I almost feel like I just wrote a blog update a few days ago but, alas, it seems as if two weeks has already just flown by. My life as of late has been so busy, I accept my reality, my life is NOT boring for sure. I have been so constantly busy that my YouTube videos have fallen behind too. I am unsure if I will just skip a bunch of stuff to get current, or make the inbetween videos. It is so hard to keep a sailing youtube channel current in time.

Let’s start now with the non-video stories here and see if later today I make a video for you or not.

 

 

Other Cultures

Let’s dig back into my fuzzy memory and time stamp this for you… hmmmm….  so like six days ago…?   (Saturday March 26th 2022)  Miss Daisy and I were still in the Dominican Republic moored in Luperon awaiting a weather window to make the passage up to the Bahamas. The intense week of her training was now completed and she has done amazingly.

One of the things I tell potential future crew…. is that I CAN teach you to sail… but I CANNOT teach you to be brave or strong or tough, you must arrive to the ship with those attributes already in your soul. Daisy has these qualities in abundance. The girl is easy to live with, very adaptable, easy going, free spirited hippy, and I think the most important quality…  she is a SIGMA female.

You can   CLICK HERE   to go back into the blog archives to read more about this concept if you have never heard the term before.

Miss Daisy is a world traveller and well adapted to exploring other cultures, I am not so okay with it. I am a naive sheltered Canadian girl, an empath who has a hard time understanding other cultures and why human beings behave so poorly towards each other, suffering still horrifies me. I am, however, learning to appreciate cultural differences when I find them. Some stuff I find interesting.

Back home in my ever so precious Canada, we train people who work with food handling, about things like germs and contamination and cross contamination. Everyone understands why you should wash your dishes well, be careful about spreading meat juices to other foods or surfaces, sterilize countertops, and most importantly do not serve food from the floor. The people of Dominican culture never get the benefit of any such training, they have no governing rules of health and safety protecting you the unsuspecting tourist.

My spoiled first world digestive system is simply not adapted to handle the plethora of bacteria and germs local food is often contaminated with. I stupidly ate local foods upon my arrival and quickly got icky tummy for my last week there. I had previously been thru this experience and already had the necessary meds onboard to treat myself for the condition, which has now cleared up.

 

 

We already knew, well in advance, from personal experience, that everything in the Bahamas is stupidly expensive. We knew to provision up heavy in the DR, which I mentioned last blog. The last things to be purchased before we left was fresh fruits and veg for my vegan crew, and fill the freezer with meat for this carnivore captain.

I had heard from other cruisers here that if you go to this store around the corner called Pollo Ruth and go upstairs, the “butcher” will custom cut up whatever you need. I was told I can get boneless chicken breasts there.

It was an experience to say the least.

With bugs and dirt all over the fresh produce Daisy and I picked out the best of the farm fresh produce we could and filled a few bags of goodies. Next I pulled out my phone and using google translate, asked the “butcher” about the possibility of getting a bunch of boneless chicken breasts. The translating and language barrier did not go so well but the man was very friendly about it. Through the translator app and various different phrasings I got my request thru and he happily agreed to help the weird gringa chica.

 

 

He reaches into a chest freezer and grabs a bunch of dead plucked whole chickens out of a bucket. He brings them to the little uncleaned counter that I have watched him using for the last 20 minutes to serve other customers other meats. He then pulls a chicken out at a time from a bag and puts them down on the bloody filthy uncleaned green cutting board, grabs a machete out of the wooden block on the floor beside him, and begins hacking the limbs off the dead birds. Limbs go into one pile on the dirty counter and breasts go into a different pile.

He then takes the same unwashed filthy knife he has been using all day and begins to slice the meat off the breast bone for me. The entire room appears to never get a good cleaning and there is a sticky film on the tiled walls. You cannot have this cultural experience in Canada and I watch in fascination as I wonder if this meat will later make me sick to my tummy again. Am I bringing more contaminated food into the ships stores?

Maybe it’s better to just not think about such things huh…?

