I said once that I am a leaf floating on the ocean, and that is still very true. I had trouble sleeping last night, with so much on my mind, that I decided that I need to vent out my soul to my blog to release everything and move forward. It seems, the winds of change are about to sweep me up quickly into the next chapter of my life.

 

 

Yacht Life

I think if you saw the last video I posted, CLICK HERE you saw that I have been hanging out with my friends again. Little ian and I have been playing like children and I have had social contact with his parents, my only friends around here my own age.

I have kept myself busy doing boat projects, you know… those things that have lingered far down on the to-do list for months. I am trying to sell WildChild thru my yacht broker and I want WildChild to be at her best for any potential new owners. I have a deep intimate and personal relationship with WildChild.

This Yacht / Captain relationship is deep, ancient, and spiritual. In the olden days there was a reason the Captain went down with the ship, they were connected, they were one. I have suffered for my girl, I have bled on her decks, cut, scrapped and damaged my body for her. It is said to truly say you are a crew on a ship you have to suffer for the vessel to earn your place. I have given everything to this girl… and she has taken care of me in return. WildChild is a good girl who saved me thru many nasty storms and terrifying ocean conditions.

I feel like I owe my girl the best of me

 

 

I am an engineer…. my brain totally gets the importance of function, as children we wanted to take everything apart to see how it worked, we are obsessed with spare parts and ease of repair for things, function is all that matters. Never has my brain been able to grasp aesthetics, when rebuilding a friends kitchen, and she asked, do these colours look good together…? my reply was always… I have no idea.

WildChild has been rebuilt by me, engineered tough and to function well and be easy to repair when things go wrong. My yacht broker told me “… Lexi… people buy shiny things… nobody is going to care about all the engineering you put into the yacht… you gotta make it shiny…“. I grimaced in pain at the truthfulness of her words. I get that it’s true.

No self respecting sailor would ever buy a Beneteau or a Janeau… but they are selling like hotcakes now. Terrible sailing boats but very shiny pretty IKEA boats. I have decided that it is time for me to care about the shininess of WildChild. I have been cleaning her up and doing the bright work for weeks now.

Yesterday I spent 3 hours with the sander to deep clean the gel-coat in the cockpit. I then spent 2 hours washing her down, scrubbing would be more correct to say. She is the cleanest and shiniest she has ever been. Today I will paint the cockpit with nice shiny glossy paint for her future owners. Help my precious girl look her best.

I am thinking of getting help to climb my mast next week to replace the mast camera too. It was a brilliant idea but the very expensive B&G mast camera did not hold up well against the ocean. I bought a replacement camera a month ago, but mounting it will require me to find someone to send me up and down the mast again. I asked Teddy bear… and he said he would love to help me… but you know…  he lacks the physical presence to grind the winches for me.

 

Chicken Wings Take Three

If you remember any of my previous blogs about how food cravings can really dig into your soul out here. I have failed to meet my two month long craving for delicious perfectly done chicken wings.

Well… last Tuesday I was at the Prickly Bay marina’s Tuesday night Trivia game, invited by another sailor. He was excellent and his team, which included me, actually won that night. Our reward is a gift Certificate for free food and drinks this Sunday at the Marina…  YAY…

Free is my favorite price

While I was there, I spoke with the owner Darren and he said that just for me, he was going to restart the $1 wings on Wednesdays again.   YAY… 

 

 

So the next day I invited my Brazilian friends to join me and we showed up for the promised feast…

and…..    YAY… the good chef was working who made the wings with the love… you can taste the love in cooking you know…  and I found out my wing limit is 20 not 24.. ha ha ha. I ate until I was stuffed. It made me personally happy.

 

I Found Her…

It is actually very hard for me being the only other girl solo sailor out here on the ocean. Sure rumours abound of once upon a time there was a girl solo sailor in that there bay over there eh…  Sure there are a few women temporarily alone on boats while their husbands are away. I am even in the same bay as Rebecca Childress on sv BrickHouse. She is alone on her boat for a few weeks, but she has never sailed alone, she always has a man with her.

Solo sailing is different.

 

 

I was visiting ian and my Brazilian friends on their beautiful all wood yacht the other day when I noticed this girl anchored in front of them. As I watched the girl got her dog into this little dinghy and rowed over. In my excitement I hollered out “… hey… are you a solo sailor..?“. She replied yes indeed. She is a German girl named Sarah. This is her boat. She is alone. She is teaching sailing at the local sailing school she said.

