Well… I have post dated the release of this blog… so right now I am probably already out on the Atlantic Ocean sailing my way to Europe…
WHAT DID YOU JUST SAY LEXI…?
That makes no sense…
Okay okay let me go back a bit and explain some things.
Do you remember last blog I mentioned I made new friends with a German boat here…?
I was helping these lovely people with an electrical project they wanted to work on. They are just lovely wonderful and very kind people. As you can imagine this whole locked down in place thing has really made life difficult for all of us sailors out here. We all know we cannot stay here for the soon to come hurricane season, yet we are locked down in place. As hurricane season is fast approaching, and slowly the world starts to calm down about this crazy thing and come to their collective senses, us sailors have been making plans to save ourselves.
Well Fiolina’s plan was to sail back to Germany now… BUT with borders and airports all shut down they cannot get crew to come help them either. So us sailors have been talking, banding together and helping each other out. Fiolina NEEDS crew to help the family get home.
So about 2 weeks ago I was visiting them and helping them out, and … to be honest… finally having someone to talk to… we became friends. Captain Lexi really is a big kid at heart and their kids were happy to have someone new to play with. Also Captain Lexi LOVES DOGS and dearly misses having a dog, Fiolina has a beautiful golden retriever on board I could snuggle and play with too.
I just adore these lovely people and we all got along so well. Sebastian is so full of energy and life and curiosity and is a delight to talk to. Sebastian even was willing to play chess with me..! We played several games together and it was fun for both of us. His wife Rika is Japanese and so a little bit more shy or timid and quiet at first, but once she gets to know you and opens up, Rika just has this wonderful kindness in her soul and a deep thoughtful wisdom to her. You can just sense quickly that this is an honorable woman you can trust, you just know it. I had so much fun with this family for the week they were out with me in Hermitage bay.
The kids just love me… I am a big happy kid inside and I had so much fun playing with them. In the picture down below I was letting them watch my spiderman cartoons. I also let them use my VR goggles and Oscar became a pretty skilled fruit ninja.. 🙂
Also I was talking with Rika… a Japanese lady… and we had a freezer just full of fresh Tuna… and I’d love to have sushi… but I am not very good at cooking the rice or making it myself… and thought maybe Rika could teach me…
Rika, who is a great cook with a very international array of cooking skills was only too happy to have us girls over and teach us how to cook sushi. We all had a great time together and enjoyed a lovely meal together in their spacious cockpit well into the night. Technically we were breaking both curfew laws and social distancing rules at the time… but hey… I had been locked down for 2 months already… I needed company. We had a great time.. it was a wonderful night.
As we became friends they shared their need for crew and I talked about my unknown plans, hopefully run to hid in the safety of Luperon before hurricane season got started. Elena had been in contact with them on facebook and had already contacted them a week earlier (without my knowledge) about crewing for them to get her back home. It would have solved my “need to get rid of Elena” problem and also solved Fiolina’s “need crew” problem. They discussed it among themselves without any interference from me, they formally asked her to join them as crew… but Elena declined in the end.
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Did I ever mention to you guys how freakin unbelievably hot it is here all the freakin time… look at this… this is the air gauges I have mounted beside me at the nav desk right now at 8am in the morning… and think about it… this is in the shade inside the boat and before the sun really has risen yet… sigh… I miss Canada where I could wear clothes.
So fast forward a week from all this… which in this blog archive is back to lockdownhell… as you guys already know… just after this lovely week the dragon came back out and everything went to shit again…. and Elena really went too far… Elena got herself dropped safely off on the beach just before sunset on Wednesday may 20th 2020 just after her crazy spell. She left her stuff onboard and left with only her purse her phone and sleeping bag. I have no idea where she is now or what she is doing. I keep trying to text her to come get her stuff but she is still blocking me.
… and so I find myself now alone on the boat again… and without any crew again. I am far from home, I am in the middle of the hurricane belt, and all the borders are still closed.
This morning (Tuesday May26th) I was watching the local news and was a little concerned about the broadcast. As you can imagine us sailors are obsessed with the weather and especially with hurricane season fast approaching. As I have been gathering all the best weather guesser information about their predictions for this hurricane season… they are all grim. All of the various weather people are all saying that looking at the data, sea surface temperature and high altitude wind shear and like things, they all say the conditions are ripe for an extra bad hurricane season this year. They are saying there could be more than usual hurricane activity and probably will be more storms than usual too.
This scares the crap out of me… I am trapped right in the middle of the danger zone.
Well the local news here was saying that actually the information they have been gathering says conditions are actually set for the worst hurricane season on record, back sometime in the 1930’s.
