Well… I know I chose an odd title for this blog, considering how difficult my life usually is, but I think it is important to appreciate the good things too. If it were not for the larger more global problems pressing down upon my soul one could almost look at most individual days of my life lately and conclude “wow Lexi… your life is perfect…” in a childlike almost pure truthfully innocent way.
If you have half an hour to spare, escape your world and join me in mine, get all caught up.
Crew Training and Sealegs
The sail getting to Long island previous to that last blog, working on helping miss Daisy keep her Sealegs, we under canvassed the sails in winds just hovering below sporty conditions. Miss Daisy now takes her seasickness tablets every time before we sail, and… to keep her comfortable I decided to very undersail WildChild that time. Double reefed main, 30% genny and running cutter rigged with the storm sail deployed, for balance in my CLE, we had a delightful sail (see image above) in winds averaging 20 knots broad reach.
I think last I shared, the girls of WildChild were still on Long island Bahamas and we had just gone to explore the blue hole there. The next day after that blog released we set sail for an easy passage 25 miles west to Georgetown Bahamas, cruiser mecca down here. There was a high pressure system that had just passed over and the seas were super calm. Miss Daisy still took her pill but conditions were delightful under full sails in light winds and there was no vomiting.
I was finally able to give my crew her first training sail in lovely easy sailing conditions. With rather light winds around 10 knots there is little risk of breaking anything. So I could post her up on deck and have her watch the sails as I wiggled WildChild too tight to the wind, watch the sails react, then fall off, then fall off too much until the sails luff again. Watch and feel the response of the boat, watch the ticklers and study the airflow over the sails. When sailing beam reach, feel the sails switch from wings to parachutes as the physics of the boat change, feel the deck under you feel different. Listen to the yacht as she talks to you.
I let my crew go to the genny sheet winch and let the sheet go too slack, clue too far forward, then sheet it in perfectly, then sheet it in too much, feel how the boat changes. This is the best way to learn sailing, and I was much overdue to give this training gift to my young jedi apprentice.
Miss Daisy is almost ready to graduate from novice baby sailor to fully trained crew member. We will have to put her thru the graduation ceremony soon, introduce her to Neptune and get her formally registered in his books as a real sailor. I am so proud of this girl, still the best crew ever, and better everyday.
I need to find a way to bribe her to stay all the way back to Canada, I have tried chocolate and candy and everything yummy I can think of. This girl is hard to bribe and wonderfully loyal to her family and her boyfriend back home.
I respect loyalty
The all Girl Sailing Team
Although WildChild remains on her mission to get home, we are still waiting for winter to abate further north. We are not in a rush to leave the Bahamas, so we do take time to enjoy the tropical beauty all around us. Sailing days are balanced with working days are balanced with relaxing days. I am so grateful to miss Daisy for just being perfect crew and actually making my life easier, I try to reward her with as much fun and cool stuff as I can, when I can.
You know, as a tangent, if you will indulge me for a moment… other cruisers, good friends, sometimes say to me “Lexi… you just have to find someone to sail with you, whose company you enjoy, and who will actually help you, and you will discover this cruising life can be pretty nice…” said with loving concern. Their wisdom has not been lost on me, solo sailing is rather horrible, I have done enough of it. It seems, that with miss Daisy onboard, my lost twin sister, best friend, secret clone, Jedi apprentice, I am finally beginning to enjoy my cruising life.
It will be horribly sad when she leaves and I return to either isolation and loneliness, or back to random crew that are very ego driven and self centered living with me. BUT…. with miss Daisy as crew, and being in the Bahamas…
I have to say…
someday’s my life is perfect.
Dinghy Engine Fight
Given that Georgetown Bahamas is so very well protected for cruising yachts, has a good grocery store, beautiful beaches, and good holding, WildChild made it a long stop for about 5 days to recover.
If you have been following along with the videos, quite a few have released in the last 10 days, you saw we spent 11 hours fighting to repair our stubbornly broken dinghy engine CLICK HERE to see the video I am referring to. That was misery I would choose not to repeat, but.. on the bright side, I learned a whole lot about how my dinghy engine works.
The hardest part about being the Captain, is having to make good decisions with bad information, and being responsible for everything… all the time. Although I am a very well trained service engineer, my specialties are in the electromagnetic spectrum, electricity to electronics to lasers, I am NOT an engine mechanic. Given the choice I would never in my life wreck my nails to repair an engine, but being the Captain, the freedom of choice is removed from me.
When the dinghy engine does not work, I must fix it… end of story. I have no money to pay other people to do it for me, and honestly, finding actually qualified mechanics is very difficult out here. So one day last week my crew and I set the dinghy engine on on the companionway hatch in the cockpit and began to tear it apart. Slowly troubleshooting system by system to logically deduce the problem, diagnose a thing we barely understand.
