I am a bit wild myself… Captain Martin is who I look up to as specifically nuts and on Ken’s short list of crazy people even he will outlive. Martin the Viking is truly a WILD CHILD.
He is an interesting character thou huh…
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Exploring Grenada
About 4 days ago the three of us decided to spend a day exploring the island of Grenada. The fantastic thing about Grenada is that they have a terrific and brilliant bus systems here making travel throughout the islands simple easy and affordable. I really think Canada should develop a similar model of public transport for smaller towns.
The “buses” are really like 10 passenger vans, privately owned and operated, at no expense to the tax payers. There are several different bus routes established, like the number 1 bus does a loop around this area, the number 6 bus does a connecting loop up around another area and so on. The buses cost between $1usd and $4usd prices set by the route length, and many private operators will run on each route. There are probably 15 different number 1 buses operating. There is not really any set schedule, they just keep driving around constantly picking people up and dropping people off. If you want to go somewhere you just have to walk along a bus route road and usually within 2-10 minutes or so a bus will drive by and offer to pick you up.
You really have to experience it to appreciate it as it is nothing like a bus system you in the first world that you are used to. What amuses me is that these buses are setup with 4 rows of seats that can each squeeze 4 people into each row. Thus making it a 16 passenger van…. add that they can squeeze 2 people up front beside the driver we now have an 18 passenger van. But you see… just because they have 18 passengers in the van does not, to them anyway, mean the bus is full. We were on a bus at one time with 22 people squeezed into it. With the driver blaring his favorite SOCA music we lurched and bumped our way up and down the narrow mountain roads. Fun stuff.
Before Elena left for her 2 week trip to India she had heard that there was a sulfur spring on the island and she wanted to see it before we left the next day for Carricou. Kolja always being up for an adventure agreed to come along with us to explore.
The three of us made our way to shore, found the number 1 bus and climbed aboard to make our way across the island to reach the north end. Elena and Kolja did all the navigating and I paid all the expenses. We had to take 3 different buses and get off the bus on the side of a mountain road way in the north and then walk for a little bit but we found it.
Now I admit that I seem to lack the travelers spirit and I was only along for the adventure of the journey not the destination, but I was kind of disappointed when we got there. I am not sure what I had imagined, but it was definitely more than this. In the rocks ahead there were a few small pools of very dirty water with small air bubbles streaming up from the bottom. My inclination to immerse my body in those “amazing pools of magic sulfur water” was about as high as my inclination to roll around in a mud puddle back home, well below nothing for sure.
We wandered around for a bit and spoke with the local owners about the healing properties of this water and how wonderful for the skin a sulfur mud bath can be. Elena and Kolja did not seem inclined to enter the water either.
We made our way to the bar and I ordered a beer and started chatting with the bar tender who also happened to be the owner of this…. hmmm… spa…? resort…? tourist attraction…? magic healing place…? I am not exactly sure what to call it.
There I met Antony who is the local guy who owns this land and has been developing it for the last several years. Antony was an interesting guy and very friendly and easy to talk to. As I sipped my cold beer and struck up a conversation with this interesting character he was more than happy to share his history and knowledge with me.
As I started my conversation inquiring about the geography that created this place Antony explained to me, that the active underwater volcano just off the north west corner of Grenada, called kickem Jenny, is the source for all this. There are veins deep in the earth that rise up from the volcano 10 miles away and surface here. This water being drawn up from deep in the earths crust is salty spring water but also various other elements also rise up with the water. Sometime sulfur but also sometimes iron or magnesium and other stuff.
The sulfur pools are a bit warm by the sun but not hot by any means.
The conversation began to turn towards his understanding of jungle medicine. If you remember the earlier story of Moses this native belief in jungle medicines has me curious. It turns out Antony is also a local medicine man who knows much of the secrets of the jungle herbs and cures and he was happy to share with us simple white people.
Antony had these three large glass bottles full of various plants inside. They were soaking half full of water, which by now had turned into alcohol. Each bottle had specific various plants in them. If you look closely at this picture this bottle even has a millipede inside it (yuck).
Antony goes on to explain how each bottle is a different medicine used to cure different things in the body. He plays for us an audio lecture on his phone of another jungle doctor who is explaining what roots herbs and potions to make and use to cure different things. Antony clearly believes whole heartedly in the efficacy of his medicine.
Antony explains to me… you know dat AIDS..? we can cure dat no problem in tree months. Its proven… we get people sometimes with de AIDS and we send em to da doctor to get da test to prove dey av it. Then we give em da cure… dey gotta drink the potion twice a day everyday for tree months then we send em back to da doctors for the test… and always the AIDS is gone.
Not just da AIDS… sometimes we get da people wit the cancer.. same thing.. we cure em and send em back to the doctor for the tests and yep… every time da cancer is gone. We can cure diabetes too… its no problem. The doctors they know… they know we got the answers… but we also gotta be careful… because we know the American Pharmaceutical companies… they don’t want people to know this stuff because they will lose money. They want this natural medicines to stay secret so they can sell their drugs and stay rich by keeping people sick. There is money in this and we have to be careful we don’t help too many people… or the drug companies they come make trouble for us.
I would say that I was rather disappointed by the sulfur springs themselves as a tourist destination but I was not disappointed by the culture oozing out of Antony. What a cool guy and what a cool experience it was to share in his world for a little bit.
From there was wandered thru the jungle trails behind his place for a while to explore the rich forests which Antony loves so dearly. It is kind of cool to be able to just walk along a trail and pick mangoes and green oranges and other fruits right off the trees. Elena loved finding the cocoa plants and we cut into one and found the little fruits that get dried out to create the cocoa that creates chocolate. They are actually white and squishy slimy but you can put them right in your mouth and suck on them raw, just don’t chew them.
Kolja had heard that there was another jungle waterfall somewhere on the island and he wanted to go find it. As we had some daylight left we decided to hop on another bus and go to a different part of the island to find us a waterfall.
The waterfall did not disappoint and Elena was happy to strip down to her bathing suit and go for a fresh water swim. Kolja still has an injured toe and has to be very careful to keep it dry and not get an infection. I declined the fresh water swim as the idea of sitting for the long bumpy bus rides back in a wet bathing suit did not appeal to me.
An hour or so later we had arrived back to Georgetown by bumpy bus and found our way safely back to WildChild shortly after dark. One minute before we landed our dinghy back home it started to rain and we got soaked but oh well… almost a perfect day.
The next day Sunday Feb 09th WildChild woke up early and sailed upwind to Carricou.
The adventure continues on WildChild and now it seems we are moving away from a time of turmoil and strife back into a peaceful boat of adventure again. Slowly we rebuild harmony on our girl.
Cheers Sailors…
Captain Lexi…
. ……. the happy…