I am beginning to worry my naked dancing on deck under the pale moonlight is starting to become a real thing with me, it feels so good to be wild and free. The A.I. overlords have recently introduced the new idea to me that apparently there is a new category for me, that the old idea of ALPHA female is not so simple, apparently the new term for wild chics like me is SIGMA FEMALE.  Good to know there is a term for wild and free crazy chics like me..

🙂

 

I realize I have not written anything on here for more than a week so I thought I would share my update with friends. Last you heard from me I had just kicked my crew out and had to solo sail my big race boat alone around the corner to Deep Bay for better protection in the strong winds here last week. WildChild was never designed to be solo sailed by anyone so it is extra hard to solo sail for a girl alone but you know… meh…  I do it anyway. It just takes careful planning and forethought about each individual step and plan 10 steps ahead. To think for the last 3 years I have been terrified to be forced into becoming a solo sailor, but just a few months ago began to face my fears and conquer this thing I feared most. Now I am doing it anyway, the fear mostly conquered, tough chic I guess…. or just completely wild girl…?

 

 

While I was in the capital city a while ago I took advantage of the shopping opportunity and bought a new Captains uniform and stocked up on chocolate milk supplies, because you know…  chocolate milk makes me happy. 🙂   So I have spent the last week alone anchored out in Deep bay with a wonderful supply of chocolate milk, that now running low has brought me back over to Jolly Harbour.

 

Deep Bay

As the weather was rather rough down here for the last week I sat it out alone in Deep bay, it is wonderfully protected. Also it meant that few boats dared to move around and I had the bay almost to myself for almost 5 days. There is a very fancy high end resort at the head of the bay with tourists buzzing the bay all day long on the rented JetSkiis. You can see there is also a plethora of mansions up in the overlooking hills, my inadvertent audience for the week I guess.

I sat alone on my boat and took stock of my life. I had time to sit and think and process my feelings about my reality. I used to be very dominant Alpha female Type A personality set goals and go forth and deliberately control and design my life. Now I have evolved into something different, the universe, God, mother nature and my guardian angels have all been conspiring to mold me into this new person beginning to form inside me.

 

I can dominate any room I enter if I want to, but I do not feel the need to or any desire to at all anymore. The Alpha dominance energy in me is now more subdued, tempered by wisdom. I keep separating from Society and I am not sure if it is this sailing life that is creating this change or my weird magnetic attraction to this lifestyle is because it matches my internal state of being. I seem perfectly content to be alone now and perfectly happy with the pleasure of my own company, gone is the strong drive to find a partner.

The sunset ritual is something I have been doing for years now. It has been refined in the tropics on the deck of my yacht in the last year and recently been the place I began to find my own center again. Two weeks in Barbuda watching sunsets healed my wounded soul. This past week, as I have struggled to accept the departure of my crew and my lonely fate I have started to dance.

I sat alone on my deck each evening this past week and celebrated the sunset alone, sometimes with a rum punch but usually with a glass of juice. As I sat alone last week and watched the sunset listening to music I noticed there was a full moon rising. As the sun descended over the horizon and my yacht was bathed in the pale moon light the poetry of the moment struck me, how beautiful a moment this was, in the now, how could I resist dancing naked and alone wild and free on the deck of my yacht in the pale moonlight.

I LOVED IT…!

I changed the music to dance tunes and walked up to the bow of my WildChild and began to dance, to release all stress and all tension and all worry, I just began to dance in my own wild crazy way and let my spirit soar free, completely unrestrained. Before I realized it I stripped off my bikini and threw it back towards the cockpit. I was a child of the universe and completely in the hands of God, there was no worry or society at all, just me and the rhythm of the music, I moved my hips and shoulders to the music and got completely lost in the moment. I danced completely wild and free and I am sure if anybody could see me in the dark they would surely judge me to be crazy, but I was completely alone and carefree.

