Well… today I can say the exciting news is there has been no drama in my life for the last week, which is great, but it has not been entirely boring. I have met new people and made new friends. I conquered a big boat project that I got knocked off the list, new mast lights. And I went sailing on an old fashioned authentic Carriacou Sloop..!  How cool is that..? Also as my naked dancing in wild freedom at sunset continues so too does my philosophical journey to find myself.

 

Boat Projects

My decision to sail back to Falmouth a week ago had a few main ideas behind it. The first of which was to face my friends spirit and face my emotional trauma and reclaim power and dominion over my own soul, I am not a run and hide in fear kinda girl. I admit that there have been tears over the last week but I would venture to say that they have been healing tears. When I walked into the boat yard and saw Peters boat (Bershert) I admit I broke down crying. While out sailing on the Carriacou sloop I cried when we motored right past the spot where Peter and I used to anchor together. I think though, that if you are strong, and you let your feelings flow thru you, give yourself the freedom to have them, they do fade away. I think I am spiritually very calm again about the death of my friend.

Another reason to come here was to meet Peters friend Kevin. Upon the hour of my arrival Kevin took me out for Pizza (yes real actual pizza..!!!) and he introduced me to two of his friends. Billy and Charlotta  who own a Carriacou sloop down here, and Charlotta is another female sailing Captain. This is so rare out here, female Captains, that I was honored to meet her and not feel like the only chic captain in the world. I logically understand that we do exist, but our numbers are so low, so rare, that I have only ever actually met 2 chic captains in the last 3 years on the ocean. They invited me sailing out on their boat last Sunday (April 18th 2021).

 

The third thing was to conquer a big boat project I had lingering on the bottom of my list for the last few months. A project that I needed help with and could not do alone. Neville and Marc helped me finish them as of yesterday by hauling me up the mast to get things done up there.

This might come as a big shock to you land lubbers but the ocean, with its highly corrosive salty air, is completely horrible to everything you own, especially electrical things. So over the last few years my steaming light, twice repaired is so poor it is barely functional. My spreader lights, used to light up the deck during night sailing no longer worked, my mast camera has not worked for a year now, and my mast head NAV light is pretty UV damaged, although still functional it needs to be replaced. The hull mounted NAV lights have been water logged so many times that they are rather dim and their function is always an iffy proposition.

For you yachties out there, who might be interested in technical sailing things I will give more details. You sailors know, that for all these problems marine stores will happily take your money, at massive profit to themselves, for solutions. For example my “proper” store bought steaming light, made in China out of cheap plastic cost $200cdn, and didn’t last 3 years. My NAV lights not a year. So out of both financial necessity, the mother of all invention, and my electrical engineering prowess, I have devised better more durable cheaper solutions.

 

 

Now-a-days you can easily buy a whole 1 meter roll of string LED’s in any color you want for only 20 bucks. You can buy vinyl tubing for a few bucks. You can buy a tube of clear silicone for a few bucks. So why not cut and solder the LED’s you want and insert them into a completely water proof ocean proof piece of vinyl tubing and seal em in with silicone? Cheap, effective, and FAR MORE DURABLE than what you will buy commercially. Easy to install, easy to replace when mother finishes having her way with them.

 

Captain Sexy Lexi and her big squishy sexy brain….    🙂

 

So step one of this project, back in Jolly Harbour was to make a new wire harness to run inside my mast and up to the first spreader. I admit this is me fixing my engineering mistakes from 4 years ago when I had just run loose unprotected wires up to each point. The rub’ey scratch’ey beating wires in the mast take is enormous and I failed to calculated for this abuse the first time. What can I say I was ocean dumb back then.

 

The new wire harness is heavily physically protected with two different types of loom to encase it and a rope strain relief system built into it. The new wires are also heavier and proper, stupidly expensive, marine grade tinned wires. I am hoping this fix lasts 3-5 years. I am an optimist.