 

Checking out of the DR

In the past, I had not been kind to the government of the DR, relating to their money extortion process on the sailors about fees and check in and check out procedures. What I have learned recently though, is that the Government of the DR remained the same, despite “free” elections for the last twenty years. All of the local people knew full well that government was wildly corrupt. It seems 2 years ago they managed to elect a new government which promised to clean up the corruption.

 

 

I think you can see the effect of that change already. The government officials in Luperon are kinder and friendlier and the process simplified and some of the old “fees” removed. Check in procedure was actually very easy ($120usd painful still) and the biggest change is in the attitude of the Navy. The Dominican Republic is actually one of the most free places you can live, except that cruiser bay in Luperon, they keep their thumb on that bay the locals tell me.

The Navy has visibly lightened up though. When you arrive the Navy guy Richard from M2 Naval intelligence, will beg a dinghy ride from someone and come out to your boat (the navy does not have their own working boat) and board you upon arrival and inspect your vessel for drugs or immigrants. When you leave he needs to reinspect your vessel and give you a despacho, but he does it with a friendly smile now.

He is a bit weird though. He seems to need to take a picture of every cruiser holding up their passports beside their face. He also seemed to make a last minute decision to take “extra” photos of the pretty white girls that I suspect were more for personal use. You cannot say no to the authority of the Navy, but it was creepy weird.

There were no extra service “fees” slapped on this time for permission to leave, which was nice. The kinder nicer more yachty friendly government of the DR.

 

Captains Mistakes

Long time readers know I have a very open and direct way about me. I will always call a spade a spade. Good or bad, I write freely about everything interesting, no political correctness filter in me. I have in the past called out the mistakes of crew, because they affect me. I do not want you to get the impression that I am in any way perfect though. I make mistakes all the time, my mistakes however, are usually more subtle and usually have bigger consequences than crew mistakes I have to catch.

Also the thing the Captain can never escape, is that the Captain is ultimately responsible for everything on the boat, including crew mistakes. If the crew fucks up, it’s the Captains responsibility. All authority and responsibility begins and ends with the Captain, its the source of my eternal stress. Mother nature has no respect for finger pointing when she punishes all mistakes.

I had extensively been training my new crew for a week but we had very little hands on training yet before we set off for the Bahamas. The DR still does not allow day sailing, thou shall not leave your mooring without Navy permission is still paramount there. Daisy had not had any actual day sailing experience yet.

So after we provisioned and checked out, we took WildChild out to the outer bay Sunday morning to run the water maker and wait for the winds to shift out of the WNW (directly on the nose for our intended course). I was also trying to time our arrival in Great inagua to be NOT at night. 180 miles is an awkward day and a half 28-36 hour distance.

So my plan was leave later afternoon Sunday when the winds get better, sail in the calmer night winds, sail all day Monday, sail the calmer night winds Monday night, arrive Tuesday morning, 28-36 hours later. The problem is, the speed of the boat can vary greatly according to the winds and sea conditions, which could be anything. Mother never reads our forecast models.

 

 

In the bay, while anchoring, just as Daisy dropped the anchor, I LOST TRANSMISSION CONTROL…!   My heart stops as I realize I cannot put the prop into gear in either direction. I adrenaline rush with fear, this is bad and might be very bad depending on what exactly is wrong. We just lost the engine!

🙁

We are at anchor in a safe bay so I thankfully have time to solve this problem too. After I calm myself down from the terror rush and stop panicking, my engineer brain can begin to think, work the problem girl.

I got lucky, it was a simple problem that I managed to fix in about an hour. The transmission cable sheath is supposed to be fastened to the red steel arm off the transmission assembly. It holds the sheath still so the inside cable can exert force on the transmission lever arm. The cable did not snap or fail, it was fine, the fastener rusted away and failed.

I hate the ocean.     🙁

 

 

Brilliant Captain Lexi switches to her dirty work bikini, pulls out the tools, crawls down into the engine hole, and solves the problem with a brilliant MacGyver like solution within an hour. Yacht repaired and ready to go again. My stressful Captains life.