I made the video to reach out for help, and got wonderfully kind and helpful replies from many men with engine skills, I am so grateful for everyone’s help. Nobody though, could give me the answer I needed.
How high or low should the venturi tube in the carb bowl be set to?
Although I have now greatly educated myself on how these scary machines work, nobody could help me understand at what height should the fuel in the bowl be adjusted to reach with the float? and…. how high or low should the very adjustable venturi tube be set? Even mechanics didn’t know this answer.
The venturi tube is highly adjustable, thus giving the impression it needs to be specifically set to a specific height. Given that we kept having a fuel starvation problem, and did fix a bunch of fuel supply issues, that did not fix the problem, I was beginning to conclude it had something to do with the float, the cut off needle and the venturi tube height.
What I did not understand, is… should the venturi tube be adjusted to just be at the surface of the fuel in the bowl? like to develop suction does it’s tip need to be just at the surface of the fuel? Or is it merely a straw that just needs to be fully immersed in the fuel? Then why is so adjustable? Why is the float so adjustable too?
My ignorance had me pinned into a very frustrating corner.
But… eventually my peeps came thru for me (THANK YOU SO MUCH ALL OF YOU) and I began to figure it out thru scientific reasoning and experimentation.
The answer is…
the Tube is a straw fully immersed in fuel
the adjustments serve no purpose at all
Once I got that all worked out, I began to find my way slowly to victory.
Stocking Island
The most famous place in the Bahamas, is the Chat-n-Chill bar on Stocking island. Although I generally have a distaste for touristy places, I wanted to reward my crew for just being so helpful and kind to me. Daisy did suffer all day with me trying to repair the dinghy engine too. So we thought a good medium test of our handiwork would be to dinghy the 0.7 nm over to visit the most famous beach in the Bahamas.
I will not waste too much of your attention and reading time on this place as you can just CLICK HERE to go see the video for yourself.
I will say we did spend a wonderful relaxing day there. I allowed life to be good again, soak it up when you can right?
We noticed that beside the little hut serving tourists conch foods, in the water, we could see rays swimming in very close to shore. Curious, we both wandered over to see what was going on. What is interesting, is that as the men kill the conch and butcher it up and throw the scraps into the water, it attracts the rays in. The water being too shallow for any sharks to get in to compete for the free food.
It was kind of cool to see the little rays swim right up to your feet.
Character and Killing
What interested me was miss Daisy’s response. To give you some context, she is also a highly sensitive empath whose compassion scores so high she became a vegan to reduce animal suffering. As you can imagine she does not want to see anything get killed. When we snorkel together she would never let me kill any lobster we find. So I found it interesting that she had the courage and strength to stare the issue in the eye. She did not shy away, as most sensitive people would do.
She met the rays, noticed the feeding, watched the conch killing, embraced her own emotional reaction, then walked away. She faced her emotional reaction and processed in a very mature healthy way. Most people, optimists in particular, cannot face unpleasant or uncomfortable emotions, thus they avoid facing them. I am not sure why this incident stuck out for me so much, but Daisy had the strength to face unpleasant emotions, she earns my respect more and more everyday.
Interestingly, two days ago, while sailing up here to Guana Cay, I was trolling a fishing line and hooked a large Mahi Mahi. Being very respectful of my crews beliefs and super high compassion level for animals I was concerned about how she would handle the coming horror. I am also a very emotionally sensitive empath but I am at peace with being a carnivore. On this Daisy and I differ.
If you have been following along, you know that everytime I kill a fish, it is a traumatic bloodbath that I cry thru and causes me nightmares later. I have the strength to face this reality, but I worried about the emotional damage the coming scene would cause sweet gentle miss Daisy. I offered her to go wait below when I get the large fish into the boat, to not watch the killing, to spare her the nightmares. I was sure my own emotional reaction would not ease the impact of the coming scene.
What I found interesting, is that miss Daisy had the strength of character and courage to stay, to not shy away, or hide from the reality, but she faced it, stayed and watched the whole horrible scene. She watched me stick a knife into this magnificent creatures brain, watched me sobbing and shaking afterwards, and she faced her own unpleasant feelings. Daisy faced her own emotional reaction with courage and strength of character.
I really respect this girl
Can you do this girls..? Can you look a living creature in the eyes as you murder it for food? If you cannot, maybe you should not be eating meat either. Miss Daisy has made this choice, but she allows me to make a different choice, she respects my right to make the opposite choice with the same information. She respects me for being able to kill my food where she cannot.
After the fish was dead and butchered up and put into the freezer we both cried for a while. Fishing was done for the day.