🙂

 

Well it took almost a week to finish the project, and although it is difficult for me to show you night time pictures of the fabulous results, I can say it all worked great. In the Dark WildChild can light up like a baseball field, and during night time passages will be well lit, better than before, while using less electrical energy. The new (store bought) flexible LED strip I used for my new steaming light is awesome. Click it on and its bright white, bright enough to illuminate sails to analyze sail trim in the dark. Click it off/on quickly and it goes blue. This gives a magnificent illumination while at anchor, making WildChild easy to find and distinguish in any crowded anchorage in total darkness. No more losing my dark boat on dark nights.

YAY for Captain Lexi and her Victories…    🙂

 

Sailing a Carriacou Sloop

I mentioned earlier I was also invited to go sailing on my new friends old school type wooden, locally built in the Caribbean, sloop. Now if you know me, you know that I emotionally struggle with sailing. I used to LOVE it so much, but now… after years out here and untold stress and misery, my love for sailing is long gone. Sailing for me is work, a job, a hard stressful uncomfortable job. So the idea of sailing for pleasure was so foreign to me I had to meditate about it for a while and try to reconnect with my spirit that used to love sailing. Ordinarily I would be reluctant to sail “for fun” but this cool old boat is such a rare gem, such a treat it lured me forth, stirred my imagination and the fire of my curiosity.

 

 

I love museums and wonder at what it used to take in times long past to go forth into the ocean for life work money and hope. I am stirred with wonder at how a bunch of men with simple tools sitting on a beach could just get together and begin crafting a sailboat from trees. Using only materials available and finding simple solutions.

 

The boat is actually a “new” 2010 built by the children of the original builder in Carriacou. The boat was originally built as another working boat, either cargo hauler or fishing vessel and is all wood construction. The planks for the hull are brilliantly notched together and stuffed just like they have done it for hundreds of years. Look at the wooden blocks and lines used to tension the shrouds for the mast? Us modern sailors have only the best of modern technology to do these things but this simple wood and rope design works just fine. As an engineer this kind of stuff just fascinates me.

Billy and Charlotta are very proud of their boat and all the work they have done to restore her and make her seaworthy again. Forgive me if I do not get this exactly correct but they have started a non-profit foundation down here called W.I.S.H  (West Indies Sail Heritage) foundation. The idea is to take local kids, who live on an island but have never had the opportunity to go sailing before, and bring them out sailing and teach them sailing in a boat their forefathers designed and used to work. To share the joy of sailing with the local kids and give them that smile of joy when they realize that they too can go sailing, they can do this.

Sundays sail was without kids though and was just for pleasure. As a real sailor, I am of course, infinitely curious about how every different boat feels to sail, how it balances and how it handles the wind. Its just part of real sailor blood DNA.

As we motored out of Falmouth Harbour, past where Peter used to be anchored I broke down crying but quickly recovered. As we got just outside the entrance reef we raised the sails together. It was….  it was… hmmm…  very interesting. The jib hanks on, no furler, and raises with a downhaul because it needs assistance to drop later. The main sail has no track or lugs? The main sail attaches to the wooden mast with rope loops that loop around the mast and slid up the mast as you manually haul the sail up without any winches…!   How crazy is that…!   But it was effective, somehow, without all the modern tech that I am so accustomed to the boat functions just fine, simplicity is its ally.

We set the sails and killed the engine and just let the wind blow us away as silence descended upon us all enjoying the majesty of the moment. I started to smile.

Billy later commented that in the beginning of the sail I was still wearing my Captains hat, he could tell I was tense and over watching everything. I was highly attentive and alert to everything. By the return sail Billy said that he could see I took off my Captains hat and let all the stress and responsibility go and just enjoyed being crew again. My trust in Charlotta allowing me to finally relax.

We sailed for about two hours around the corner to Carlisle bay where we anchored, setup a shade awning and broke out for a picnic lunch and a swim. It was so lovely happy and peaceful. We had just such a lovely afternoon.