To dance naked and alone on deck is a spiritual pure perfect moment of JOY

I worry this little ritual that has popped up in my life is rather addictive, it is so healing, so freeing, so primal. Eventually other boats arrived in the bay and I worried I might be disturbing them. One day I asked a neighbor boat if they could hear my music at sunset, they said barely audible. Sometimes I feel the desire to dance at the moment of the sunset before darkness can descend to cloak me in its protective embrace, and I dance in my Captains uniform and don’t care at all what the neighbors might think. I am beyond social conformity now.

 

My days passed slowly and so peacefully. I put my hammock up on the front deck off the spinnaker pole and enjoyed reading books again. Without man energy on the boat, left alone, I found I am such a peaceful gentle girl, I laugh and smile and I have fun, I am so silly and playful when not burdened by the enormous stress of responsibility I carry for crew, without the oppressive sadness of death hanging over me. I admit I talk to my Teddy Bear a lot, he is a good listener and fun to be around.    🙂

 

Once the strong winds calmed down last Thursday (April 1st) I launched my dinghy and went to shore alone to go find a way to hike up to the old fort overlooking the bay. Fort Barrington is remarkably well preserved and just open and free. First world countries would have developed this into a tourist pay destination but down here it is just open and free. The hike was short and the trail easy. The fort was awesome and I am so glad I went to check it out.

 

 

I went snorkeling alone on Saturday as the calmer winds meant calmer waters meant the visibility in the water improved. I am not really a water baby, some people are, but I am beginning to appreciate the spiritual experience of floating along the surface of the ocean and just watching the underwater scenes. I went snorkeling behind the resort cabanas and in shallow water along the rocks. It was wonderful. I found three lobsters in different places and two lion fish. It is so easy to lose yourself in the moment, just a passive observer hovering above. I am finding peace being at one with these beautiful moments.

Life can be good if you let it

without other people pulling you down with their shit

 

When it is too sunny to lay up in my hammock and read sometimes I go down below and play video games on my VR headset. I found this game called Beat Saber where you get two laser swords and you slash at the boxes in the direction the arrow tells you to, all to the beat of the music. I have added some expansion pacs of music I like and dancing around in my yacht like a music ninja is so much fun and good exercise to boot. There are not many ways to get exercise on a sailboat but this is definitely the most fun way to stay active.

 

All Girl Crew

I was contacted by an Italian girl, Stefania, who is down here in Antigua waiting to crew a yacht across the Atlantic. She answered my ad looking for crew, she thought hey, why not make friends with another girl sailor down here. Although she was not in a position to come be my crew she does have a week free. She offered to bring some friends and help me sail WildChild over to Jolly Harbour. So Yesterday we did exactly that.

 

 

I admit I forgot to turn on my GPS tracker for the sail yesterday so it looks like WildChild just magically appeared back in Jolly Harbour, whoops my bad.

Stefania was the glue that made this wonderful moment happen. She had recently met these other sailor girls thru facebook and all three of these women were happy to come meet me and help me move WildChild around the corner. If you have been following me for any length of time you will know that I am very much about female empowerment, I just love girl power.

This was a wonderful opportunity for me to meet other girls down here, make friends and get WildChild moved. I have never had 3 crew onboard before so I was a little worried it would be a challenge for me. I had never met any of these girls before yesterday. I brought my dinghy to shore and picked them up on the beach as planned and brought them home with me.

I was unsure about what their individual sailing skill level was and I knew nothing about their backgrounds. We sat down below on WildChild for an hour talking and getting to know each other. Each girl explained a little bit about their sailing background and experience. I asked for permission to give them a very short course in Captain Lexi’s sailing school to make sure we could all communicate using the same technical sailor language. As Stefania is Italian and Lissi is from Guatemala and speaks Spanish and Xiaolei is Chinese / German and English is her third language I knew we would need to bridge the language barrier. Sailing is so full of technical terms it is confusing for even native English speakers to learn and understand. None of these girls spoke English as their first language so I knew it would be harder for them. I knew they would need me to communicate clearly for them so they could follow.