I worry I might have traumatized my crew with this scene.
It was truly horrible
Exploring Georgetown
With a now almost reliable dinghy engine, we decided the next day to make our way over to Georgetown proper to provision and explore and have a land adventure. We motored WildChild a mile across the enclosed bay to shorten the dinghy ride and launched the dinghy to go to town the next day.
I know I warn you all the time to believe me when I say that food in the Bahamas is prohibitively expensive. There was a wonderful grocery store here and we did go a little bit crazy stocking up on food. A medium full shopping cart, about 4 bags of food, cost us almost $500 usd to get. Provisioning heavy when Daisy first arrived in the Dominican Republic was the right thing to do.
Before the grocery stop though, which we did at the end of our day, we got to go for a hike around and explore. I bought myself a pretty pink shell necklace to add to my exotic look (ha ha ha) and miss Daisy bought a small ankle bracelet for herself.
I noticed as we walked around this very touristy place, that there were very many signs asking people to be respectful and not litter, put your garbage in the trash bin please. Nothing that you would even think twice about, as a well brainwashed dirt dweller. It struck me as interesting though, because I have been down in the tropics a long time and I know better.
You will never find a sewage treatment plant in these islands, you will also not find a recycling facility, and often not even a garbage dump. I also know the locals have not had the benefit of the social brainwashing you have been raised with, and usually don’t even have a part of their brain that cares about “protecting the environment“. So to see so many signs in such a touristy place, was for whose benefit?
Miss Daisy and I walked to the edge of the tiny town and took the first rural road we could find. I wanted to go for a hike and get as far from the salty air near the ocean as I could. I live a blue life and dream about returning to a more green life someday.
As the two of us continued our walk along this dirt track exploring nature outside of town I could not help but notice the road was lined with trash. Like the entire road from start to the mile we walked inland along it. We saw everything from old abandoned rusty vehicles to piles and piles of glass bottles and trash of every sort.
After you dutifully place your garbage into the trash bin, where do you imagine the locals empty that trash bin? When you carefully separate your recyclables what do you think the locals do with them later? I have been here long enough to know the answer.
I am just saying people, try not to be naive. The real world is a mess. People suck, and governments suck more, and corporations suck the most. It’s just reality.
The Rescue
Please forgive me in the telling of this true story, I do not remember anybody’s name, so I will make some up to ease the story telling.
After my crew and I had finished provisioning around 6pm, we were loading all the new food into my pink dinghy (which Daisy has now named Penny) at the dinghy dock behind the store.
As we were loading up we saw a bartender and our new friend Ben and his wife Millie were helping a very drunk American man down the dock towards us. The man’s sweet and adorable girlfriend Jane, following along trying to convince her highly intoxicated boyfriend to be cooperative. The guy was completely smashed and honestly, Jane’s embarrassment was completely understandable, his behaviour was shameful.
We had met Ben and Millie earlier in the day, former sailors, here on vacation, are wonderful and amazing people. Their act of kindness helping the bartender and Jane get super drunk guy loaded into their dinghy was in character for them. The lady Jane was so grateful for everyone’s help and she was just apologizing to everyone involved.
We were not really part of the scene, except for the fact it was occuring right beside us as we loaded our groceries into our adjacent dinghy.
Drunky dinghy left for the open waters of the outside anchorage about 3 minutes before we did. As we are coming out under the tunnel into the open waters we see the dinghy ahead of us. It seemed weird as they had a 3 minute head start on us. We thought perhaps their dinghy engine died and they might need a tow. Our dinghy engine now working spectacularly, we would be happy to help out.
I slow Penny down as we approach their dinghy now stalled in the waters ahead of us. We angle closer to close the distance. Jane sees us and suddenly screams help with panic in her voice. We move up beside their dinghy and Jane does not even wait for us to raft up before she throws herself into our dinghy on top of our groceries. She is crying and bleeding and hysterically terrified.
The look of shock and raw terror in her eyes still haunts me as she yells “he beat me… he beat me…!“. She is shaking and clearly in shock. We did not actually see him strike her, but her $500 glasses were now gone and there was a bleeding cut across the bridge of her nose and blood dripping from a nasty cut on her hand.
She turns to face the dunk man we are now drifting safely away from and she screams at him… “you beat me… you beat me… you hit me you asshole..!” her shock now turning to anger. The drunk guy is a big powerful man, and he is so sloshed he sits there alone in his drifting dinghy staring at us in silence.
Us two girls are doing our best to shelter and comfort Jane and try to get cohesive information out of her. What now? What does she want to do now?
