Hey again guys… I must make a confession… this was written a week ago and post dated for its release. Currently I am sailing across the Atlantic Ocean on a German boat headed to the Azores. I will be out on the Ocean for about the next 2 months until we get this boat somewhere near Hamburg Germany sometime in August. Given that all indicators are this will be an unusually active hurricane season and an early start to Hurricane season and I am sailing across on a Jeanneau… Lexi is a bit worried.
So my last week (May 25th to May 31st) has been a hectic one to say the least.
I will avoid all the dramatic details of how and why my crew left WildChild last week (2 weeks ago by the time this releases) but suffice it to say once I understood that my crew HAD to leave and there was no way peaceful cohabitation was going to be possible with her… no way she could possibly help me get to safety in Luperon… I realized Captain Lexi has to make some serious choices fast. Hurricane season is now upon us and I am in the middle of the hurricane zone.
By Wednesday May 27th Elena and all her stuff were dropped off at the Dinghy dock in Jolly harbor. She will be off to pursue her own adventures now. If you have been following the YouTube channel you can see some of the great adventures we had together. There were some great memories.
I have been working my butt off the last week to make things happen fast. You can see from the image above that I moved WildChild around to the mouth of Jolly Harbor by myself and got her anchored beside SV Roxy in the bay.
THE DECISION…
I DO NOT WANT TO BE ALONE ANYMORE…
I cannot bring in crew to help me…
This is not safe to just stay here waiting for the borders to eventually open again…
I give up waiting on my Canadian Embassy to get me permission to enter the Dominican Republic (Luperon) and I am running out of time to wait for them to take forever to help me.
I do not feel emotionally like just waiting with blind faith that the DR will open soon…?
I do not want to sail alone to either Grenada or Luperon…
I do not want to pay Grenada all their “extra” fees for permission to come there.
In conclusion… two and a half years continuously on the boat constantly carrying the weight of the Captains responsibilities… constant stress and fear… I need a break.
So I made a deal with the German boat… I will help get them home if they help me pay for some of my storage fees in the boat yard here in Jolly Harbor and they pay for my flight back “home” although I do not have a home on land anymore or actually anywhere to go… I do have friends I can stay with until the end of hurricane season.
Therefore… I have to get WildChild put up and away for the season fast .
Have you ever put a fully stocked provisioned cruising yacht away on short notice before…? It is a lot of work and I had only a few days to do it.
So it was time to get crackin in a hurry on the ever present to-do list on the boat. Fixing the spinnaker pole has been on my to-do list for two months and I have mentioned before that I have been working on it. It has also been consistently defeating me. The very stubborn pin just freakin refuses to budge. For the life on me I could not get the “fist” to open. Finally… in frustration I resorted to beating the thing with my red fire axe and performed the miracle… I got it open. Much as I had suspected the aluminum hole where the pin sits was filled with salt and corrosion and had seized the pin. The great news is my $6000 spinnaker pole is functioning again… YAY Lexi wins…! 🙂
As I thought of things that needed to be done I put them on my white board and spent 18 hours a day for 5 days crossing them off the list.
I was not planning to leave WildChild alone anywhere for hurricane season so she was fully stocked and fully provisioned with a lot of food. The German boat had no room in their freezer for all the meats I had onboard so I asked around to other cruisers if I could sell some food at a great discount to them. My boat neighbours from SV Roxy (wonderful people from Michigan) were so kind and so helpful. I was able to sell them all the extra fuel I had on my Jerry cans on deck and they emptied my freezer for me. What they could not take they shared with other cruisers.
Remove extra fuel…. check
Empty freezer…. check
Drop and store the sails… check
Pickle the water maker… check
on and on the chores go….
You already know the long fight I had with my Barrient 23 deck winches, and I was thinking about my two barrient 23 winches used inside the dodger for the main sheet and the halyards… what if they seized up while I was gone..? that would be horrible… so I dismantled them and got them all cleaned up and greesed up properly. I do admit though that I did not service my HUGE cockpit winches and chickened out… for two reasons… 1 I do not actually know how to open them… and 2 they are like $10,000 essential winches… if I make a mistake now in my rush… the boat would be disfunctional when I returned. They do not get washed in salt water and have been working perfectly for years…. so the old addage… if it ain’t broke don’t fix it came to mind as I justified not doing them now.