It went great. The one thing that struck me was these girls, who have all been sailing with other (Male) captains had never been taught these terms before. Nobody had ever taken the time to actually explain the sailing fundamentals to them. Each girl had stories about how terrible it was crewing for men, how men grunt and expect them to read their minds. How male captains made them feel either like servants or to feel stupid for not knowing things. One girl crewed for a man for 2 months spending 8 hours a day cooking and cleaning for him for free, one day he turns to her and says “what’s wrong with you…. you act like you do not enjoy serving a man..?” ….!!!!   The girls stories really touched me and I know full well their crewing stories are not unique. Most Captains are men and most Captains are terrible teachers and communicators.

These girls were so happy to have the chance to crew for a female captain and they all just loved the experience. All three girls were just beaming with big smiles the whole sail, happy and appreciated. They thanked me so much for teaching them and explaining things to them and giving them the chance to learn and thrive. A good Captain can figure out how to empower her crew and bring the best out of them and I did a great job with these girls. They did a wonderful job as my crew. A boat full of estrogen was a wonderful experience of kindness and mutual cooperation.

We set sail around noon as planned for the short 5 mile sail over to Jolly Harbour. Being the queen of safety that I am I made everyone wear lifejackets and sailing gloves. I worked hard to make sure I was communicating clearly and making things easy for them to understand. I assigned each girl a station to control and before each maneuver I explained the dance we would all perform together as a team. Everything went so well. Raising the main sail, pulling the Genny, tacking when we had to, just so smooth and perfect.

 

These girls were a pleasure to have on my boat and I am so grateful to each of them for their help. Sailing is so wonderful when you have good crew, just a joy instead of a chore. With girls there was never any power struggle or challenging of the Captain. Each girl only wanted to be part of the team and figure out how they could help. Stefania was particularly wonderful to have onboard, she has a natural desire to watch and figure out how she can help, looking ahead. 

Any future Captain that is privileged to have her on board as crew is a lucky Captain. I got excited to see my girl crew drawing deep within to find their girl power to conquer the sailing tasks. Who says girls are not strong enough to handle a race boat.

We were running full Genny in 13-18 knots of beam reach wind and WildChild has huge 1 inch thick Genny sheets that are sheeted in manually using huge Barrient32  two speed winches. When sailing beam reach full Genny there is a lot of pressure on the sails. Even grinding the winch on low speed is still very hard. I watched with pride as Stefania got her whole body into the winch handle grunted under the strain but never wavered or failed to sheet the Genny….   GIRL POWER at it best.

 

Or check this out, little Chinese Xioalei is like 5’2″ tall and maybe weighs in at 120 pounds. This tough girl with lots of ocean experience was doing the main sail work for me. As we start to bring WildChild in a close haul into the wind we have to bring the main traveler up to windward. Under full sail and with good winds, even the reduction blocks are not enough to remove all the pressure on the main traveler sheets. This girl pulls and pulls and cannot move the car. I tell her she is doing great and not to quit, that she can do this. Xiaolei is smiling and determined, she digs deep inside to call upon her inner girl power, wraps both hands around the line, braces her foot against the companionway and uses her entire body to heave the car to windward. Despite the enormous load forces on the car this tiny girl can do it, she wins, she conquers the boat.

I was so proud of her I burst out whooping in excitement. She was smiling ear to ear when she won. Girls have been told by men their whole lives that they are “just a girl” and they cannot do things. I tell girls they “ARE A GIRL” and therefore they can do anything they put their mind to once they find and harness their inner girl power.

I admit… I just loved sailing with these girls. I just loved seeing what they could do when they were empowered by a good Captain like me. That was one of the best sails WildChild ever had and it was because of the spirit of the all girl crew.

Thank you girls

 

 

Cheers Sailors….

 

Captain Lexi

 

…   the Sigma Female Awesome sailing Captain Wild chic  ….

 

🙂