Hey again… I am not sure if you have noticed…?  but I have been busy making a lot of YouTube videos lately. It puzzles me… why am I doing it?  I have been thinking about this lately…  I think I am extremely lonely. I think I have been talking to the camera a lot because I am lonely and this gives me an outlet for my daily dose of words, my version of socializing.

The idea when I started this new YouTube channel was that I would use it as a Video diary when I felt like it. I am wild untamed and free… I do and say whatever I want to, unconformed wild and free. I am not politically correct, I feel no external pressure to either conform my videos or follow any external schedule. I make videos when I feel like… about whatever I feel like sharing… whenever I feel like sharing…

So lately… why so much…?

 

 

I am extremely self aware and very introspective. I spend a lot of time alone with my thoughts to dig up my unconscious drives. I have noticed that about two weeks ago my YouTube channel doubled its number of subscribers. Not sure why. Lately the YouTube Ai overlords have been actually promoting my videos for the first time ever. My number of views per video seems to have doubled.

I have no illusions of fame or fortune with this medium. I have never been paid a penny for the 5,000 hours of work I have put into making videos. I have no hopes of ever making money from them, that has never been my intention.

I make videos and blog my life because I am alone, far from home, cut off from civilization and friends, and I feel some internal desire to peel back the shrouds of darkness imprisoning me in its shadows. The eternal human search for meaning and connection.

The way I see it… if 100 people were to gather in a room to listen to me tell a story… I would feel flattered. I would be honored if 100 people took time out of their day to take some interest in my existence.  Typically over the last few years that has been exactly the case, with the exception of a few rare videos with titillating intimations of a glace at a booby or cleavage that excites the masses of horney viewing perverts out there. My videos usually get about a hundred views and I am cool with that, comfortable with that. It helps me feel slightly less alone.

I had wondered for a while if maybe… some deep unconscious part of me… had gotten excited for the potential to grow my YouTube channel….  and was driving me to publish publish publish NOW NOW NOW….  as it would be the logical strategy to achieve “YouTube Success” … whatever that means… ? With this would come fame and trolls and more stalkers and attention I do not want.

I have rejected that idea… I do not think there is any unconscious part of me being driven by this logic. After a lot of internal searching… I have concluded that the loneliness has infected my soul. I am hurting inside… deep in my soul. I am so lonely… so lost… feeling so isolated and so alone out here… so hopeless… it is hurting me. Sometimes I snuggle my teddy bear and cry alone in bed wishing there was some hope of ending my isolation.

But… the other part is…   I fear I am slipping off the deep end… I joke that I am going feral… but I fear I am heading there with the loss of my social skills and verbal abilities. In this bay… I met a man who has truly gone feral… and in him…  I see my own future.

 

 

 

Truly Feral

I want to be very careful here… this story… is written by an empath… written from a perspective of empathy and love and kindness and softness and concern for another human being…   but not all of my readers can understand empathy and will encode lots of nasty judgement into their reading experience…  this is not my intention…

The story of one of us

We are all God’s children, our silly idea of separateness is merely our own ignorance. I say all the time… there but by the grace of God go I…  because as an empath… and a genius… I know it is true.

Once upon a time…  I am guessing about 50 years ago… in the province of Quebec Canada… some young french woman got pregnant and had a baby. A baby she did not want… after she gave birth in some alley she threw the baby in the garbage. That baby grew up knowing he was unwanted and unloved.

I do not know the details of his formative years, he has never shared them with me before, but at some point, as a young man, he became a commercial fisherman off the east coast of Canada (maybe circa 1980’s). After a few years of that, and he intimated it didn’t go well, he did not fit in, the young man bought a small 22 foot sailboat (maybe late 1990’s..?)

Feeling rejected by society and humanity in general, he dropped out of society. He sailed south alone with little money in his tiny little shitty sailboat. After some time he found himself in Luperon Dominican republic for a few years…. then about 5 years ago he sailed here to Grenada.

 

 

He told me once, when I was asking about the seaworthiness of his vessel… he said… “…I do not travel often… but when I feel it is time to move… I make a big jump…“. To me, an experienced sailor, I find it hard to imagine myself sailing on this floating garbage pile. I am amazed it has not sunk yet.