What’s that you say… you thought the cruising life was all rainbows beaches bikinis and cocktails huh… nope… lots of work work work. This is not to say that these things do not exist in paradise… they are just enjoyed while taking a break from all the work.
Although I was happy for the newly acquired peacefulness of WildChild and I was able to focus on getting done what I had to do to prep for my haul out… there were still some things for which I needed help, like dropping sails for example. Sailors are a wonderful community and I never needed help that I could not find. Just ask for help amongst sailors and you will find it. This is one of the things sailors understand… we are all members of the same club… if you can make a goodwill deposit into Sailor Karma bank you do… if you can help another sailor you do… because you know someday you will need help and make a withdrawl from the sailor Karma bank and you want to have a positive balance. At the end of the rainbow there is a sailboat… 🙂
I joke all the time that my official captains uniform is my pink bikini… and I know full well that I am not a beautful sexy woman as I am supposed to be to wear a bikini in pictures or in public… but I wear it simply out of necessity. Did I ever mention to you how hard it is to get stuff done when the sweat is just pouring off you? How un-motivating being too hot can be to ones productivity…? I live on a dark blue hulled sailboat in the tropical sun. It is always 35 degrees C inside in the shade and much hotter in direct sunlight here. I drank liters and liters of water everyday while working and still got dehydrated everyday. Lexi no likey the extreme heat.
Haul-Out
I had two days at anchor to start prepping WildChild for her haul out on Thursday May 28th at 7am. I got a lot of projects done in preparation for this event and figured I could get the rest done on the hard in the boat yard.
Finally when the moment came my new German friends came to help me get WildChild into the slings. Everything went smoothly and the boat yard here is full of wonderful professionals who did a great job with my girl. Although, as usual, Captain Lexi was a nervous hen fussing over her girl as she lifted out of the water, the guys here did such a great job.. there was no reason to worry.
Actually… when WildChild was finally up in the air, safely in the slings and getting her bottom power washed… I felt such a wave of relief I burst into tears and started crying. I just cried and cried as all the years of stress and responsibility for WildChild safety finally lifted off my shoulders that morning. I did it. I sailed WildChild 15 thousand hard upwind ocean miles thru incredible hardships and dangers and safely brought her back to land again unharmed. I took care of her and she took care of me. This girl is my baby. I have so much love for this boat and now she is safe for hurricane season AND I get a break from being responsible for her care. I just cried with relief.
I think male sailboat captains do not feel the emotional weight or connection to their sailboat in the same way Female captains do. For us it is an emotional connection… full of feelings… so haul out was an emotional time for me.
Within a few hours WildChild got up in the stands on Thursday and I had until Friday night to finish getting her stored away. It was time to strip her naked so that even if a hurricane of strong tropical storm winds hit here she is stripped down and sleek as a racer.
All the canvas had to be removed. All the solar panels removed. The wind generator tied down. All the winches and as many ropes as possible protected from the UV damaged of the blazing tropical sunshine. The water tanks had to be drained. The decay-able food stores thrown out. The fridge and freezer emptied and cleaned. I cleaned out the bilge too. Eventually it gets all filled with engine oil and the like and it gums up the back check valve on the bilge pump hose, greasy dirty job but on the hard is a pretty good time to do it.
Did I mention already that it is hot down here.
Well… if you can imagine… on the big heat absorbing and reflecting concrete pad in the boat yard, up on the stands with no water on the blue hull, just baking in the sun…
I got heat stroke everyday by around 3pm I just could not function anymore as my brain began to boil. I had to go find the boat yard showers to cool down before I needed an ambulance.
Oh goodness I miss the snow… I miss Canada….
You are not a sailor until you have suffered for the boat. I have already suffered a lot taking care of WildChild for so long but putting her away I suffered a lot more those two very hard days.
Now lets all collectively pray Antigua does not get directly hit by a hurricane this year…!
