I always know that what I do out here on the ocean is dangerous, after all when mother is in a mood the ocean can get rather rough, she can break destroy and sink boats. So I sail on my girl and WildChild is specifically a tough boat much like her Captain. There is a new danger out here now though that scares me even more. Its people.
I know this Covid thingy is super annoying for everyone on the planet but it seems to be affecting people in different countries differently. My friends in Canada receive money from the government if they cannot work due to Covid as income substitution. They remain happy safe and comfortable at home. First world nations just turn on their money printing machines and print up massive amounts of money as debt and take care of their people. Down here in the Caribbean however, they cannot do this. Their economies are completely dependent upon tourism and tourism is dead down here. The governments down here are getting desperate. The poverty is beginning to really affect people.
Here in Antigua this is the Dream Yacht charter boats. Normally these slips are empty this time a year as there are normally people waiting to rent them out. These things rent out for like $10,000usd per week and people happily pay these prices for a one week taste of my lifestyle. Now you can see the entire fleet is just sitting here at the marina idle.
Antigua is one of the most expensive islands down here and specifically caters to the upscale and wealthier tourists. It is how they distinguish themselves among the other islands tourism schemes. Normally this place would be packed with wealthy tourists but now the locals are telling me this is a ghost town, even here in Jolly Harbour. I know most of the boats in the boat yard the owners will not be returning anytime soon to get them, the wealthy boomers who own them are not going to risk travelling during Covid this year.
These are the charter yachts for the very rich people. These are huge 70 foot CAT’s that rent out for like $30,000usd per week. Normally they would only be in port for a day to turn around their guests and take on supplies. Now they are all sitting here idly waiting for tourists.
This is in Antigua. Although a very expensive place to live it is also one of the richest of all the Caribbean islands. These islands have never bothered to develop any other industries, there are no factories down here to produce anything, they do not grow most of their own food, they are completely dependent upon imports they pay for with tourist dollars.
I cannot help but wonder how the other, less wealthy islands are doing.
Well…. pirates and piracy. We all know that Venezuela is a bad place for a few years now. Things down there collapsed way before Covid. There have been reports of piracy around the southern Caribbean near Venezuela for years now. What most people do not know… is that the waters around Venezuela are now the second hottest area for pirates in the world right now. Us sailors know not to go down to lovely Trinidad and Tobaggo, typically a lovely place for us cruisers to visit, because the Venezuelan pirates have been kidnapping for ransom everyone they find anywhere near Trinidad. This includes the local fishermen.
What is extremely distressing is that they are now coming much further north into the Caribbean. I know that in January when I sailed from Barbados to Grenada, about a week before I arrived, there was a pirate attack on a sailboat just ten miles south of Grenada. I spoke with a sailor who knew the guy who got attacked, the pirates chased him for miles and shot up his boat but the Captain refused to yield and the pirates gave up. Close call for him and a yacht full of bullet holes.
Well now there was a recent pirate attack against local fishermen from St. Vincents and further north than the Grenadines…!
You can click here to read the incident for yourself
This is way far north of Venezuela. The pirates robbed and wanted to kidnap and hold the fishermen for ransom back in Venezuela. The fishermen convinced the pirates they had no money and no family with money and survived the incident to tell about it. BUT…. ummmm….. this is way north of Grenada where many of my sailor friends are currently sitting on their boats. This is waters I have sailed in this year. These are waters I am planning to go sail down into soon. There are real life modern day pirates now in the Caribbean and it is actually extremely dangerous to sail around here on any of the islands.
Ummmm…. Alex and I are white people… sailing around here on a boat. We now have big targets painted on us.
Well okay you say… that’s just Venezuelan pirates… that pretty rare Captain Lexi… the odds of probability you will encounter them are low. Well… yes low… but low is not zero. Now considering how many fewer boats are sailing around out here… and I will be one of the few boats sailing… more pirates fewer targets.
I was speaking with one of the security guards here in the boat yard. Just a local poor guy happy to still have a job guarding the yachts up on the hard in the boatyard here. Nice guy, very simple man with a thick accent. He was telling me the other day that the government here in Antigua has now put taxes on the purchase of goods that have never been taxed before. He says to me…. “…. dey tax da gum… dey never tax da gum before…”. I asked around and it seems this is true, the government of Antigua is desperate for money. I already told you about the “resort only” scam they are pulling on returning sailors for permission to enter.
