I have been extremely busy rushing about on my new found schedule for the last week. Very stressful but we are ready to make the big jump tomorrow. My new crew Candy arrived 5 days ago on July 2nd. We have been very busy. We sat out the Hurricane Elsa, that hit Martinique, in St. Johns harbour then we moved around to Deep Bay. There we put Candy thru an intensive 3 days of Captain Lexi’s sailing school to get her ready for this big passage. I did a bunch of repairs on WildChild to get her ready for the big jump too. We did a heavy provisioning in Jolly Harbour and I said good-bye to friends. Today we just sailed to the check out point in English harbour to check out tomorrow morning and make the big jump. Life has been busy.

 

New Crew

So it seems that storm I was hiding from last week did turn into a Hurricane. It actually did veer more southy and get stronger than forecast, it moved away from me, so it seems Mother Nature still loves me…. YAY.  A few other yachts came into the harbour to hide with me from hurricane Elsa.

I did get concerned when, during the passing rain, a small local boat was hiding in my blind spot with their engine off 15 feet beside me doing…?   whatever. It was a bit creepy. They were not just passing by. They just silently came up beside me while I was down below and were just floating beside me for who knows how long. Then when I came up to the cockpit to take  picture of the storms they saw me, suddenly started their engine and zoomed off. Just weird…  my intuition just had a bad feeling about it.

 

 

The dinghy ride to pick up my new crew Candy from the cruise ship pier was a bit sporty and wet but my little 4hp engine did the job. I found Candy pretty much on time and she did not get harassed by the health screeners too much, her entrance into the country went fine. I was nervous though about leaving WildChild alone after the weird scouting incident that morning. We returned immediately to the yacht and I gave Candy the day to chill out and relax while we waited for the rest of the storms to pass.

Candy lives a busy life on land and had only a limited window of opportunity to help me make this passage. Her flight home is booked out of Grenada for July 17th. Also remember Grenada will Covid quarantine us for a week upon arrival. This gave us 5 days to fully train Candy and get WildChild all ready to go. The new Schedule will be the source of our upcoming suffering, mother nature will be moody this weekend for this jump.

The next day, we sailed downwind out of the commercial harbour and tucked around the corner into Deep Bay to begin Candies training. We both knew her tight schedule would force her to hit the ground running. Next Morning after my morning chocolate milk and episode of Grey’s Anatomy (soap opera) we began Captain Lexi’s sailing school.

 

I understand why it is a good idea to spread all this information out over the course of a week. I also know how hard it will be on the student to have their head crammed full with so much information so fast. We sat down to begin. I will say…. Candy did great. She came prepared with her note book, listened attentively, took notes, and took it all in. She got the high speed version of Captain Lexi’s sailing school because of our tight schedule.

We began as I always do, right from the fundamental beginnings of types of yachts and types of sails, to sailing terminology. From there I kept pushing thru lecture after lecture as fast as Candy felt she could go. We stopped for breaks whenever she said she needed one. Short breaks and we were back at it. After a few hours of lecturing we would switch over to hands on go up on deck and see and touch.

 

 

Candy has sailed before so she had a great instinct for things. She learned so well, she did absolutely great. Good students are a pleasure for good teachers. The only thing she had trouble with was knot tying classes. She did amazingly well with the physics portion which is usually the hardest for most beginners. Candy is a very intelligent lady and for her, she found grasping the physics easy as can be.

After two and half days of intensive training we finally took a break. I gave Candy half a day to go snorkel around the beautiful clear waters in Deep Bay. I had yacht repairs to do and had to run the water maker so I met her onshore an hour and a half later with the dinghy. There we hiked up to visit Fort Barrington, because… well you know… exercise is good and sometimes it is healthy to get off the yacht sometimes.

Training done… it was time to actually go sailing.

 

 

The next day (Monday July 5th) we lifted anchor and had a perfect light wind easy sail to Jolly Harbour. Mother Nature was being kind to us with gentle conditions. The training sail went GREAT and Candy showed her sailor blood. She has a natural feel for sailing, she has an instinct, she did amazingly well for her first sail after classroom theory. She was actually helpful immediately and proved she retained and could apply the gift I had given her. She was able to steer and apply her new technical sailor language and follow instructions. Her hands followed my words beautifully and we did amazing as a team together.

