Well it seems I lied about the return of the trade winds to stave off the brutal tropical heat. Those winds only lasted two days. It is back to sporadic winds often below ten knots and no wind at all at nights again. Ohh well….  Tropical life right? It is still brutally hot down here but I think the last week has gotten slightly better as we move past the peak of summer into autumn.

 

 

Hurricanes Scare me

Of course the reason Grenada is quite full of yachts at this time of year is completely weather related. Hurricanes sort of have a zone or traditional path range they tend to stay in. Well…  right now… tis the season to pay close attention to the weather forecasts. The nice thing about our abundance of modern technology is that we generally will get warning a week before the nasty hits. Of course long range forecasts are only statistical probability machines.

The weather guesser do their best to estimate what mother nature will feel like doing, but as all sailors very well know, she is a moody bitch. I seldom trust a forecast more than 3 days into the future because it accuracy breaks down to nearly zero by the 4th day.

Hurricanes however, cause us sailors to pay close attention to forecasts even 10 days out. We watch, and study the difference between what they thought would happen, and what actually happens. This is where we earn our sailor Captains wisdom. Making our own “accuracy” or “dependability” estimates for all future belief in forecasts is born of this experience, we study the prediction errors.

 

 

As we watched Hurricane Larry swing past a few weeks ago we knew succeeding hurricanes will just keep dipping further south each time. Hurricane SAM is the current one just north of us now. A week ago the models said he would be scary close to some of my favorite islands. For sailors, 140 knots of wind pushing up 36 foot waves is pure horror. Even having a hurricane pass this close to the northern islands is scary close.

Hurricanes are moody and will do whatever they want to in the end. I remember watching hurricane Dorian pass north of me 2 years ago and was predicted to miss the Bahamas. Then I watched it take a sudden sharp left turn beside the Bahamas, attracted by all that stored potential energy in all that shallow warm water. Despite even the 3 day forecasts saying Bahamas would be safe, we all know how badly that turned out to be wrong.

 

 

All of this to say, I did not like or trust SAM to be that close to those beloved islands, one little mood swing and a little southy feeling and say bye-bye Antigua. The unpredictability of hurricanes makes me very nervous The exciting news is, SAM got pulled more northy than anticipated by other forces, did not feel the heat of the warm shallow Caribbean waters, and is today, missing Antigua by a comfortable margin.

PHEW… close call right…?

What I am currently concerned about, I am a nervous Nellie paying close attention to, is the historical trend thru the season of succeeding hurricanes to successively come a little more south each time.

 

 

The question that makes me nervous is how southy will the next one feel like coming? Hurricanes seldom hit Grenada, but not never. Even if I am personally safe down here, I have friends with boats in boat yards all up and down the Caribbean. I worry for my friends too. I know full well hurricanes have stripped islands completely bare of anything green before. Their power is to be respected and feared for good reason.

What does personally concern me today, is that Hurricane SAM is going to pull in some strong winds and storms behind him. This weekend the forecasts are for winds in excess of 30 knots down here in Grenada. I do not trust this forecast either. A month ago when they said relax it will only gust up to 30 we got some nasty strong storms over 40 knots and my anchor dragged in the night.

 

 

NOPE… not doin that again. I do not like being scared. Last time I trusted the same forecast info I got spanked. I was in 46 feet of water with at best 4:1 scope out (all of my 200 feet of chain out), it would have held, and did hold in winds under 30 knots, it did not hold in winds over 40 knots, even with the sential anchor.

 

 

I have a brilliant simple plan to sleep comfortably this weekend, I will just move to the safest bay that I can. Egmount is awesome.

 

Needing to Provision

I spent my first two weeks of Covid lockdowns alone in Egmount bay. I admit, I have been battling a depression. I am on the upswing now and getting better, feelings are things we have to ride thru.

This is such a small and silly thing but struck me as interesting. Egmount is so calm, so smooth, completely without any ocean swell at all, you would think you are anchored on a small lake in Canada. Event the cricket sounds give it that homey Canadian feeling. BUT… it weirded me out. How is a sailor girl supposed to sleep on a yacht that is not moving? How will I get rocked gently to sleep. For the first week, it unnerved me.