I stopped by to chat with him again yesterday, I want to hire him to do the artwork for my next book, and the conversation was strained as always. He is hard to talk to because his mind is erratic and unstable.

Kamu told me he lives on about $200 dollars a year, that he gets around christmas time from friends who are worried he is going to die out here. They worry for his life. HE LIVES ON 200 DOLLARS A YEAR…!  Can you imagine that…? Can you imagine yourself living like this…?  What if this was you someday…?   or someone you loved…? He literally forages in the hills  for food, wilderness survival style.

He is extremely skinny and malnourished, all skin and bones. He was doing the cruisers trivia on the morning VHF radio net here for a while, his last and only connection to society. His french accent is so thick nobody could hardly understand what he was saying. About a month ago, some ignorant dick said something on air harsh and mean and insensitive that stung Kamu deeply and shut him down. He retreated and no longer does the trivia. His last connection to humanity severed.

I am also out here alone, and lost in isolation and loneliness and running out of money. I also have no roots to return to, no family. I was also raised by my French Canadian mother who hated me from the day I was born. I wonder… how long until this becomes me..?

Maybe going feral is no longer a joking matter.

It really does happen…

 

The Danish yacht

Also, if you watched yesterday’s video CLICK HERE, you saw that I pointed out a Danish yacht anchored near me. I had been visiting my boat parents yesterday when these three young hot blonde girls swam by on their way out to this moored yacht.

 

 

As I sat with my boat parents I noticed over the next few hours many young hot blonde Danish girls either swim by or paddle by. I thought this was odd, young people out here is so rare, a yacht full of young people has to be an interesting story. So yesterday I decided to stop by and introduce myself.

I slowly dinghied over to the yacht full of hot sexy young girls on it and was greeted by 4 young topless ladies who stared at me like an intruder. Fearing my social skills have degraded I summoned my courage and tried to not sound crazy.

The girls soon summoned the Captain, a young hot blonde Danish guy, very sexy, who greeted me kindly and seemed actually happy to chat with me. Lucky guy I think to myself. I am a writer and a storyteller and this story was just too interesting to not inquire about.

 

 

Sooo…. it seems…   This is sort of an organized thing. Some guy in Denmark… owns several yachts like this… he gets volunteer Captains… and says to them… just wander around the Caribbean for a while… wherever you want to go… and we will fill the yacht with young girls. It will be like a young person sailing adventure experience. Many of the girls had ZERO sailing experience when they came onboard a few months ago in Bonaire, where the yacht was purchased.

The two Captains, one male and one female, there are 4 boys in total and 11 girls, are all volunteers. They pay their own way. They fixed the yacht up and had that enormous arch built and installed, and they sailed away. First to Curacao, then here to Prickly bay in Grenada. The Captain tells me in about two weeks they will sail to Tobago Keys.

I was just amazed… wow… what a cool experience for these girls. If you know me, I am all about female empowerment. I, myself, am a powerful dominant female sailing Captain who was told her whole life she was “just a girl” and disempowered by the male dominated patriarchy we live in.

The idea of all these girls doing something so wild and adventurous just impresses me. I ended up giving a few of them a ride to shore with me as I was going to the jumble sale at Prickly bay marina, they often have to swim to shore, their dinghy engine doesn’t work and their dinghy only holds like 6 at best, and there is 15 of them living on that 49 foot boat.

Speaking with the Captain, I offered to give him and his crew free sailing classes. I am an excellent sailing instructor and I would love to empower these girls to be successful sailors. They all seemed excited for the idea and said they would contact me soon and we could set it up. I even offered to run a separated advanced sailing class for him and the other few experienced sailors onboard.

We will see if they take me up on it in the next week or so.

I am happy to make new friends around my own age too.

So it’s exciting… maybe…

 

Snorkeling Alone

I have made a YouTube video of my life almost everyday for the last week, and I do not want to overlap too much, but these blogs are the thread that weaves these stories together.

