Ok… Well… I need to think things out to my journal to help me figure out what I am going to do…
Monkey (I am not allowed to use his name in my blogs)… he left Vero beach Florida last Wednesday April 10th to make a 10 hour crossing to the Bahamas… he landed this morning, Saturday April 13th, YES 3 days and 3 nights later, washed up on the beach very near where he left from in Vero beach.
Well the good news he is alive and he is basically ok. So cheers that he survived himself as the captain. I knew he is a bad sailor and this is HUGE proof that I am not wrong about his abilities. Look he failed miserably on his FIRST solo sail.
Let’s look more into the details of what I know happened… I was providing him with shore support information about winds and weather when he decided to leave Wednesday. I advised
him that it would be ok to cross but with light winds and very calm seas he would have to motor sail for part of this. The crossing is about 50 nautical miles across and can be a little treacherous because of the gulf stream
currents drawing your boat north.
Under normal sailing conditions if the yacht is moving at a comfortable 5 knots of boat speed this crossing should take about
10 hours. Now you have to take into account your sideways slip so you will lose some ground fighting the current so maybe it takes 12 hours. Of course if you go slower you slip more sideways north and lose ground and if the winds are stronger and you go faster you cross faster with less slip. So the crossing time is like an average calculation type of thing with a plus or minus of maybe 5 hours depending on conditions.
When Monkey left around noon on Wednesday I figured he is alone and should not try to be out there more than 1 night. People need to sleep but missing 1 night of sleep is acceptable. So given that he was expecting light winds and very calm seas he would have to motor sail from about 3-6pm while the winds switched from west to north west. All night he was predicted to have (on 3 wind models) 7-12 knots of lovely light wind
broad reaching him to the Bahamas. So it should have been an easy gentle and peaceful crossing. Conditions were good.
So the plan was he would arrive on the northern bank of the Bahamas by early Thursday morning. He could drop an anchor on the bank in 15 feet of water, sleep eat and rest, then pick up and continue to Great Sail Cay (the first safe anchorage).
Somehow Monkey was out there sailing (in circles??) for 3 days and 3 nights…. !!! alone.
We do not know exactly what went wrong… (knowing Monkey is a terrible sailor)… we can assume many many things went wrong. He blamed the wind, the water, the engine, and his chart plotter for all letting him down and causing this. His blunders are never his fault.
He did admit to me this morning that sometime last night he went below for a drink of water and fell asleep. So with him comfortably sleeping down below the boat sailed itself in gentle conditions up onto the beach. The tide went out and voila… his first solo sail ends in disaster.
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Where this affects WildChild.
Monkey had damaged some critical solar panels on WildChild before he left. I ordered brand new ones ($500) and had them shipped to him in Florida. He also bought me (with my money of course) a camera and a hard drive at Wal-Mart and some food. All in all he has about a $1000 of my stuff on his boat to deliver to me in the Bahamas.
I still have a bunch of his stuff on my boat for him to come here with his new boat and retrieve. I gave him the Scuba gear (I bought with my own Money) worth $10,000 and it is his big dream to go diving. The gear is big bulky and heavy and in my way on WildChild (it blocks me from getting into the engine room to make water every 3 days).
Plus there is so much of his crap left on my boat I want off.
So we have not totally parted ways yet. There are final strings to sever. Critically WildChild NEEDS these solar panels for the windlass to work. I have already paid for them… I need them.
Getting things shipped to the Bahamas is apparently mind bogglingly expensive and amazingly slow. Like one sailor needed a $600 engine part and it would cost a total of $2800 to get it shipped here. It was cheaper for him to fly to Florida, pick it up, and fly back than to have it shipped and wait 2-3 weeks for its arrival.
Hurricane season is coming… WildChild needs to start jumping south soon. Elena is almost ready to go. Her first sail 2 days ago went great. A few more fun sails and she should be ready for real sailing soon. WildChild is ready to jump, like a race horse at the gate…. time to go soon.
BUT…. we cannot leave without those parts… without the gear hand off with the monkey.
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So what do I do….?
I am the captain of my vessel and I have to make good decisions for my boat.
I cannot wait around forever for the monkey. I am not even sure he can get his boat off the beach. He said in a text it will cost $8000 to get a crane in there to lift him back to the water, and I know he does not have that kind of money.
Do I sail WildChild to Florida to get my stuff off his wreck?
Even if he can get his boat off the beach somehow… What reason would I have to believe he would ever be able to sail to the Bahamas…? If he could not do it last week why would I believe he could do it next week?
So if he says to me just keep waiting and “trust me” I will be there next week…. Do I believe him?
Do I wait another wasted week for my stuff to be delivered?
Do I say “fuck it” and just sever all ties… not depend on him anymore… and find other solutions?
Accept the loss of my thousand dollars worth of new stuff as another total loss of the cost of knowing Monkey?
Sell the scuba gear ( I gave him) to recover some of my financial losses and place another solar panel order and have them shipped here to the Bahamas and wait 2-3 weeks for them to arrive?
Have monkey recover my stuff off his wreck and ask him to mail them to me before he heads back to Canada… (his dream shattered… tail between his legs).
Grrrrr….. being the Captain is often a lot of stress and a lot of responsibility. The captain has to make the decisions… often very hard and critical decisions…. where small mistakes can add up and end in disaster. The captain often has to make good decisions based on sketchy or bad information… maybe if and then maybe if then again maybe if that….
I have no clear idea of what to do here…. ? What do I do? What is the right decision at this moment in time?
Any suggestions people…? I am lost…
Captain Lexi
the lost and uncertain today….