We return her to the dinghy dock where Ben and Millie, who must have seen some of the scene from shore, arrived to rescue her. They assure us they will help take care of Jane and help her figure things out.
Poor Jane, I know nothing of her boyfriend, the man she was living on a boat with, sharing this cruising life dream with, but she was very shocked he actually beat her. I would assume such violence had never been part of their relationship before.
Not all sailing adventures end well huh?
I had a lot of empathy for lady Jane, my sailing dream was destroyed by a drunk man hitting me 3 years ago. I remember the shock, the fear, and the anger too. I had a lot of empathy for lady Jane. Drunk men destroy so much.
Poor girl…. <hugs>
I Hit Bottom Again
The next day WildChild set sail for here, where I sit now writing this blog, Guana Cay near Staniel Cay Exumas. I will not dwell on this very frustrating story too much as I covered it pretty well in the video CLICK HERE to see the video.
I know exactly how dangerous my sailing life is, I know how quickly WildChild’s story can become a tragedy. It is thru great skill wisdom intelligence courage strength and perseverance that this story continues well. Being the Captain is super stressful and super hard. Any idiot can be a boat owner or a skipper, but to be a Captain you have to be successful, earn your title by limiting your mistakes.
I am proud of how good a Captain I am, I have earned my title the hard way. I have proven myself on the ocean. I have succeeded where so many others have failed. I still make mistakes, and I own them everytime, I learn from them, get better and move forward. So it annoys me so much when I hit bottom. I am so irritated by this story.
To get out of the northern cut to Georgetown I had to get WildChild’s very deep 8 foot keel thru many shallow shifting sand bars. I had to make decisions of unknown waters on the fly, decide quickly, based upon available information and my own experience. I try so hard to always make the correct decision, but so often I have to make decisions with little to no information, or in this case, with specifically wrong information.
I hope to forgive myself soon. My crew was right there with me thru this horrible gut wrenching event and she easily forgives me. Even she could see the impossibility of the decisions I had to make. Captain’s life is very stressful, being Captain is very hard, always flirting with disaster.
Watch the video and decide for yourself.
Iguana’s and Thunderball Groto
Despite the awful start to the last sail, the rest of the day went great. I think 8 hours having a lovely sail, caught a huge mahi mahi and got to anchor safely here. Originally I wanted to go over to CAT island, because I have never been there before, but I knew Daisy would enjoy this place. My gift to her was to alter the course of the yacht for this Cay to thank my crew again for her help.
Right now we are anchored in front of a beautiful white sand tropical beach full of large iguanas. Three miles north of us is Thunderball Groto where the 1965 James Bond movie was filmed, and a few others. I thought my crew would enjoy hanging out with the rich people who come here to this magical place. Two days ago we launched our dinghy and walked the beach full of lizards, made friends with the lizard king. You can CLICK HERE to see the video released about all this stuff.
Funny side story here. There was this one smaller female lizard that was irresistibly attracted to Miss Daisy’s ass. Everytime miss Daisy turn her behind to this one lizard it always came out and made a run for her butt. Miss Daisy is obviously a super sexy chica with a rockin hot bod but it seems her ass is irresistible to reptiles… ha ha ha… 🙂
I am clearly not reptilian sexy enough to attract the lady lizards as only the dominant alpha males had the courage to approach Captain Lexi. I am a very intimidating person dontcha know. 🙂
Yesterday we pushed Penny my pink dinghy the furthest she has ever gone. We dinghied 3 miles north to go find Thunderball groto and snorkel the caves. It was a very long dinghy ride in hot tropical sun, but the caves were amazing to dive despite being a tourist spot full of rich people. Daisy and I both really enjoyed our perfect lives in paradise yesterday.
We also found out that a little further north, around into the mega yacht anchorage on the west side of Big Major’s island is the famous place with the swimming pigs. Although I have no particular interest in swimming with farm animals miss Daisy really wanted to go see them.
The dinghy engine had been doing well so far, so I made the decision to give it a go. We did find the pig beach exactly where the active captain notes said we would. The pigs can be very aggressive sometimes and I opted to just stay in the dinghy but Miss Daisy was brave enough to go to shore and meander amongst the wild pigs. She had a wonderful and happy day enjoying her now perfect life too.
Optimists say everything is great and wonderful all the time no matter what
Pessimists say everything is terrible all the time
Realists say enjoy the good mixed with the bad
I wonder where do you live in this spectrum?
Today I appreciate my life lately has been almost perfect, and I am grateful.
***
Okay…
cheers sailors and sailing fans…
that’s enough storytelling for today…
Back to reality for both of us huh…
My dinghy engine needs to be repaired again… it failed us yesterday 2 miles from returning home.
sigh… 🙁
Wild Captain Lexi
the grateful