Last week, in Woburn bay, I had decided to go snorkeling on the reefs in Calviny cut, alone as always. I am sure by now you are aware that I live with a heart condition that often makes my life extra difficult. Generally I live with it, I am adapted to it, I am an expert passer-outter. I can usually feel it coming on, I usually have 3-10 seconds pre-warning, and I know to put myself down before I fall down. The exact words of my Cardiologist were “… learn to bend your knees…” and I do.

 

 

What I worry about… is feinting while swimming. It happens to me sometimes. I discovered a few years ago, that while cleaning my hull, and diving inverted down to clean the deep 8 foot keel, it sometimes puts me out. The first few times this happened really scared me. I always put hanging loop lines around my yacht when I clean the hull, and managed to hook an arm over the lines before I went out, and call to my crew. When I would come to, my crew would be supporting me and I would start vomiting uncontrollably, and I knew… phew… that was close… time to get out.

 

 

But I swim alone now, no crew to turn to for help should I start to get the early warning signs. I always swim in my very buoyant wetsuit so at least I have positive buoyancy, at rest as I float. I always worry though…  while unconscious struggling to come back…. will I still hold my snorkel in my mouth..? I usually stop breathing when I pass out anyway… but the coming back part… the autonomic nervous system fighting to save itself… that first gasp for air as my blood ox levels falls… is violent.

I wonder if I will suck in a lung full of water or air..?  it is a life or death question for me.

So when I found this full face mask at the jumble sale on hog island a week ago… I thought it might be the solution to this problem. I was excited to try it. It was… okay… ish..?   Basically it is fine… but twice… when I put my head underwater completely, and the ball valve in the snorkel closed… it did not reopen when I came back up, it vacuum locked closed.

It was very scary to try to get that new breath of air and you have a plastic mask vacuum sealed to your face suffocating you fast. I had to tear the mask off my face in a hurry.

Sooo… I have decided… fun toy… but kinda dangerous.

I switched back to my trusty old pink mask and snorkel.

 

The Solo Sail Here

At the beginning of this past week I got an email from my… hmm…  let’s just anonymously say CAT friends here in Prickly bay. They said that after 5 long hot painful months on the hard in the boat yard they were finally launching on Friday.

I just adore these people and love them dearly. I have been like their biggest cheerleader over the last few months. I told them I wanted to be there for their big exciting launch day, just to give moral support and a helping hand if needed.

 

 

I have decided to include this story as a cautionary tale to any readers who might have dreams of someday sailing off into the sunset on a sailboat.

Sailors be warned

Spice island boat yard here in Prickly bay is typical of most of them down here in the tropics. Owned by millionaires rather concerned with staying rich and not so interested in how the business runs.

They are amazingly expensive…!   Like just to park your boat down here will cost you between $700-$1200usd per month..!   just to park it in their yard. They make millions off you.

Then of course… they now can hold your yacht hostage… and they do. The longer they keep you trapped in their yard the more money they get to take from you.  They make rules that say you cannot hire outside help… you must use “their guys” to do the work you need done on your boat. Their guys are experts at wasting time and getting paid and not doing anything they say they are going to do.

My CAT friends had sailed here from South Africa 6 months ago and had their CAT hauled out for some major work to be done. All talk and nicey nicey with the boat yard and POOF… they get hauled out and set up in the yard. It is very easy to get your boat into the prison, harder to get it out.

The work they wanted done should have easily been done in about 1-2 months…. they got trapped in there for 5 long hot hard months. They eventually got so desperate… please please…. we will pay no problem… (they never refused to pay) but please just do the work we are paying you to do. It was nearly impossible to actually get any work done using the mandatory local labour.

They realized… they were being held hostage by either incompetence or willful deliberate malevolence. For months they suffered. I felt so bad for them, they probably wasted $30,000usd. I even offered to do the work for them for free, but they informed me the boatyard would not allow them to get any help from any other sailor to do any work at all on their own boat. It was the yard staff or nobody, and the yard staff were not doing the work.

 

 

So after witnessing their suffering for months I was so excited to hear they were finally going to launch and be free again.

I decided to sail out of Woburn bay and come back to rolly Prickly bay last Thursday to be here for their very exciting launch day. This was the motivation for the last sail… the “why did I sail out?”.