You know how people who live beside train tracks or airports eventual get used to the sounds and don’t even hear them anymore? The same is true for sailors and the motion of the ocean. Generally I cannot even feel the boat moving. Often even in some significant swells. I cannot feel it, but when it was absent I could hardly function.

Then last week I sailed over to Prickley bay to provision again, its rolly in here, and for the first two days I could feel the motion of the boat for the first time in years, and it freaked me out.

Sailing life right…

Last week, while I was still in Egmount, and a week after I ran out of milk and veg and any fresh foods, I found out there is this local lady “Jenny’s Farmers Market” who delivers random assorted bags of local produce to sailors. The other cruisers in the bay contacted me the day before I was going to leave to provision and said maybe Jenny could deliver something for me to the side of the nearby road.

I texted her, last minute, and she said she would try. Jenny is a sweet and wonderful lady who mostly wants to help people. Although she did not have much she could share with me she did try.

 

 

I admit, I am neither food adventurous or very interested in cooking exotic foods. My ignorance in this area is substantial. I did not know what most of these foods were so I juiced everything I could and sterilized it with some good old Antigua rum. I had a few lovely vitamin C filled sundowners that night. It was great, thanks Jenny.

I sailed around to Prickly bay the next day, as I still needed things like milk, bread, eggs, potatos, onions and veg. You can click here to see that video from last week. I also really needed to speak to other living human beings again. Boat mom and dad welcomed me back and I (illegally) snuck onboard their yacht for a few social visits the last few days. I am feeling better now, human again, and my depression is fading away. Social contact helped me immensely.

I made the long hot 3 mile walk to the grocery store Monday morning to just check and see, if after the weekend lockdown, maybe they might have restocked the shelves. Food down here lately has been weirdly hard to find. In the last 3 weeks I am only finding empty shelves.

 

 

So now that I am fully provisioned and ready to go again, I can head off tomorrow to the safety of Egmount. I will live like a princess with fresh chocolate milk, potatoes and fresh veg and play my VR videos games again.

 

Sailor Robbery

As I have mentioned in a previous blog, one of my dinghy Davit triple blocks failed a month ago. The other side failed a week ago. I did my best to rig something up but I am low on spare blocks. I need at least another single block, or… in a perfect world… to replace the two triple blocks.

If you remember me saying before about how ungodly expensive everything down here is. I went into the Rigging shop beside the Budget marine down here, as they have the biggest selection of sailing blocks, and I did find a nice single block that I need.

 

I know you people do not speak in e.c. dollars well, so as a reminder divide by 2 for Canadian dollars and divide by 2.7 for US dollars. YEP… $250cdn ($200usd) for a single block. Also notice each of the three identical blocks are also priced differently.

Bend over sailor… prepare to be robbed

 

Sailors Life

When i did get here to Prickly bay and launch my dinghy it was displeased with me again. It was dripping fuel into the water. It was clear my life with lovely long sexy impractical nails had come to an end, time to get my hands dirty Captain.

I hauled my dinghy engine up and placed it up on my massive companionway hatch sitting in the cockpit. I broke out the tools and began opening her up to find the problem. It was not too hard to find or fix. While I was there I decided I might as well drain the water that has accumulated in the fuel filter too.

 

 

Sometimes I worry that I do not stress enough just how unbearbly fuckin hot it is down here all the time. I am adapting to the horrible heat, but it is not a good life. It is so hot down here everyday during August and September that I cannot move. As soon as I do move I break out into sweat. So trying to live without moving is not a good way to beat depression. I try to exercise when I can or do stuff just up to the risk of heat stroke.

 

I noticed when I pulled into this bay last week, with all my instruments on, the water temperature, as measured by a sensor is 33.8 degC…!   YES… it’s true… when I dunk into the ocean to prevent myself from getting heat stroke again the water is only 2 degrees cooler than body temperature. The ocean is as hot as bath water.

