Hey again, well it remains true that my life is never boring despite my longing for such. Last time I spoke with you I was still down in Falmouth harbour. I did not stay there very long as I am starting to dislike the place, crowded and busy is not my style. On the second day, the day after my VISA renewal, I solo sailed out of there alone around the corner to the mythical Carlisle bay. I spent a few days there, then went around the corner to Freyes point on the southern end of Morrison bay, then solo sailed to here in Jolly to pick up my new crew.

 

Last weeks sailing

 

 

So shortly after this above picture was taken I lifted my anchor alone and did a great job of motoring alone out of the harbour to deeper waters. I decided to be a panzy and sail like a lazy old man again, hopefully you can forgive me, I did not raise my mainsail…!   shocking I know

I only had to get 4 miles downwind, the reefed genny was plenty enough sail to keep me moving at 5-6 knots and kept the sail pleasant. The difficulty of me raising my mainsail alone and the risk of me passing out while doing it..   vs.  the benefit just did not make it seem like the logical decision. I decided it would be wiser… for such a short downwind sail…  to just do it genny style.

I got around the corner into the protection of Carlisle bay out of the 16-20 knots of running winds. The wave protection was immediate once I got around the cliffs. I was easily able to furl in my genny and switch to motor and move into find a nice place to anchor in the middle of the little bay. I was excited to have the place to myself.

 

 

Shortly after this though two other boats came into the bay and anchored near me, oh well… if they do not like my night time sunset dancing concerts they will move. Everything was peaceful and calm for the rest of the day. I did notice however, that despite Carlisle bay’s stellar reputation, it was the most rolly anchorage I have ever been in in Antigua. The ocean swell wraps around the protective headlands and comes sideways into the bay, perpendicular to the winds pinning the yachts at anchor.

I have been out here for a long time, and don’t really notice the motion of the boat anymore but the neighbors left the next day. Over the next several days I would be joined in the bay by a dozen other yachts that would not stay very long, driven out by the side swell. I was happy to have the place to myself, despite the rolling, but it freaked out my VR gear and made it impossible for me to play my evening video games up on deck. This, of course, is an unacceptable crime that shortened my planned stay.

So after maybe 3 days in Carlisle bay I solo sailed around the corner to Freyes point on the southern edge of Morris bay on the leeward side of Antigua. There I anchored alone in 13 feet of water off the resorts lining the shore. The swell was much less and I could resume playing my VR games which made me happy again. It did annoy me that suddenly on the third day there, anchored alone along a huge long beach in a bay with no other boats around, some big blue motor charter CAT anchored right in front of me.  So much for privacy. I wonder why they would choose to anchor right next to my yacht, the only yacht out here?

 

With the assistance of new Antigua friends who were willing to drive me around a week ago I had found a new outdoor fabric to reupholster my cockpit cushions with. I had bought some rather expensive outdoor green fabric in Canada last year but it did not fare well out here on the ocean. It was falling apart and looking terrible. The island only had enough of this new beige fabric for me to reupholster two of my cushions though.

I think I did a rather good job of it. Considering I had to rip off the old stuff, peel all the glue and hand sew the entire thing with my speedy stitch sail repair stitcher. ha ha ha… I stitched the new ones up with whipping twine… that aught to hold for longer than the fabric huh.

I was rather proud of myself when I solo sailed alone off my anchor without using my engine a day later…!   Yep this is a technical skilled sailor thing to do and extra hard for solo sailors to do, and super hard for me to do alone on WildChild. It is hard to keep cantilevering your anchor up when you have a full mainsail now fighting you from getting upwind, yes even though your mainsheet is loose. The weather was calm though and I am super awesome so I pulled it off and didn’t even pass out. I solo sailed the short distance to Jolly Harbour to await my new crew who came a week ago (May 28th 2021)

I had a happy and lovely week alone on WildChild and there was no drama.

Life was great.

 

New Crew

 

So you guys know that I am pretty much always looking for crew, and lately, with covid travel restrictions, the pickings are slim. There is pretty much no crew wandering around out here in the ocean, and… as per my last tirade in my last blog, land people seem to want to schedule crewing opportunities way into the future. I did finally find a girl named Victoria in Hawaii who was willing to fly out to learn sailing from me and to crew on WildChild.

Victoria was a US army truck driver for 20 years and being a girl I thought female energy on the boat might be nice. She was scheduled to arrive here in Antigua a week ago on last Friday (May 28th). So I needed to be in Jolly Harbour to find her and welcome her aboard.

 

She had done some sailing on a CAT a year ago and did have a little ocean experience. I met her at Mr. Jarvis’s outdoor art gallery where I meet all incoming crew. She was understandably frazzled from a long 24 hours of traveling so after a quick provisioning at the grocery store I brought her home to WildChild and welcomed her aboard.