 

the video of that sail was broken into two parts…

ep36 CLICK HERE

and ep37 CLICK HERE

 

Sailors be warned

never pay for work upfront

never trust any yard worker in these islands

always supervise any worker you hire

pay after the job is completed

write down any agreements and get them to sign it with deadlines… island people live on island time and have zero concept of a schedule or deadline, the longer they can string you along the better it is for them. They have no motivation to earn your repeat business, they don’t care, you are a hostage not a customer… understand the difference.

Put it in writing

 

The Male Spirit

If I restrain my nerdiness and try to keep this thought simple enough to follow…

life is like the surface tension of water… you toss a pebble and can barely fathom the string effect of causality that will ripple out from every action you make

My last blog, perhaps there were some new followers who had never heard a Lexi anti-man tirade before. I think I accidentally stung the masculine spirits with good natures on team testosterone. Not all men suck… and many of the good men might have felt stung by my tirade.

Interestingly I have recently been contacted by about half a dozen very nice kind lovely men who have offered nothing but kindness, love, support and empathy. To you… I do apologize if the behaviour of some of your clan has tarnished you too.

Please know… I do understand…

NOT ALL men suck..!

 

Boat Projects

It has been said the cruising life is really just about fixing your boat in exotic locations without the resources to do so. Perhaps this is true. All sailboats… even shiny new ones… require a lot of work to maintain. When you buy a boat you are buying an expensive obligation on your time and money.

At first you only see the key to your freedom…

Eventually you see the cost…

 

 

I know how to do all this work.. but it is sooo HOT here all the time… I seldom feel the energy or motivation to do the work. This project however turned out rather well. The only difficulty I really encountered was paint supplies.

It is a bit technical… but gel-coat paint… used for fiberglass… is a polyester paint that uses the same catalyst your polyester resin does. It usually comes in two varieties… with…  or   without… wax.   With wax let’s you sand it without gumming up your sandpaper.

When I took the bus from Woburn to Budget Marine last week and bought Gel-coat… the container looked kind of rebranded a bit…   now called   “brushable” gel-coat..? whatever that means. The bottle gave no indication of with or without wax. I had no other options so i bought it. It turns out it was without wax.. and is shiny and un-sandable. Which kinda sucks… cause Gel-coat is thick like honey and impossible to paint on streak free no matter what their advertising department says.

Sooo… the final outcome of my fill in the hole project is okay… the fill part with fiberglassing it went perfect… the painting went… acceptable.

But it is shiny huh

There was another little project high on my to-do list last week too, having nothing to do with the boat, but with the ocean.

When you live on the ocean… you are living on salt water… you know this…  what you do not think about… is you are living in very salty air.

This salty air is going to destroy everything you own very quickly, electronics especially. Two weeks ago, I went to use my well loved, well protected, very expensive FLUKE DMM for that mast wire repair… and it was not working.

 

 

Among many other things… I am also a marine electrician… and I love my very expensive $800 FLUKE Digital Multi Meter. I was very frustrated when I took it out of its protective case two weeks ago and it did not work.

It seems the cheap brittle steel they use for the battery posts weakened over time. With the aid of the salt air they corrode and lose their spring. The bend points weaken and they no longer make contact with the batteries. The negative post broke right off. I was heartbroken… I take such good care of my stuff and still the ocean destroys it all.

I am a very smart and talented girl though and I managed to repair it. I built a new post out of a piece of paper thin hardened brass my friend Mark gave me months ago. This is not the first device to have its battery posts fail on me.

Exciting news…

Lexi wins again

I had mentioned earlier in the blog that yesterday I went to the Jumble sale at the prickly bay marina yesterday. You never know what treasures you might find cheap.

 

 

I was not specifically looking for solar panels, but these were so perfect for me, and such a good deal… I could not resist.

Getting these mounted and installed will be the next project on my to-do list over the next week or two.

No sailboat can ever have too much solar

***

 

It does seem apparent that I have simply given up on keeping my blogs short reads. It seems after 10 days or so I always have plenty to chat about. 

 

I hope you do not feel like I have wasted any of your time today.

I am heading out to go play with my friend ian now…

 

cheers sailors and sailing fans

 

Captain Lexi

 

… the lonely empath …