While dirty already, I also cleaned the boat speed paddle wheel sensor and replaced the failed bilge pump float switch. It is important that the yacht is in good condition before she leaves for this next passage. My crew was wonderful thru all of this, emotionally supported me thru it, cheered me up, and helped assist me thru everything. She remained a helpful member of my team the whole time, two is stronger than one, and with this girl on my team, this is a powerful girl boat now.

Captain’s mistakes. I never inspected the rusty cable bit that failed me, I should have noticed it before. I did not even understand anything about it, never bothered to learn in advance so I was not prepared for such a thing, my ignorance landed on me hard. I have been ignoring problems with that bilge float switch for months now, knowing it was not quite right but never facing it earlier. I planned the departure time wrong, we arrived in the dark.

and….   

the colossal one…

We hit bottom next..!

 

Hitting Bottom

After suffering thru all these last minute boat repairs, and running the water maker, WildChild was finally ready to go by 3pm. The winds had picked up and began clocking around to the north 3 hours later than forecast. I decided it was time to lift the anchor and go, another mistake, I should have waited until sunset, I times it wrong.

My crew and I were sitting in the cockpit together when I made the last minute Go/No-Go decision to begin the jump. Fuck it… let’s do this crazy thing. I look Daisy in the eyes and get serious. I know what is about to come and I know how potentially dangerous this can get fast. I NEED HER… I need her to step up to the plate. I know she is still a baby sailor but I need her to be an advanced sailor now.

We need to motor out directly into 20 knots of wind and snake our way out of this harbour winding around the reefs thru the narrow shallow channel entrance with an engine that has just failed us. We cannot sail out if the engine suddenly fails again. I need to remain at the helm and I need her to be perfect lifting up the anchor alone in these sporty conditions.

I have such a serious look in my eyes as I explain all this to miss Daisy. She understands the seriousness of what we are about to do. Daisy is brave smart strong and tough. She is on my team, she will give 100%.

Daisy has been well trained, as all my crew are, on how to raise and lower the anchor. WildChild is a race boat with a shallow anchor locker. She was not designed to have a windlass. When I installed it years ago I knew its limitation was, the chain does not have 2 meters clearance to drop after it leaves the windlass gypsy. It has about 20 inches and piles up quickly. My crew needs to pull the chain forward by hand as it piles up. Draw in 5-10 feet of chain only at a time, then move the pile of chain forward out of the way.

 

 

Daisy is doing great lifting the anchor and my transmission repair is working. It is sporty windy in here with limited room to maneuver but things start out good. I am using the engine to slowly move towards the anchor and Daisy is up on the bow lifting the anchor chain with the windlass exactly as she has been trained to do.

Everything is going fine. 

Just as we get above the anchor, and it begins to break free I suddenly see Daisy having problems up on deck. She yells back to me “it’s stuck… it doesn’t work…” and I get suddenly gripped with fear again. We have just broken our anchor loose and are now drifting backwards towards the shallows behind us with limited room to move and she cannot bring up the anchor, now dragging the bottom. This is the worst thing at the most vulnerable moment for a yacht, not anchored, not clear to motor around, not safe.

This is BAD fast…

Fuck fuck fuck fuck….  I run out from behind the helm as my boat is now drifting towards the shallows and I run up on deck to see what has happened. Daisy didn’t pull the chain forward, it piled up, jammed the windlass, loosened the slip clutch plates, and blew the fuse. Her mistakes are always my fault. We both try to work the chain free by hand and rip it out of the jam to free it again. The windlass still doesn’t work, the boat is drifting into danger out of control.

I think I know this one, I run down below and find the breaker for it, its blown open, I reset it. I yell up to her standing above me, “try it now“. She yells back that its turning but not lifting the chain. Fuck I know this one too, the slip clutch needs to be tightened with the special tool. The slip clutch released tension to save the motor as it is designed to do, now needs to be tightened.