We got to Jolly Harbour and dropped anchor a few hours before sun set. The next day (Tuesday July 6th) we lowered the dinghy again and went in to shore.

 

Boat Projects Again

What would be lovely, is that after I do a good job repairing things on my yacht, that they stay repaired for a few years. It can be amazingly frustrating when things you just fixed, fail again. A few days before Candy arrived I was jolted out of bed in the middle of the night by the emergency backup bilge pump alarm going off. It seemed like the brand newly installed float switch on the main bilge pump failed. Failed….   failed… grrrr.

 

 

I just purchased a new, very expensive, float switch from the local budget marine only about 6 weeks ago. Installed it 4 weeks ago, and it failed after only 2 weeks. I spent quite a bit of time using my fancy electrician tools and proving the problem. I had initially thought perhaps I had made a mistake installing it..?  or bad wires…?   Nope. It was the new switch, manufacturing defect, bad luck for me.

Good captains… always think ahead and have an amazing propensity to keep spare parts around. I spent a few hours dirty in the bilge solving this problem again. Floaty boats makes sailors happy.

The next project was my newly made and installed mast head nav light failed the day before Candy arrived….!    Grrr….  I was careful to build it well. With Candies help yesterday she hauled me up the mast to take down the old light. I performed surgery on the thing and proved it was a failure on the white LED strip where the power wires to the bus were soldered in.

 

 

This gets technical but… for other sailors who may be interested…  did you know China is really good at making things as cheaply as possible..?  The white LED strips that I have, are so thinly made, that the metal pads where you are supposed to solder the wire leads onto, are thinner than paper. I have had many problems with them in the past. It failed at that point yet again.

So… I accept… my bad…. I failed to over engineer it. A mistake I was determined to not make again. The new light I built yesterday has 3 power lead wires connecting to all the ends of the red and green LED bus strips in the series. So with multiple power up points to the new LED bus combo strip, if the white strips do fail in the future, at least the red and green (better built LED strips) should continue to work. Lose a segment instead of lose the whole thing.

BIGGER BETTER MORE POWER

arrggg ugh ugh ugh Tim-the-tool-man Taylor grunts at me with pride

Another little project I have had on my list for a while now is to raise up the base of my storm sail. The steel rod that connects it to the deck works just fine, but does not raise it high enough to put the dinghy on deck beneath it. When I have the dinghy upside down on deck for rough sailing and long passages, I cannot use my storm sail. I have been thinking it would be nice to find a solution to this. When we were onshore in Jolly Harbour yesterday I stopped in to visit David at the marine machine shop.

I was able to purchase a simple piece of steel flat bar that I modified this morning to solve the storm sail problem. Nice job huh…?

 

 

While there I also happened to mention to David, a good guy and good mechanic, if he knew where I might be able to find a new cooling reservoir cap. It took me like 6 weeks to solve this puzzle. My engine had been loosing coolant every time I ran it. Not a huge amount, maybe 500ml each time, but for weeks I could not find the leak. Finally on the sail between Deep Bay and Jolly Harbour I had a hunch. I taped a plastic baggie over the cooling reservoir over flow tube and lo-and-behold it caught the escaping liquid, the invisible leak.

Puzzle solved in a stroke of Lexi genius.

So once I knew the cap was failing to hold under pressure it was time to learn everything I could about this new world of caps. It seems… it is designed to release coolant when the cooling system pressure got up to 13 pounds of pressure, to bleed out extra pressure. BUT…. it also has a thermo couple valve in the center used to break vacuum pressure when you shut the engine down and it cools off.

 

it seems… that center valve thermocouple failed. See the gap… it is supposed to be spring loaded closed. My system was not holding ANY PRESSURE  and was immediately dumping all overflow, but only when hot and running under pressure.