Ummm…. Lexi no likey… 🙁
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So Lexi needs to make some difficult decisions and fast.
So let’s assess my situation…
I am alone.. and I cannot have the dragon back on the boat… and there is no other crew able to fly in. I cannot get other crew
I need crew to sail… or do I…?
Maybe I could just sail WildChild alone to Luperon…? 500 miles downwind heading west thru the thorny path alone. Get to the DR and hope they do not turn me away. My friends there say several other boats have showed up and just declared emergency and were not turned away by the Dominican Republic…. so that’s good. I had contacted the Canadian Embassy to try and beg them to get me permission to enter the DR but I have not heard back from them in the last 3 weeks… so I am not holding my breath or counting on my government for help.
But this is a far and hard sail and will take about 4-5 days and involve me sailing alone for 3-4 nights… in a well trafficked area. I do not feel good about this option. Also the mona passage can be really mean sometimes. Do I really want to risk my life doing this alone…? I don’t think so.
I did register with Grenada Lima and got on the list to go down to Grenada for hurricane season. They are now allowing boats to come with a bunch of extra fees and strict conditions… it is only about 350 miles south of me so therefore is closer. IF the islands between me and Grenada were open I could technically do this sail all in day hops and drop the hook every night and get to sleep, that would be much safer. BUT the islands in between are not open yet…
I could just stay here until like nearer the end of July and haul out last minute… pay for only 3 months in the marina… and pray no early hurricanes come here. Then I could just try to rent a room somewhere locally, live on land for 3 months then launch WildChild again. By then maybe find a new crew… and continue the adventure…
I could do this…. but it sounds lonely. I am very lonely. I am very tired of being alone. I really want to be near people again. This is my best option (providing the gamble of no early hurricane in July is correct)…
But… I don’t want to be alone anymore.
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I talked to Sebastian on Fiolina… and we came to an arrangement… IF he helps me pay for some of my boat storage fees…. AND pays for my flight home (to somewhere in North America… I am not sure where to go yet)
I will crew for him and help him get his boat and family back to Europe.
HE AGREED Sunday May 24th 2020 to this plan.
So it looks like I … Captain Lexi… the girl who does not like sailing anymore… will be doing a trans-Atlantic crossing… from West to East (the hard way) against the trade winds… for the next 2 months.
So I have been making YouTube videos like mad lately for you guys to try and get ahead a little bit… but… I have had to reduce them to releasing once every 2 weeks. I have stacked up until the end of June… maybe I can get a few more finished for July before I leave for the crossing soon. So please forgive me sailors… Also there will be no blogs for a while either… you know… no internet in the middle of the ocean…. I figure we should be back to Germany by August sometime.
You can always follow me on my route info page using the Garmin inreach map link….
I am actually very nervous about this crossing… and here is why…
Mother nature is in a weird mood this year… Most boats bound for Europe have already left last week and this week… so we are a bit late to leave… and with the potential for a SEVERE hurricane season… so close… who wants to be in the middle of the ocean during that…? Also to be honest… this boat is a Janneau… which is basically still a Benneteau… which is a cheap thin pretty production boat…. they are thin and weak. If you have been following me for a long time you have probably already heard some of my previous stories about the ocean destroying these weak boats in even medium conditions…
WildChild is a tough boat… I trust her… Is Fiolina a tough boat..? Can I trust my life to her..? because that is exactly what I will be doing…. Will mother nature be calm…? or will she hurt us…? Lexi nervous…
BUT sometimes we just have to make difficult decisions… and sometime we just have to jump off the high diving board… so I did… by the time you are reading this I am all ready on my way sailing to Europe with this wonderful family.
We have to ride that band of wind just north of the blue dead calm area across to Europe… as it fluctuates up and down so must we… and pray the nasty northern storms do not drop down onto us…. pray no mid Atlantic hurricanes do the swirly swirly in the middle of the Atlantic going round and round as they sometimes do. Hurricanes will kick up huge nasty waves for thousands of mile away.
We are about to leave late in the season to make a difficult crossing on a year when they are anticipating perhaps a record breaking bad hurricane season… Eeeek.
Please pray for me sailors and friends…
Watch over me… feel free to contact me on my garmin inreach by sending me a short text email (no more than 180 characters at a time) at [email protected] If any of you reading this are experienced sailors who know how to read the wind info and are willing to be shore support and text routing information or weather info… I would be very happy to hear from you.
Cheers sailors…
Hopefully you hear from me again
Captain Lexi…
. ….. the nervous