I run up on deck again, and put the engine into gear slowly and aim it for the big red channel mark at the entrance, red on port side leaving, keep the green on right side, stay between the channel marks. I call Miss Daisy back to the helm and tell her to just slowly aim for the red buoy and keep it to our left side. I give her visual navigation cues to follow, hand steer us safely into deeper waters please.

My HUGE mistake. 

 

 

I cannot see the information now on the chart plotter as I am racing forward. I do not see that east shoal we are heading for. I have no time to spare double checking myself, we cannot keep motoring forward dragging the anchor on the bottom, its gonna snag a rock and stop us hard and fast any second now.

I have to get the anchor up FAST…!

I sprint forward, fix the slip clutch, and begin hauling the anchor up with the now working windlass. I get the anchor safely secured to the bow roller and everything seems fine again… but…  I peer down to the water below me on the bow… oh shit… that’s too shallow! I sprint back to the helm yelling at Daisy check your depths.

I arrive at the helm, move Daisy aside, and assess the information fast. I realize too late, we are too far east in the channel for our 8 foot keel. The depth is falling… 10 feet…  9 feet… engine in neutral… 8 feet…. the boat comes to a stop as the keel softly burries in the mud.

Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck…  I am so frustrated as I try not to cry and begin working the engine back and forth, trying to break my keel free. We are stuck… she’s not coming free…!   I get such a sinking feeling. I really made many mistakes to get myself into this horrible position. I have really fucked up big this time. I want to kick myself in my own ass and scream. So many small mistakes compounding so fast.

I have no idea if we are on a rising or falling tide, another mistake, I should have checked that before we lifted anchor and forgot to. If this is a falling tide, we are not leaving today, we will be truly stuck until next high tide.

Luckily it’s a rising tide, and with onshore winds blowing waves towards us, eventually we do get just enough little swelly lift for me to work my keel free and back out. I spin her 160 degrees and go backwards towards deeper water and move WildChild around to exit the middle of the channel. We get out safely and raise the sails and sail away 20 minutes later.

My huge mistake… stupid stupid Lexi…  I should have instructed my crew to follow our old pink entrance line on the chart plotter… as the road out. Leave the same path you entered… sailing 101. Instead I had her heads up staying between the channel markers, gave her visual navigation cues. She has never ever taken a helm before, this is not her fault. Even though all the information was available to her at the helm to see this danger coming, and she has had hours and hours of helm training, this is her first time ever taking a helm, she has ZERO experience.

This is completely my fault and all on me. 

The Captain’s life is horribly stressful

 

Sailing to the Bahamas

Despite our rough start to this passage, once we get out to deeper waters, Daisy does amazing helping me get the sails raised. I decide to run double reefed main and 50% genny. I have given myself more time on the start of this passage as a time buffer should this weather window decide to close earlier than forecast. We have lots of time and do not need to sail hard and fast. Slow controlled and gentle will be good for a first sail for my baby crew.

Poor Miss Daisy…  within about 20 minutes of getting the sails raised she starts to not feel right. She gets hit by seasickness and is soon incapacitated. I think she was worried this might happen to her, and we both knew it was a possibility, but I need her. I cannot solo sail this 36 hour passage alone, I must sleep eventually.

 

 

I also do not want to dwell too much on her misery but it is important to the sailing story. This girl was the most seasick of any person who has ever sailed on WildChild. This very tough girl sat without complaint tolerating her bodies revolt to this constant motion. She puked every hour for like 13 hours. She could not keep anything down and soon was at serious risk of dehydration and kidney problems.

Despite this being a very lovely pleasant sail, one of the nicest WildChild has had in months, waves below 1 meter, rather calm ocean. Easy beam reach light winds and the boat not going hard or too fast, Daisy’s body hated this.

I have gotten many people thru seasickness and Daisy was wonderful about listening to the Captains advice and not fighting me (men always resist and argue). I keep Gatorade onboard for just such situations, if someone is vomiting a lot and cannot keep anything down, we have to rehydrate them and replace lost electrolytes anyway we can. I got her sipping gatorade and nibbling crackers to help control the building stomach acid sloshing around in her tummy.