 

 

The sail back, when I began to relax, was so GREAT for me. I rekindled my love for sailing, I could just enjoy the motion of the ocean and feel the boat carrying me forth. Both of them commented that I was smiling so much again, I seemed happier.

We did have passengers, a young local couple whose privacy I will respect, friends of Billy and Charlotta, who had never been sailing before. The man did fine but the girlfriend, we discovered, does not have any sailor blood in her. She kept praying to Neptune. The sloop has no lifelines or side rails so I helped to take care of this poor girl and I held onto her as she repeatedly kept kneeling to offer homage to the god of the sea. She was tough though, despite the torture of seasickness her body was punishing her with her mood and mental attitude, her spiritual fortitude was awesome to witness. Tough girl… and we all know Lexi loves and respects tough girls.

I am sorry to report that we did have to make a tac of shame upon our return to the harbour mouth, we missed it by 200 meters. We made our offshore tac about 10 minutes too soon, so we had to make a short correction tac at the end, but I am happy to report…    it was not my error…

🙂     ha ha ha…

 

Freedom in I Don’t Care

My life is… well it is what it is. This is true for everyone. Some of us like where we are in life, either we stumbled into a great life or we deliberately created the life we want, the life that fits for us. Four years ago I set about changing the course of my life, in a direction I thought would be for the better. Harsh reality has so severely altered the course of my life…    it is now, nothing like I planned, nothing I wanted, nothing I agreed to… and not where I wanted to be.

So what…  who cares… nobody cares…

mind over matter….  you don’t mind and I don’t matter

Every evening I stop what I am doing and go up on deck to sit with the universe and meditate under the sunset. I ponder my reality and ponder the reality of the whole world. I silently seek wisdom and understanding about the bigger nature of reality. Mentally I explore all the loops of causality, I wade thru the myriad of other illusions of reality that swirl around me.

Think about the blog “Brendan gets kicked out” ….    if we had a magic wand.. and could get him to have written his version of reality for that same incident… what would it have looked like. Of course he would be the innocent blameless hero of the story and I would be the complete villain. I am sure he viewed those same events so completely differently than I could even imagine. How do we exist in such a messy pluralistic universe? How do we interact with the other characters? How do we accept and play the roles other people cast us into?   How do we alter the narrative to align better with who we are inside and the life that fits for us…? Not get knocked around by other peoples roles for us.

 

 

I wonder these things everyday on deck under the setting sun.

Sunsets over the ocean are so much better than sunsets over land I think. As I was becoming one with the sunsets over Jolly Harbour I was in a more lost and lonely place. The simple wanderer going with the flow of her world.

Now I can feel further evolution inside me.

I think I have arrived at a place of simplicity and contentment…. acceptance maybe.

Let me try to show you…

 

I am a a highly emotionally sensitive woman with a logical analytical brain.

As a Captain out here I am always calculating danger, odds of probability…

In my head it goes something like this…

HURT PAIN and DANGER are BAD

Therefore avoid them.

So for example… I am thinking of sailing away to another bay soon. I have no crew or help. Therefore it looks like I will be doing it alone. There are currently many boats anchored very near me.

IF I raise anchor alone I might blow into and hit another boat…  Odds of Probability 4.8%

If I raise anchor alone I might pass out     ……..  Odds of Probability 20%

IF alone and pass out raising anchor I could hit other boats   ……  Odds of Probability 50%

——->    Consequence

————————->   expensive damage, being disrespectful, legal action

=BAD

 

Or how about something more like this…

 

IF I go sailing alone I could pass out….    Odds of Probability 90%

IF I pass out sailing alone I could fall overboard…..  Odds of Probability 5%

——->    Consequence

————————->   Lexi dies

=BAD

Or is it…?