The super exciting news is….

this is the cheapest possible failure to fix… the best case scenario for me…

the extra amazing news is… David happened to have an extra cap he could sell me… that fit…!   God smiled down upon me yesterday. I installed the new cap easy-peasy and like a miracle, when I used the engine today it did not overheat at all, actually held the temp right at the open point for the cooling system inline thermocouple.

WildChild is now in tip top shape and ready for this passage

 

Today’s Nasty Scheduled Sail

I have been keeping an eye on the weather, captains obsession before any passage. Behind the recent hurricane the weather has been fairly calm. So this last week was calm. Starting today though, the weather is rough for this upcoming weekend as another nasty low approaches. It looks like sustained 20+ knots until Monday. So Monday would be a good time to leave for this next jump to Grenada. Tomorrow (Thursday July8th) is not the best weather window but this is our schedule.

Again the schedule will push me into making a mistake and sailing in the wrong weather, not waiting for best weather, which would be the wise thing to do. Schedules kill sailors.

Today we sailed from Jolly Harbour down to English harbour to check out of the country tomorrow.

This morning after finishing the storm sail modification it was the scheduled time to make this jump down around the corner. I gave the order to “prepare to toss the boat” and the two of us secured everything down below. We came up and prepped the yacht together. I stood up on the bow of my girl and surveyed the weather. It was very gusty with very unstable winds. Not weather I would choose to sail in. Not weather I could lift the anchor alone in. Not weather I would risk solo sailing in 20-27 knots of wind, it is too sporty and rough. Not a good day to go sailing…   but we have a tight schedule.

The good news is….   Candy is AWESOME…!   I love Candy. She is fabulous good useful helpful crew. I knew the only way I could get the anchor up was to use the engine to carefully motor the yacht towards the anchor to relieve the tension on the chain. There would be no way for me to solo cantilever the chain up as I usually do. We could do this… but only if we could work well together as a team.

I explained the coming dance to Candy as clearly as I could. She listened attentively and actively, fed back what she heard me say. We were both on the same page and I made the leap of faith our new team of girl power awesomeness could get the anchor up together.

 

 

With her great assistance on the helm we got the anchor up together and fell off downwind in 25 knots. We found 20 feet of water depth, “headed-to-wind” and did great working together as a team to haul up the mainsail. This would be a double reef day. Once it was done we fell off again and sailed 26over6 knots with only the tiny reefed mainsail.

Once we got around the corner towards Cades reef we added 50% genny and came around to a close haul, heading into the wind. We were doing fine 24over7 knots, WildChild is a very fast girl, just wants to go. I am always okay with slowing her down to make the sailing easier on the humans.

Today we started out in easy 3-5 foot waves and ended up with 10 foot waves and took a nasty beating out on the ocean. I had rather strong currents fighting us the entire upwind close hauled slog against strong winds and fair sized sheering waves. If you go look on the Garmin tracker for todays sail, my tac angles are shameful. We had to triple tac to get far enough upwind to get into freemans bay here an hour before sunset. My tac angles are usually around 90 degrees, today closer to 45 degrees. It was poundy rough and we were running against peak tidal current.

This was the hardest time I have ever had to get upwind to English harbour today.

Candy did great. It is clear she has sailor blood in her DNA. Her tummy was fine and her fortitude held up great in sporty conditions that would have most baby sailors hurling over the rail. The girl was smiling and happy to be on the ocean. She said the conditions were pretty much as she expected them to be. She handled herself great.

It is such a rare thing for me to sail with actual good competent crew again. Sailing is SO MUCH EASIER WITH GOOD CREW…!  I should do it more often for sure.        🙂

 

 

Candy did great today in sporty rough sailing conditions that would be fine to run in and horrible to smash to windward and fight, which is exactly what we did. We worked very well as a team, great communication between girls, as we began the tacking dance together. With a few corrections from me soon she fell into the swing of things and crossed the wind.

I personally hate it when mother decides to give it to me in the face. The waves built up bigger the more exposed we became, soon we were taking waves into the cockpit again, waves that smash into your face. The whole yacht shudders as she shoots up out of the water over a wave crest and slams down on the backside. The whole yacht shudders when she gets hit by the bigger harmonic waves that hit her so hard she looses forward momentum and falls off sideways, the spray shooting up into the air, hitting me in the face again. This is where the term salty sailor comes from.

