The last blog was so long, and in my defense covered 3 weeks in one blog, that I had to leave some things out. So I am going share some of the other random interesting discoveries I have made in the last month now. We are currently at the marina and waiting for a weather window to jump to the mainland of Europe next.
But while we were sailing, before we got here there were a few cool discoveries. Of course we saw dolphins while out there sailing, this is nothing new. What was new and interesting for me was that about halfway across we began spotting these little… puffy… floating… purple… thingies. At first just a few random ones but by about the Latitude of 36 degrees North for the rest of the sailing into the Azores they became extremely common.
Before you scroll down take a guess…
So on this I am taking the Captains word for it, as I do not have a clue in the world what these strange little creatures are, but apparently these are Man-O-War jelly fish. I am told they actually have very long tentacles hanging down from them and are apparently very poisonous. What is very interesting about them is that they can inflate and deflate themselves and we have seen them flip their sails to change their direction of travel in the wind. Like somehow nature evolved these perfect little creatures to survive
at a specific latitude in the middle of the ocean with nothing around… like no seaweed no plankton no visible particles in the water nothing. I have no idea what they could possibly have evolved to eat out here. The ocean here can get incredibly wavy and nasty yet these delicate things seem to survive the rough waters without getting ripped apart. They look so delicate and beautiful but they are also so deadly and tough. Very exotic indeed and I found them very interesting.
Flying fish are super common. It is so common for us sailors to walk our decks in the morning and find the petrified bodies of these small flying fish that landed on our decks in the night. While sailing they make excellent bait to fish with. One morning we discovered this gooey little squid on the boat. I know nearly nothing about marine biology and precious little about squids in particular but …. ummm… how the heck could this little guy have gotten 4 feet into the air above the surface of the water to even make it onto the deck of the boat. I have never found a squid on my boat before so this was kind of an interesting discovery too.
So here is another weird story. We are at the marina and tied up to the docks. Just a normal marina, kinda old and a bit neglected but good enough. I was sitting alone in the cockpit reading when I noticed this guy walking along every slip with a knife in his hand and he would occasionally bend down and reach over the side of the dock and scrape away at something stuck to the floats.
I put my book down and watched this weird thing very curious about what was so interesting to this guy under the docks. Slowly I watched him make his way down, dock to dock until he was beside me and doing the same thing again. I noticed that after he scrapped the bottom his hand would slip into the pocket on his shorts. If you look in the picture his left pocket is wet.
I speak ZERO Portugese so conversing with the locals is very limited for me to their level of English. I was so curious though I could not help myself and when the man stood I asked him… “what is so interesting with these docks?”
He says to me in reply with a broken limited English… “my wife… she is pregnant… she tells me she wants… so I get…” It seems very noble of him and a good husband who respects his wife’s food cravings and goes out with a pocket knife to scour the marine life growing on the pontoons as ordered. I have no idea what these are exactly because the only thing I see growing on the pontoons looks like barnacles to me and as a sailor I consider them a pest and nuisance. It never occurred to me to scrape them off and eat them. To me the idea of eating these slimy things seems revolting but hey… in Portugal… to a pregnant woman somewhere… these are a delicacy. I thought this was interesting too.
Sailors LOVE to look at other boats. Sailboats are like a cross between a floating home and a moving machine. There is so much variety and different advantages and disadvantages to the different ways to layout and design a sailboat we are always curious when we see something new or different. There are so many different sailboats in the world with so many different ideas put into them sailors may not admit that they are checking out your boat but we are.
So at this Marina in Punta Delgada of Sao Miguel island this is a stopping point for many ocean worthy sailboats that have just crossed the Atlantic ocean. There are boats from all over the world here. Which means there is a very interesting collection of unusual boats for me to look at. I have found some interesting ones to show you and thought I’d share for my sailor friends out there. For sailors this is sailor porn below… so enjoy it my friends…
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The next interesting part of the adventure was something internal to me that surprised me. So if you have been following me you will know that I have been trapped on my boat for a very long time. I have been trapped on my boat in the Caribbean for over a year. Now the word trapped applies specifically to me and specifically to my situation for other reasons. The Caribbean is a lovely place very cool to explore and full of interesting people and interesting adventures.
But… the Caribbean… for all its charm… is not generally a first world place. You do not see many sky scrapers and I had never seen a traffic jam out there. I did not hear a single police car wailing a siren or ambulance. It is hard to find a wal-mart or shopping super store and finding specific items, common and easy for you to find might take a sailor in the Caribbean a month to find. I still cannot get a new power cord or keyboard for my Surface pro 4 laptop yet.
So now I suddenly find myself in Europe. I am in a first world country and suddenly we are in a modern city. The first day just the view of the tall buildings overwhelmed me. I watched cars and traffic jams. I heard cars honking their horns and police cars whizzing by. It was somehow kind of like culture shock for me. My brain got overwhelmed by the stimulus.
It took me a day on the boat to mentally prepare myself to enter this crowded and busy strange land. I walked around for a day by myself and was rather interested in the mix of old and new. I now have to be careful crossing a street and look both ways, this place is busy.
In Canada, we are a baby country at 151 years old. In Canada if you find a building that is 100 years old we consider it very old, but that is not old in Europe. This city center is probably hundreds of years old. The fort here has been guarding this bay for Portugal since the 1400’s. Some of these cobble stone streets are probably that old.
So it was kind of interesting to explore this old place. I admit I am not a traveler by nature, I do not usually have the travelers zest for exploring new places, but wandering around here alone I did find a curiosity begin to rise within me. I wonder what is around the next corner?
Spiritually I am still a wounded puppy. This sailing adventure the last 3 years has changed me. I have suffered and endured so much stress and overcome so much difficulty that I can tell it has changed me. I have gone very quiet inside, I hardly speak anymore. I spent a day wandering around this place alone and didn’t say a word to anyone. I have nobody to talk to anyway. Internally I have fallen, I do not feel my usual powerful self anymore, I feel weak inside. I cry a lot and cannot seem to find any internal central reference point to interact with people from.
I have no tolerance for other people anymore and little interest in them right now. I fear people now. I can feel deep inside… in my current completely broken condition… I am afraid to interact with people. I am not afraid of bad people… I am actually afraid of the good people, afraid of nice people too, afraid of all people. I cannot handle their… hmmm… human complexity now. People are so complicated and I am so broken now I cannot handle interacting with all the crazy paradigms schemas and energy control dramas they carry in their heads.
Normally Lexi loves people and wanders around infinitely curious about people, but this girl is gone now.
As for this adventure, being crew, it was fine, different… but fine. I do feel that I am less stressed out now. I feel calmer and more relaxed inside, but I am very lost. Right now Lexi is totally lost. My life has taken a radical and unexpected left turn because of all this covid stuff, much like has happened to many of you. For us sailors, who require open borders for our travel lifestyle, all borders closed really made problems. Right now I quietly watch the world around and do not feel responsible for it anymore. I have no idea where my life is going or what my future might bring but I wait for things to change. I am lost, hurt and waiting for…. well I do not know what.
Cheers
Lexi…