This is the reason being the Captain is so stressful for me. It is actually very dangerous all the time. I get that testosterone helps men to avoid all logical reasoning of the odds of probability of danger with a hormone swept   “….mehhh… it’ll be fine…” as they are biologically programmed to believe in their own invincibility, its why they make good soldiers when they have their highest testosterone levels, it makes them extra dumb about consequence. The innate belief in their own invincibility makes them fearless. My tolerance for this man logic is very low.

I have no such hormonal blindness to aid me with the stress.

I know exactly how the bad feels, how quickly it comes, and I live in perpetual fear of it. This makes me an uptight worrier. I like my healthy body, I love my arms and legs and eyes. Now I want to expound upon the virtues of this schema before we dismiss it. For those of you science minded there are a bunch of great science books you should read such as

The gift of Fear

Emotional intelligence

The power of intuition

Trusting your instincts

These books, written by scientists and researchers and doctors, explain how the human brain has biologically evolved these systems for the very purpose of survival. They are brilliantly complex parts of ourselves that serve us well if we let them. That we need to learn to listen to our inner voice of intuition and instinct and respect our feelings, worry is my friend, it keeps me safe.

Long ago, in my late teens living on the streets and early twenties struggling to rise out of poverty I deliberately honed my instincts. I learned to listen and trust my worry to keep me safe. All told… despite my very adventurous and rocky life, I have done a brilliant job of keeping my body whole and undamaged. Three years on the ocean and I have not crashed or wrecked my boat once. Go read “Sailing Crazy Winds” so see how things worked out for the man I left to go on this sailing adventure with…!   He sailed his own boat three times… beached it first sail.. broke it second sail, broke and abandoned it his third sail…! He never worried about anything and always attacked me for worrying “about nothing”.

I have sailed thousands and thousands of miles over years and years and never suffered any of these fates even once. So maybe my worrier nature has served me well despite other people complaining about it.

But…. maybe I don’t care anymore

 

 

The root of all fear is fear of pain and death and loss…  but maybe I don’t care anymore. Maybe the illusion of control is slipping away from me. Maybe the list of things I actually care about anymore is much more narrow than it used to be. Maybe my tolerance for the odds of probability is changing too. Maybe I don’t care anymore about things with less than a 40% odds of probability of happening… just stop worrying about it. Aside from actual death by bad means (being eaten alive is a bad way to die I think that should be avoided) maybe I don’t care so much anymore about the fate of my body.

The world is constantly training us to be afraid…   all the time…   of everything…

But maybe… I have run out of afraidy juice in my bones. Maybe I used up my lifetime supply of fear and now I have to ration what I have left…

Maybe I just don’t care about very much anymore.

Fuck it… bring it on…  I will just face it… I have faith that I am smart strong and tough enough to face anything now.

I seldom have any control about my own fate anyway… maybe hope and prayer and faith are better tools for peace than worry.

Maybe…     ?

 

Next Step

 

I was given this little pink prayer ribbon by a friend a long time ago. It comes from some special church down in Brazil (I think) and the idea is that you pray for something and tie on the ribbon, when the ribbon falls away your prayer will be heard by god and he will begin working on it. It is probably silly but it was a pretty pink color so I prayed to find love again someday with someone good nice and kind and tied on the ribbon months ago. This morning the prayer ribbon finally fell off. So maybe my isolation and loneliness out here will end soon?

Maybe..?

 

In the next little while… when the winds are calmer, I am thinking of solo sailing around to the windward side of the island. I know this sounds crazy. The very nice thing about the Caribbean is that you always know the wind will come from the east therefore you are always safe on the west side of any island. Using this simple logic I have avoided the east side of Antigua until now…. but  ….  I hear from other sailors there is a lovely safe anchorage called green island on the windward side. I am told that the outer reefs provide good wave breaks for the Atlantic swell and there are good places to snorkel there. It is apparently a nice anchorage and I am thinking of going to check it out soon.

 

I have no crew so I will be solo sailing again. It will be dangerous and things could go badly…

 

maybe….  ?

 

Cheers sailors

 

Captain Lexi

 

….   living in acceptance  …..

 

IDC