Then the guard goes on to tell me that he got fined for not wearing a face mask. Antigua has implemented a face mask at all times in public places policy. It sounds reasonable to your first world ears doesn’t it. Except down here, it gives them permission to raise tax money by fining everyone in violation of the rule. The guard tells me… “…I was in my house de udder day… on my property… nd I gotta just put out de garbage outside da house… just for one minute… nd da cop sees me nd calls me over…. he give me $500 dolla fine fer not wearing de mask… dere was no one else around n I was on my own property… lotsa people gettin da fine now… we got no money for dis…“.
To give some relative idea here…. these people probably make between $800 e.c. and $1200e.c. a month, if they are currently lucky enough to have a job. The cost of living here is very high. So a $500e.c. fine is a serious hardship for this man and his family. Now he is one of the lucky ones who still has a job. Nearby there are two huge resorts closed down that normally employ 500 local people in this small town. That’s 500 people without any jobs or any income at all. The government here is trying to make up its shortfall by leaning heavily on the already poor local population.
Well…. us white people are seen by locals as cash machines. If we get caught not wearing a mask… even for a second.. isn’t that a good excuse to rob us of $500e.c. dollars. Now I will say that in the confines of Jolly Harbour the police leave this gated community (where the president of the country also lives) alone. But go out into the local areas and you will not be so protected.
The next concern is the actual local populations of each island as they grow more desperately poor and begin to starve. Their governments cannot print money to feed them like your government does. Starving people will do desperate things, governments facing bankruptcy will do desperate things.
Read these latest posts going around down here amongst the cruisers. The Government of the BVI’s is now in the piracy business. They are stealing boats and holding them for ransom… completely illegally… and completely against international maritime law.
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The second text I just received from sailor friends this morning…
I want to be clear with all the apologists here who will immediately seek some reasonable nice happy good explanation for these things as being reasonable and justified… People who must believe all governments are good and right and safe and your friend.
This is Piracy… period.
What is sickening to me is that this is now piracy by a government. I have heard of similar problems in the past by the government of the Turks and Caicos impounding boats and giving “fines” to sailors for imaginary things. It seems their neighbors in the BVI’s have caught onto the idea. I cannot help but wonder how many other of these small desperately poor tropical islands will follow suit. The big problem is… these are the incidents we are hearing about… how many are happening that we do not hear about.
I have Venezuelan pirates in the water south of me and Government pirates in the waters North of me. Covid has closed everything down and the world is not a reasonable place.
I used to find sailing in the ocean a dangerous enough thing to do…
Now people and governments are a much bigger danger there is nothing I can do anything to protect myself from this threat either. It is purely a random gamble and I am helpless if they find me and try to board me. I have to say though… OVER MY DEAD BODY..! If anyone tries to board my boat at sea they will be treated as pirates and I will die fighting them off, badge or no badge.
Captain Lexi is beginning to worry again… 🙁
Once we launch WildChild in a few days… we are free… in the water.. free to go…. but where…?
We are planning to go to Barbuda in a week or two, as it is part of Antigua and we do not need to check in or out. My friend Barry has told me to be careful up there… they have nothing up there… more poor than here… and they have a history of boarding yachts and murdering the people to steal their stuff. The government hides it to protect tourism industry.. but it happens. He has been living here for 15 years now.
You can read about this stuff for yourself the 1994 murders in Barbuda
You can read about the 2009 Yacht Captain murder here
I realize you can scary yourself silly by reading too much bad stuff. My point is only to help you understand the general frame work around these things and pose the question….
DO YOU THINK COVID INDUCED POVERTY WILL INCREASE OR DECREASE the likely hood of bad things like this happening…?
I am not foolish enough to believe the bad things incident rate is currently going down… and you can see the murder rate was never ZERO. This island only has a population of 100,000 people. Imagine a city in Canada like St. Catherines with a similar population having a murder rate this high? The whole Niagara region back home with a population over a 1/4 million people has a murder rate of like 1 person every decade. Here 10-17 people a year get murdered in the good times. What do you think the murder rate will be now in the bad times… as people start to starve? The local poor people see white people as wealthy cash machines and the solution to their problems. Our skin color paints a target on us.
Well…. enough fun stuff for today…. I launch WildChild Thursday (tomorrow) and I am busy getting her ready to go… She looks good doesn’t she?
Cheers Sailors….
Captain Lexi….
……………… the busy stressed and worried girl ……..