So it is true…

I have finally met another girl solo sailor out here…

I am not the only one…

YAY…

 

Naked Dancing

I have been naked dancing in the dark up on my bow for a year now. If you have been following along though… you know it got suspended during the height of summer… it was simply dangerously hot.  No cold adapted person should ever be down here in the tropics between August to the end of October, it is hotter than body temperature everyday…  it is very unpleasant.

As the peak of summer is fading, the world is cooling down nicely at sunset. Like sometimes it even gets below 30 deg C up on deck after dark..!  I can move again. A few nights I could even pull my super thin see thru bed sheet over my naked sleeping body to keep the no-see-ums off me, and not get sweaty. Mornings are usually below 30 deg C now.

 

 

I started my freedom ritual again a month ago. At first only able to tolerate 2 or 3 songs until I began to overheat. Lately I can dance all I want and not get heat stroke again. It is still too hot to wear clothes, but naked my skin can cool me down in the evening breeze.

When I dance, and it does feel wonderful, it helps me think, take stock of my life. I reconnect with God and Mother Nature (the energy of God’s creation) and remember that my immortal soul belongs to God. I reconnect my soul to the universe. I vent out all my stress and worry and set it all free, give it to the stars. Dancing like this is an extremely ZEN like moment of the pure divine expression of being.

the wild connection of body to music

dance like nobody’s watching

and you don’t care

it is what freedom feels like

It was a full moon last night, (so I could try to capture the moment on camera) it is such a deep spiritual experience to dance naked in the light of the full moon. I also have so much stress and things to think about. I need the time to commune with God and the universe.

My yacht broker wants to me stay calm and not get excited, be all British and conservative, but she has found WildChild a buyer…!  I was shocked.

I was all prepared for the worst, for no buyer. I was prepared that come January I would still be tethered to WildChild and I would be forced to sail her home… all the way back to Toronto via the East coast of Canada and down into the mouth of the mighty St. Lawrence river again. Mentally preparing myself for those thousands of nasty ocean miles up into the horrible North Atlantic ocean to face those 20 foot tides and 15 foot waves again. It would be scary and hard but we all know I am tough and brave.

I could do it…  but I don’t want to.

BAM….  just like that…

God alters my life trajectory and the leaf gets blown in a new direction.

It is not a done deal…  there is not even a deposit down yet…  but it does seem as though some young American couple likes WildChild and wants to adventure on her. It seems that maybe in the next few weeks, once I have money in the bank, I will be solo sailing her from Grenada up to St. Thomas in the USVI’s to deliver her by Christmas.

then what…?

holy crap… then what…?

 

Warning… this next part is going to be personal… and human…  and mushy…  some readers are only interested in the illusion of the glory of the sailing life and not so interested in my humanity, for you… you might want to skip the rest of this blog.

 

Aging

It is a very well known thing with me… everyone who knows me knows…  Lexi is weirdly sensitive about her age. Like even my ex-wife didn’t know my birthday nor my actual age. Even I do not know my own age.

A few years ago, just on the cusp of turning 30… I panicked… total meltdown.

Remember when you were 10… and you looked up at a 15 year old and thought… holy crap they are old… and when I get that old I will…. insert expectations and dreams.

Then remember when you were 20…?  and you looked up at a 30 year old and thought… holy crap they are old….  and when I get that old I will…. insert expectations and dreams. 

I just could not possibly turn 30 yet…  by 29 I was still living just as impoverished… and just as poor as I was at 19. I am no better off in my life now than I was when I was 20. By 30 I was supposed to be married and have kids and a house and a good career and a wonderful husband. I had achieved none of that stuff.

I was still working a crappy job for low pay, struggling to pay off school loans. I was still not married and I had not actually done anything with my life. By the time a person turns 30 they should have achieved certain benchmarks in their life. Clearly they should be better off than when they were 20…!

If I turn 30 and have done nothing and achieved nothing more than paying off debt…  I have just wasted the last ten years of my life treading water…  and I cannot live with that. If I turn 30 I will have to cry for a week….!    AND… I just cannot face that.

My brilliant plan to avoid the week of tears was to just keep turning 29 for a while. If nobody knows or acknowledges your birth date each year… then it never happened…  then you do not have to face growing older…?   right…?   The childlike reasoning was the best my emotional brain could come up with to protect itself from the flood of tears.

Well… Tomorrow is my Birthday…. and I think I feel ready to finally turn 30. I feel like I have lived… done stuff now… lived a wild adventure. (we can talk about catching up to my actual age later, maybe next year, one hurdle at a time)

I think I feel very ready to settle down now and be boring. I think safe and stable and secure are now things I value highly. I have an intimate acquaintance with the raw taste of terror in my mouth that I feel done with.