I tend to give my crew my bedroom and I just go out and sleep on the couch. To be polite I offer my crew the best of everything I have. I even spent the whole previous day hand washing all the bedsheets and linens for her. It takes so long to wash everything in the bucket. Interestingly… I always make sure crew has fresh sheets when they come… they never once wash sheets even when they are about to leave on good terms. Only 1 crew was ever respectful enough to reciprocate this kindness and it was Kyndy.

She was a lovely girl.

I do accept new baby crew or inexperienced crew as I can simply teach them everything they will ever need to know about sailing. Victoria told me she had taken several sailing courses back home in Hawaii including some ASA (American stuff) and she had crewing experience. So I thought well this should be easy then.

The first day all my friends, who know I can be an overwhelming presence sometimes, cautioned me to just let the girl relax her first day on the boat. I did exactly that. First day (last Saturday) we just hung around and relaxed. The next day, once my crew had settled in I began Captain Lexi’s sailing school.

 

 

This girl knew nothing, not even the basics. This no longer surprises me anymore, it seems so few people actually know what the 3 sides and corners of a sail are called despite this being so completely fundamental. This is why I know that despite how much crew think they know, if they cannot answer leech luff foot head tac clew…  we start at the beginning.

For the last few days I have been teaching her about boats and sailing.

 

Antigua culture

I find this an interesting aside so I am going to go on a tangent here.

Remember before, if you have been following along, I have been exploring Caribbean culture and learning to see the world thru their eyes. My first introduction to the British legacy of propriety down here was in Barbados 2 years ago. I got lambasted by an immigration woman for not being dressed properly to enter her office.

For those of you who do not know the story (Dec 2019 blog archives) they ordered me from sea directly to report in immediately to them after 30 horrible hours at sea in 10-15 foot waves. I was still wearing my lifejacket and sailing gloves and dripping wet when I reported in as ordered… it pissed her off to no end that I was not wearing my Sunday best to see her, very weird for me. You cannot order sailors fresh from sea to report in and expect them to be dressed spiffy…but they do, the British sense of “proper” being rather inflexible.

Well anyway you know that last blog, now knowing about their culture I wore my Sunday best to report into immigration and, being over dressed in the heat, it caused me to pass out with heat stroke. I get that they are fussy about such weird things but it is very hot here all the time. I dress with very little clothing to not get heat stroke, for practical reasons.

 

 

Well a few days ago, my local friend was willing to drive Victoria and I around the island to find her a SIM card. We eventually went to this place down here APUA (something like Antigua Power and Utility Association) as it seems they also run a phone company down here too. I thought we were just going to hit a corner store then go hang out at the beach so I was wearing my Captains uniform and a holly moo moo over it for modesty (see the above picture of me sitting on the steps when I met Victoria… same outfit) dressed cool and for tropical heat. I was covered from my knees to my elbows and nobody in public has ever called it inappropriate dress before.

What was weird when we pulled up, besides the security guard outside guarding the parking lot and controlling the door access, was that they do not want people to park their cars in the car parking spaces near the building..?   It seems odd to me. See the traffic cones out front… the guard was yelling at us that we cannot park in the parking spaces. I wonder what are they for then? Why is it forbidden to park in the spots near the building.

Weird but whatever, we park across the street.

 

It strikes me as odd when the security guard refuses me entry into her building. It seems I did not meet the dress code. Okay… weird but fine… Then she does not want to let Lenny in because his glasses are the type that automatically shade in the sun. So essentially prescription sunglasses. He has to remove his glasses to be allowed entry. Just a mystery. We hide our faces in masks but in Antiguan culture its wrong to wear sunglasses in their offices…? Even Lenny was mystified.

I have included the dress code rules here for you if you are ever curious about their culture.

Don’t break their dress code rules or else you will not be allowed to pay your utility bills…!

They just have weird attention to small details that the rest of the first world nations would not even think about.

So weird. Like in Canada we have some basic decency rules for some places like “no shirt no shoes no service” which to me seems reasonable for a public building. Here they have dress your Sunday best in the heat to be allowed into a public building. Like imagine yourself having to dress up in your finest clothes to go pay your power bill…?   isn’t that weird….?

I waited outside alone in the heat for 40 minutes for Victoria to buy a SIM card for herself.

Then it seems, her phone is not unlocked. Like she has a new fancy expensive flip screen cell phone still under contract from her service provider back home which has obviously locked the phone. This seems basic understanding to me. OBVIOUSLY you need to have your phone unlocked if you are planning to travel and use local SIM cards right? OR… you have to pay your carrier for a roaming package.

I felt stupid we wasted so much of my friends time on this fools errand, but what can I do, my crew did not tell me her phone was locked.