 

 

Seasickness occurs when the eyes and the ears disagree about the motion of the body, when the two orientation systems disagree. The human brain orients itself to gravity by visually seeing the horizon and seeing it is moving up and down, side to side… and the inner ear fluid also senses gravity. When these two systems disagree you get seasick. I kept Daisy watching the horizon from the vomit port and she fought the vomiting off as best she could.

This got me worried though, Daisy is a tough girl but her body is failing her, this is not her fault and there is nothing she can do about it…  BUT….  I need to be training her right now. Hands on practical training experience, because in 9 hours… I need to leave her alone at the helm.

I MUST SLEEP soon

the seizures are coming for me

By around midnight Captain Lexi’s brain will begin to fail as the seizures and electrical activity begins to overwhelm me. The whole reason I NEED crew for overnight passages. I cannot function between midnight to about 4am..! My brain will shut down no matter what anybody says.

Daisy is completely disabled with seasickness… and it’s pretty bad. She is at risk of serious kidney problems soon as a complication of severe dehydration. I keep taking care of her but it’s not getting better.

I solo sail as long as I can and try to let her rest and control her tummy.

By 1am…  I just can’t anymore…  I call her to the helm…  “Daisy… I need you now…” I say into the darkness. Bless that tough chic, she gets up and comes sit behind the helm with me. She fights thru her seasickness and focuses on my words. I give her the most basic instructions to keep us safe in the darkness. I have WildChild under canvassed (reduced sail area) so Daisy will not have to do anything if we get gusted in the dark, the yacht should shake off anything up to 30 knots of wind and I have slowed her way down.

God bless that girl… despite feeling awful there was no way she was going to let her team down. She tethered in behind the helm for me and did what she had to do, vomiting about every hour or so. She kept watch and called me awake the 2 times we had to avoid collisions with large passing cargo ships. I am terrified of getting run over by the huge cargo ships out here in the dark, I am invisible to them.

We arrive off the south shore of Great Inagua island by around midnight of the second night. We arrive in the dark..!   For the last 60 miles I did everything I could to slow WildChild down to try to arrive by sunrise. We were sailing with no headsail at all and only a double reefed main, still I could not get WildChild to hold speed below 5 knots. She is just too fast a girl.

We were about to perform a night landing on a foreign shore at 2am while my exhausted brain is in seizure mode. Clearly I screwed this up too, I kept making mistakes. If I had done my job well we would have either arrived before dark or after sunrise, but dead in the middle of the night was not good timing for me. I could not have timed our landing worse.

but do you know what we did about it…?   

We faced it and dealt with it…

cause that’s sailing. 

 

 

Check in Horror

We all know that Captain Lexi is bureaucratically retarded. I make no pretense about understanding any of the government stupidity I am forced to submit to constantly. I also absolutely hate it and never never want to face it.

Bahamas is the worst of it…. holy shit that was horrible.

You all know my rebel spirit and disinterest in submitting to any of this paperwork bullshit. I avoided all the previous english islands paperwork and fees and was debating not formally checking into the Bahamas either, they will never know.

I decided to be a good girl though and submit to the stupidity, my crew might want to fly home from this country and they don’t let you fly out of a country you are not checked into. I must respect the risks I take with my crew’s life. I don’t care at all if someone eventually arrests me but I cannot risk getting my crew arrested.

Well… it seems… that Covid has prompted the Bahamas to invest into upgrading to computer databases and complicating this process to an insane extent. It seems now you are supposed to just know to go online to various websites and submit yourself to dozens of pages of stupidity from the comfort of your home computer before you come here.

WildChild showed up with 2 exhausted girls

no forms filled out

 

 

We made our way into the port authorities office the next day and met George. Lovely local man and the port controller. He delightfully helped us deal with everything to check-in to their beautiful country.

He called Jollie from immigration who came down to the port and personally helped us figure out how to submit to their stupid Covid Health Visa system online. She held our hands, and phones, and did much of the button pressing for us. She was amazingly helpful and kind to us.