IF… and I am clear about the big IF on this sentence… WildChild does sell soon… I need to deliver her to St. Thomas by Dec 27th 2021. Then I will step off with nothing… and start my life over… from the beginning… like when I was 19. I have no family to turn to, nothing on land to return to. No place to go. I will start over… like a kid out of college. I have successfully turned my life’s saving $150,000 down into $40,000 but have one hell of a story to tell for it (and several interesting books).

At least I will have a bank account with some money to restart a new life, so that’s better off than when I was 19 and it was all debt.

OKAY… tomorrow I am ready to turn 30… and start over again.

Bring it on…

I am ready to face the next chapter of my life now

 

Evolution of Self

I was dancing last night and thinking…  I woke up early because my brain is in overdrive thinking about stuff…  I cannot function now because my brain is distracted thinking about things.

If you ever read back in my books to the first one… Crazy winds… the beginning of my life / age panic… who was that girl…?  She was soft and sweet and innocent and such a big chicken. She was so gullible and naive. She trusted everyone and thought the whole world was full of lovely nice happy people who would never want to hurt you. Such a sheltered and Naive Canadian girl. Such a sucker.

 

 

I had such high hopes for this sailing dream. I used to love sailing, the world was my oyster and I was going to circumnavigate the globe. I would explore all the wonderful people and wonderful cultures all over this planet. I had no idea it was such a nasty place. The brutality of life outside of Canada had not permeated my zeitgeist yet.

And I jumped right in…head  long… 100% commitment. I gave up everything for this dream. I dedicated every waking breath to get here. I sacrificed everything to reach out and grab this dream.

 

 

I was so naive…  so dumb… just dumb… completely clueless…

You can read the books to see how things turned out. Nothing ever goes to plan. Nothing ends the way you think it will…. but the ride was not boring.

I look at that silly girl and just sigh…

 

 

I was always clear about my limits… right from the beginning I said to my boyfriend…

I NEVER NEVER WANT TO BE ALONE OUT HERE…

I WILL NEVER NEVER BE A SOLO SAILOR…

IT’S TOO CRAZY FOR ME..

I CANNOT DO IT..!

I was totally sure it was beyond my limits. I am a delicate flower that needs protecting. I am all soft and mushy inside, emotionally very sensitive and clearly not strong enough to face such crazy things. I need a knight in shining armour to protect me, and my boyfriend pretended to be just that, it was all a con job though. He was an aggressive predator pretending to be a safe protector. He turned out to be the one I needed protecting from.

 

 

Just for fun    CLICK ON THIS LINK    and go check out this girl…  she is just… soo… kinda cute… kinda chicken… The raw power of the open ocean was so overwhelming…     so intimidating…    so massive in scale…     it scared me. You can feel it in your bones and when you truly feel it for the first time… it is an intense experience that will change you. The North Atlantic is not the Caribbean, it’s bigger and stronger.

I have been out here for years now… years…. and I have done it… nobody can take that away from me. No matter how much you may dislike me…    you have to respect me, I earned that.

I am a very different person now…

 

 

I am not too sure who I have turned into. I wonder about this often. I am different now. I do not eat shit from anybody. I am impossible to push around. I am so strong it’s scary. I am intimidating. I am a lot wiser than I used to be, book smarts graduating into life experience and melting into wisdom.

I am not a good girl anymore, and I don’t want to be. In fact take all of your expectations of me and shove em up your ass. I will not fit myself into your expectations anymore. Whatever box you have created for me in your head… what ever limits you have placed on me in your mind… FUCK YOU..!   I am beyond your control anymore. I am outside the matrix of social controls. You cannot hold me down with your limiting thoughts anymore.

Now I know I am a POWERFUL girl

My whole life I was held down by other people’s minds and beliefs and expectations, repressed by the victim role assigned me at birth. I was so easy to push around and the world did at every opportunity. Empaths are so very easy to walk on, wounded puppies even easier to kick.

but… not anymore…

 

Next Steps

So my yacht broker is keeping me from racing forth… trying to keep me from jumping too soon…. it can still fall thru…  but I can feel it… this deal will happen. God has planned it… this new young couple needs WildChild for their future path…  and I need to get out.

I have been saying for a while now… and still say it…  When I get out…  I will turn my back on the ocean and sailing. The personna of Captain Lexi will die. In fact I never plan on telling anyone in my future that I know anything about sailing or the ocean. I will never step near the salty ocean again… I hate the salt.

I have no idea what my new life will be… it is completely unknown to me…

My online presence will evaporate and I will disappear…

but we had an interesting ride together…

 

but I do know…

nothing ever goes according to plan huh…?

 

Let us see what tomorrow brings…

 

Wild Captain Lexi

 

… the still lost… optimist …