 

Interpersonal Conflict

 

This subject is complicated for me.

I get…  that I am super book smart…

I get…  that I am socially retarded…

… people often just do not make any sense to me. I am very different than “normal people”, you kind of have to be to be a sailing captain out here, it takes something special. The social isolation also affects me and I am becoming introverted. I know that I am not wired in the same way as most people. I think in my head I am a lovely human being, easy to get along with… under certain parameters. I am highly self aware and extremely thoughtful, most people are not. Most people are automatically reactive like animals running primitive selfish software in their heads.

So when things are not going well between me and my new crew, I do immediately self reflect and try to figure out the world from their point of view. I check inside me to see if I am causing this, what might they be reacting to about me? After that process I then examine the other persons programming.

I do not know if this comes as a shock to you… but more than half the population of humans suck. Just so many selfish horrible uncivilized people out there.  Looking for crew lately, I have almost zero screening process. I will take anyone I can get. That’s what I did with Victoria, she was simply the first person willing to fly out here thru the travel bans and quarantines. I had zero screening other than a single phone call.

Well… my bad huh…. This is not going well.

 

 

So food on the boat… there are generally two ways this can go. Either they just buy and prepare their own food… or…. they can pay me $20 a day to chip in for the house stores and be welcome to eat from the boats supply. Victoria chose the later. She does not cook though. Usually in a shared food situation we would alternate cooking days. She doesn’t cook though and I am not going to be the galley slave for my crew, this is not a charter, I will not be serving her hand and foot.

On the second day, I tell her that I am making a nice chicken vegetable wrap, would she like one? All food down here is very expensive and fresh veggies are rare on my boat (they rot fast) and are very expensive. So a chicken vegetable wrap is a real nice treat on a boat. I was offering to make her the best of what I have. She said yes and agreed to eat one.

It took me half an hour in the galley to prepare all the food and I made us each a lovely sandwich wrap. I sat down to eat mine watching TV and she ate hers outside at the cockpit table watching her tablet.

She only ate about half then asked me where she could throw out the other half.

It surprised me…

…we were already having our first cultural difference.

In my culture it is a sin to waste food. Food is very expensive. Also if someone invites you into their home as a guest and goes to the effort to prepare some nice food for you, it is sinfully rude to throw half of it in the garbage. If you don’t want to finish it there are polite ways to explain you are full. At the very least wrap it up for later. There would be polite ways for her to respectfully reject the food, but it is important to be polite about it, after all… I am Canadian.

In her culture… and there is some guessing here on my part…

Americans are the fattest people in the history of the planet because they have the highest abundance of food and cheap access to unlimited food. There is so much good food available cheap in America. Also She was in the US army for 20 years. Think about being in the army… you never have to cook… you just go up in the chow line and fill your tray with unlimited food, and throw out what you don’t eat. You didn’t pay for it so who cares.

Probably in Victoria’s culture there was nothing wrong with what she was doing.

Okay… I can see that maybe….  I can bridge the cultural gap and try to understand. I am shocked but I don’t say very much about this. She throws out the food overboard.

The next day I am thinking maybe we should talk about this, come to some sort of understanding.

Her response is weird and aggressive. She seems unwilling to listen to me long enough to understand where I am coming from, my point of view is irrelevant to her. She adamantly stands up for her unlimited right to throw out any food she wants…PERIOD. I have no say in the matter…! She says “you cannot force me to eat food if I’m full and you cannot make me eat anything I don’t want to..!” she forcefully tells me. I was saying no such thing but she wasn’t listening.

Listening is not her strength

This is  very American culture, Americans generally seem like a people who talk loudly at each other and seldom listen to each other.

She is not interested in hearing about my perspective, she doesn’t care how I feel about it. I try to explain that we could have wrapped it up for later… “I don’t eat leftover food” she declares. The communication goes badly and I do not know how to deal with it. She keeps cutting me off before I finish my sentences.

I drop the subject. I seem unable to communicate with this girl and it seems like a weird hill for her to die on, like a weird thing to stand up so fiercely and so uncompromisingly for in somebody else’s home.

She has laid down the law in my boat…! She certainly told me how its going to be.

but… ummm….  ummm…    I am pretty sure this is not how things work in my home on my boat.

Brother Ryan later tells me its weird Lexi but is it worth losing your crew over?

I let it go.

 

 

I had laid out the general outline for my crew of how we would be doing the training sessions. We would do one class in the morning and one class in the afternoon. The next day we had a morning sailing class where I taught her the fundamentals of sailing. It went well enough. Then we stopped for lunch. After lunch I told her that once this TV show episode was finished in 20 minutes we would begin the next session. She pushed me for more time. So I agreed to an extra 20 minutes and a second TV show.