How people find this life romantic is beyond me. The truth is… the harsh reality of life on the ocean is for a special breed of very tough human beings.

 

 

You know you have had a rough sail when, after anchoring, the water is still pouring out of the anchor locker drain hole 5 minutes after you have dropped the anchor. My bow spent so much time underwater the anchor locker filled up like a bathtub. The bow spent so much time underwater it was covered in sargasso weed like a green garden. Todays sail was sporty to be gentle about it.

 

Looking ahead

Tomorrow morning, we go check out of Antigua. Do last minute preparations, and then lift anchor by early afternoon for the long run south. I am unsure which route I will take. You can over watch me on the Garmin tracker page.

The debate is….

go close to the islands… be closer to coast guard assistance… lower chances of a pirate encounter… get lee shore wave protection… fight swirly mountain winds that are unstable… get easy protected sailing mixed in with hard rough sailing between the islands in the gaps… more marine traffic to be attentive to… higher risk of collision if inattentive at night on the helm…

or…

go straight line… way out to sea…. far away from the islands… in the waters the pirates are more likely to be in… but other small craft are unlikely to be in… stable winds… steady rough seas the whole time…. fewer sail trim adjustments… beam reach… straight south.

I am unsure right now what I will do… we will see when I get there.

I am worried about sudden storms. Two days ago, my sailor friends in Grenada told me they had the worst thunder storms they have seen in a long time. Lightening everywhere. I know full well how fast storms can generate in the warm waters. I know what they feel like when they pummel you in the dark… its very scary. Right now… I am praying we have only the stable sustained 20+ knots of wind scheduled and DO NOT also get hit by storms.

Todays sail sucked because we had to bash to windward.

The passage south should be easier because it should be mostly beam reach. Reef the sails enough and the yacht will handle the high winds easily. Beam reach is side to side rolly… but as long as the waves are not breaking, not curling under us, its fine.

I cannot make any kind time schedule calculation as to when we will arrive, despite the interests of Grenada telling us to schedule our arrival in advance. Candy will do the difficult 12-4am shift for me… but she has expressed concern about not wanting to get overpowered in the dark, she has asked for very reefed sails at night. We are also facing rough seas, it wears you down physically… we might heave-to to rest for short periods.

I expect to arrive either Sunday or Monday at the latest.

If you see our Garmin tracker suddenly veer due east or west… send the coast guard… something is wrong…. if we start going super fast… we have been kidnapped by pirates… if we go past Grenada towards Venezuela … we have definitely been kidnapped by pirates… send the American special forces to rescue us please.

sigh… so much worry in this fearful little female body huh.

But we cling to the odds of probability we will be fine… arrive tired and maybe a bit grumpy… but fine. We are both very tough sailor chic’s.

its been a very busy week

but we are now a race horse at the starting gate

 

Update

so its Thursday morning now and I am trying to make a go/no go decision… this is a bad idea… the weather is looking scary for our arrival Sunday… this is becoming dangerous… We might have to delay… which means Candy might not make her flight home… we have problems today….

 

well…  we have had a very dramatic morning… Candies iphone charger cable failed so she cannot communicate with anybody atm. After discussing the updated weather forecasts… (the above image) we have decided to wait. Better alive and safe but delayed than have horror stories later. Racing a nasty storm to your destination is not a wise idea. She used my cell phone to discuss the situation with her family and they decided to take the safe path.

 

So after we all discussed this… the new safer plan will be leave here on Monday above the nasty…. and slip down behind the nasty low. It will take between 2-3 days to get there. So we should arrive Wednesday either morning or evening. Worst case scenario we have an extra day of clear safe weather if we need to arrive Thursday. We will be racing into clear weather instead of racing into a storm.

Sailing life… we need to be flexible and adapt…

either the reed bends in the wind or it breaks…

the race has been delayed due to weather

 

Cheers people

 

Captain Lexi

 

… faking bravery and hiding the worry and fear ….