Now I must add though… that even if they do take a direct hit here… there is a fair chance WildChild will survive unharmed. The little known secret about this boat yard is it is actually surrounded by small steep hills so the winds cannot really hit the boat yard directly.
They do have these massive and heavy hurricane stands for rent here for an extra $2000usd per season but I do not have extra money like this laying around.
I think for like only an extra $1000usd you can get your boat over a keel pit which is a great idea. it shortens the stands and height your boat gets stored at and I love the idea. If I was one of the rich babyboomers I would do either of these options if I could. My one big complaint is the prices they charge down here. Basically it is $4400usd to store my boat for 6 months in their boat yard. I can get an entire year back home in a nice marina with electricity and water and a nice summer dock for $3000usd a year. My German and French friends said they can get a full year in Europe for $2000 to $3000 Euros. This place is extremely expensive and not the kind of place a young person with no income like me can afford to stay… but Covid has locked me down and tied my hands. I wonder IF I can bill China for causing me this expense… hmmm…?
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German Boat
Please forgive me for while but my German friends have asked to be kept out of my online content and for me to respect their privacy. I totally understand and respect their right for this and so I am going to avoid talking much about them directly or filming them on this crossing. So please forgive me for only referring to them as the Germans… or the German family… or the German boat.
This is a nice boat. A newer boat… like a 2008 or something… and I think it is 49 feet long so it should handle the waves better than my light weight twitchy race boat…. BUT… it is a production boat… it is a Jeanneau. Although Jeanneau’s are slightly better than Beneteau’s they are all thin skinned weak production boats. I always said I would never risk my life in one… and yet here we are. I figure… either this crossing will go well… or we will be bashing upwind for thousand of miles and get hit by storms that make us cry and test out how tough the boat really is. So here is to hoping mother nature does not test out the toughness of the German boat while I am on it huh…? 🙁
The family was nice enough to give me my own cabin in the back under the cockpit. I am super happy to have my own space. The kids are so much fun to play with and the parents are some of the nicest people to be with ever. I think any crossing done with nice people will be fine. If the boat holds up we will all hold up. So lets go do this crazy thing….!
Personally I am so freakin happy NOT TO be the Captain anymore I have been all joyful smiles and giggles for days now. I moved on board 3 days ago now and I have been trying to get ahead on my digital online content so I can take 2 months to help get them home. So on top of my own boat work… I have been struggling to make as many extra YouTube videos as possible.. and a few extra blogs ahead. So please forgive me for spacing out my video releases to once every two weeks for this summer… So now every other Tuesday at 6pm. I am sure I will eventually get internet access again to post blogs when I can.
The big reason for all the rushing to get WildChild put away once the decision had been made is that most of the Europe bound boats left in the last 2 weeks… middle to end of May is typically the best time to do this crossing against the trade winds. If the German boat is going to get home… we gotta get outta dodge fast partners. We gotta go.
We are leaving tomorrow morning (for me) but last Tuesday June 2nd for you.
This gives you a general idea of the route usually taken for this crossing.
Just to give my friends and family some general idea of what my next two months of travel might look like… we can loosely call it the plan… will probably be something more like this.
Please bear in mind… mother nature is always the boss. The German Captain is a wise man and he will modify all time schedules according to the weather and his families comfort level. So this is only a general idea. We will wait for weather windows whenever we need to and we will wait as long as he deems necessary.
I will write another blog maybe once we get to the Azores in three weeks or so. I will tell you how it went.
I think the Captain did register the boat on this predict wind OCC site and if you do already know the name of the boat, because you are a close friend, you should be able to track us here…
Click this link for the Predict Wind OCC page
and of course you can always track Captain Lexi… err… I mean now crewmate Lexi on her Garmin using my route info tab on this website.
So there is two different sources of information, two different data sets you can use to track us (me).
Here is to hoping this all goes lovely peachy keen huh.
For the girl who does not like sailing anymore… I sure keep doing a lot of it.
My friends say… well Lexi… your life is never boring…
…but I do long for the boring life… someday… I will be comfortable and safe like you… I can only dream of it now though…
Cheers sailor fans
Crew mate Lexi….
. ………….. the happy girl onboard the German boat.
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