It is so hot down here that I have trouble charging my electronics. As I have been sitting in the mornings working on writing my latest book I eventually have to stop and turn it off because the screen is burning hot to the touch.

 

Not kidding… it is so hot down here all the time that when I go to charge my electronics, they often go into thermal protection mode and shut off their own chargers.

I literally have to put them in the fridge for a while to cool them down before I can charge them. I have to limit how long I use them because they start to cook. I have to try and use them with the screens as dim as possible to reduce the rate of thermal climb.

just crazy hot here

Accepting Fate

Yesterday I hired a local yacht broker to help me sell WildChild. I accept my reality.

I just finished reading that book about the origins of Covid. You should click this link and go read the book for yourself. I know you are unlikely to buy or read a book. So let me give you a brief idea.

WOW… China has been amazingly reckless.

This is all China’s fault.

The future is completely fucked.

What I have been struggling with, what has been pulling me down into depression for the last few weeks, has been my own future. I have been looking ahead, there is nothing good coming.

I foolishly sacrificed everything to achieve this sailing into freedom dream.

It has all gone badly. My choice of partner worked out badly. Covid was unforeseen but has completely ruined everything. It will not get much better.

I don’t want to get too into this, cause you probably have your own ideas… but I have been educating myself on this subject a lot lately.

In the beginning we all foolishly and naively thought, well… we will just sit tight for 6 months and things will return to normal….   WRONG…!

Then 12 months later we all foolishly thought…  well… once everyone gets vaccinated everything will return to normal…    WRONG….!

Now 20 months later I am still waiting for freedom to return. Waiting for islands to open back up, the freedom to cruise around these amazing islands, fly in crew, meet new people, make new friends, explore new places, have amazing adventures….

It’s not going to happen

The reality is…. the vaccination myth… is a lie. Basically, and I knew this from the beginning, mutations will not ever let this happen. In the same way we cannot make a single vaccination for the regular flu… because it keeps mutating… so too can we never make a single universal vaccine for Covid. In fact the vaccines we have are super narrowly specialized and do not do well with the variants. The variants keep coming and the governments seem surprised… oh my.

Covid will never go away… will never stop mutating… and governments will never relax their controls or give us back our freedoms. They will never again allow for the free flow of people across borders. The more they (like Grenada) foolishly try to lockdown and hide from Covid, the longer herd immunity will take. These Caribbean islands are trying very hard to hide from Covid forever. Like the Swedish doctor said, if you hide from it, you will get stuck in this cycle forever, you have to face it eventually.

First the governments invented the “war on Drugs” to steal some freedom for your protection and give the police too much search and seizure power. Then there was the “war on Terrorism” to get permission to spy on you and collect unlimited info about you. The new word you will come learn as the justification for stealing more of your freedom will be “bioSecurity“… Covid passports and QRF codes are just the beginning. Your freedom is gone, and not coming back.

The Caribbean governments will never stop REACTING to each Covid outbreak the same way, lockdowns and less freedom. They will get better at it over time too, China and America will teach them how to. They will never just take Covid on the chin, not steal freedom, take the human losses and move on. They are so good at “controlling” outbreaks. All deaths are bad, even one Covid death justifies unlimited restrictions on freedoms, government thinking.

The freedom of Caribbean cruising life… is a memory… a thing of the past… it will never return the way it was before.

I am glad I did get to enjoy it for a year before the world went to shit. I used to change countries every week, wandered around with my crew and explored anywhere we wanted to. It was great. It is over now. It is done forever. Waiting for this beautiful free life to return is foolish.

I accept my reality… 

Time to sell the boat for a huge financial loss… and return to land life… broke, poor, homeless and alone, find a job like a good slave again and start over on the bottom like a kid out of college. It is now a better option than waiting out Covid on a yacht alone. Besides… I clearly cannot tolerate these Caribbean summers anymore, never again.

I will buy a very fast motorcycle…

and never be hot again…

I hate the heat…

 

Wild Captain Lexi

 

… at peace with her reality again…