When it was over she was playing on her phone in the cockpit. I got up, cleaned up the table did all the dishes and clearly announced that we were going to do another class now. She heard me. She ignored me. I then sat down at the table with my laptop and sat waiting patiently for her to come sit beside me so we could begin. After 15 minutes, of her ignoring me, I put everything away and began reading a book. 30 minutes later she comes down and says okay now I’m ready.

Ummm….

ummm… it doesn’t really work like this hunny. She is not the dictator of the schedule. I clearly set the expectation and gave her plenty of notice plus concessions. She decided when she was good and ready to learn after she was done playing with her phone, like I should be dancing to her tune. There is something weirdly dominant and controlling about her. It is clear this girl is not going to submit. This will not work on a boat. I have been on this ground before. Some people are so self centered and selfish and self absorbed they make terrible teammates.

She is also typically American in that they have a very racist culture, she is very racist in her mind but she doesn’t see it. Racism, in her mind, is only something white people do to non-white people. She does not see herself as Victoria, she right away proclaims from the first day she is a proud native American and Mexican. She says to me “don’t call me white… that’s insulting“…?

ummm… what…? She sees skin color very predominantly, self identifies herself by skin color and sees me by skin color first. She tells me I am just ignorant of my white privilege! She says to me “its not my fault if you feel ashamed of your white guilt…!”

Ummm… actually I am Canadian… we just don’t give a crap about color…. I don’t even see it.

But it seems… in her head…  that because I am to be primarily identified by the color of my skin, and my skin happens to be white… therefore she assumes… in her head… I am an oppressor of all non-white people?  That therefore I must already be brain washed into knowing this and therefore automatically feel guilty about this? She is constantly telling me how “I stole her lands from her people“..?  She is not even Hawaiian yet she seems somehow all wrapped up in the “they stole our lands” stuff that perhaps might be floating around the Hawaiian islands… I guess.

Ummm…  hunny…   I am poor… have always been poor… lived on the streets at the age of 17… never owned any lands… never stole any lands from anyone… and the color of my skin has never benefitted me before… it doesn’t matter in Canada.

Surprise hunny… but in the real world… rich people of all colors steal everything from poor people of all colors.

She has no idea she is racist

She believes racism is something only white people can do

Also she tells me she is NOT an American, so don’t call her American. She lived her whole life in America, is from Oregon, born in America, has an American passport…  So ummm…. hunny… that makes you an American. She doesn’t see it this way. Its just weird to me.

Just an hour ago, I asked her to sit with me in the cockpit so we can discuss a few things. She has done some other weird and aggressive things in the last few days. She keeps making bad blood between us and I don’t want that. I suppose I am then responsible to clear the air and try to get things on a good path again.

Very gently and very calmly we sit together in the cockpit. I am talking softly and trying to choose my words carefully. I am being very gentle and respectful of her feelings. She lets me talk for about a minute then just cuts me off. She tells me she is not just going to just sit there and listen.

She reserves her right to interrupt me and challenge me at any point while I am speaking. I try to explain to her that perhaps there is a better way we can communicate where we take turns listening to each each other. She cuts me off and refuses to allow this. “That’s not going to happen” she tells me and “you can’t make me just sit here and listen I am going to say whatever I want to say that’s how communication works” she tells me.

I am flabbergasted… I have no idea how to proceed. I go quiet for a few minutes. There can be no communication without listening with an open mind.

I try again, she shoots me down again, interrupts me and plants her foot firmly down. Refuses to concede or allow me to communicate in the open listening way I want to. I cannot make her listen.

I try a different tactic, she was in the army, maybe she is used to a more aggressive approach, I mirror her and talk loud clear firm and aggressive. It obviously goes badly too. She puts on her headphones, tunes me out and says this is over. PERIOD… she has decided no communication will be allowed.

If you have read my books you will know of a Lexi’ism that I live by…

Lexi’s Laws of Communication

—->   Never speak to people who are not listening

—->   Never tell people things they do not want to hear

—->   Never tell people things they will not understand

It never works out well for me

This girl seems to be violating all three of my rules…  so I guess I know what to do. If she doesn’t want to listen… I don’t have to talk to her. I guess sailing school is finished.

I do know that she is taking Testosterone shots. Like she injected herself just 3 days ago with the needle. I have no idea why a woman would be injecting herself with male hormones. I assume something medical. She tells me it does not make her aggressive, she seems to really believe this.

But…. I am having trouble with my crew being weirdly dominant and aggressive with me.

It might be a coincidence maybe…

I have no idea how to deal with this

This is not going very well…. my ESP predicts a sudden bad ending in my near future.

 

Cheers sailors…

 

Captain Lexi

 

… the lost and overwhelmed by social stuff I cannot understand again ….