I would be remiss to not share any of the details of this process though.

The online “HEALTH VISA” is crazy and stupid beyond reason. The fees substantial. in total it cost us $600 to check into the Bahamas, by far the most expensive process of the entire caribbean. The stupid system rejected us each 3 times for a health visa because it does not work properly. Jollie was able to phone in to Nassau to talk to someone to keep pushing this thru for us. Alone we could never have done this without help.

One time we got rejected because we did not upload the front cover of our vaccine certificates, but it never asked for that and did not provide a way to do that..!  Constant stupidity. I try not to cry.

We did end up being forced to Covid test here upon arrival which was cheaper than anywhere else. Why get vaccinated if you still get treated as unvaccinated? So stupid. We had to pay for a test voucher online $25. We had to pay $20 for the test. We had to then pay $40 for me ($50 for Daisy??? not sure why) for a health VISA that took 3 hours to get. Then had to pay $50 each in cash to immigration for permission to get our passports stamped.

 

 

Next George called in Luther from the Customs office who also helped walk us thru their stupid stupid, separate, online check in website for customs. I am not kidding when I tell you they really ask you if you have the plague onboard? Small pox? How many dead rats did you find onboard? How many crew died during the passage? Seriously… they literally ask these stupid questions. I’m not kidding.

 

 

Hours and hours using the port wifi on my phone trying to fill out dozens of pages of stupid questions on databases that function poorly. You have to give answers in drop down boxes that are poorly populated. Home port… not in the list… I put someplace random. Next port… I have no fuckin idea but somewhere in Florida… Cape Canaveral maybe might be nice….  not in the drop down box… I put something completely random. Home address again… i don’t have one, I put in something random. Contact phone number… i don’t have one… I just type in completely random numbers.

You struggle to not scream as you suffer the computerized stupidity and then suddenly for no reason the website kicks you out. You have a PCR number to find your partially saved forms when you login again, but no obvious place to enter it to retrieve your data and continue. Start over. I am boiling with frustration now, Daisy smiling and trying to keep me calm. This doesn’t bother her… I am going to lose my shit any second and scream.

5 hours and $600usd later… they allow us into their country.

That was fuckin hard and expensive misery

Honestly…

it was a mistake to check in and submit to this stupid system

I should not have bothered

 

Looking Forward

The anchorage outside of MathewTown, where we had to go to check in, was super rolly. Daisy stayed seasick for our 2 days there and lost her healthy appetite. I decided yesterday to move us around the corner to Man-O-War bay 7 miles away. Wonderfully Daisy did not get seasick for that short 2 hour upwind sail. So I think she is getting her sea legs finally.

 

 

Now that we are all legal into this country we are free to move about paradise. I have seen the entire Caribbean and honestly, the Bahamas is still the best of it. You can still clearly see the bottom even in 50 feet of water. The water is just crystal clear and clean, it’s amazing.

My crew Miss Daisy is a happy camper now enjoying her new life in paradise. She gets to read books and watch TV and swim in perfect tropical warm waters. Life is good again.

 

 

I got to dance naked on deck last night under the stars to vent out my stress and today I release the rest of my stress into this blog so I can let it all go and move forward now. There is good reason sailors always carry rum onboard.

We have a weather window opening up tomorrow to make a medium jump up to Acklins island. 80 miles is not a great distance either, like 14-18 hours is an awkward distance to cover during 13 hours of daylight. I am hesitant to do it over night if I don’t have to.

 

 

So far… in theory… conditions look good for a pleasant and lovely sail up to the next series of deserted tropical islands full of miles and miles of unpopulated beaches to explore. We are both hopeful Miss Daisy will not get seasick this time, hoping she now has her hard earned sea legs.

I guess it’s true… my life is anything but boring huh?

Cheers sailors and sailing fans…

I hope you enjoyed sharing my life for the last half an hour reading this…

 

Wild Captain Lexi

 

trying let the stress slip away