One of the fun things writers get to do is choose a paradigm, or frame of reference, from which to present a story. If you have been following me for any length of time you know about my penchant for pluralistic relativism. Today I have some fun stuff for you.
I think the last we spoke I told you about WildChild’s sail to Barbuda. It was Kyndy’s first sail with WildChild so I knew it would be too much for her to be active crew so I let her take it easy and I kept life simple for her, don’t vomit. With some Dramamine she accomplished her mission.
Barbuda is just lovely as I constantly tell you about, it was no different this time. Kyndy just loved the place. Well in the last blog she swam to shore to go visit and explore the place. I told her about this cool little beach bar there run by a local guy named Enoch. I told her that if she goes and visits my friend to tell him that Captain Lexi says hi.
Enoch the lovely
I had met Enoch on previous visits. He is a simple guy, speaks slowly, not much book learnin, but is always smiling. Enoch just loves cruisers and Canadians in particular. Very friendly nice guy. He told me before all about his girlfriend in Nova Scotia and how much he loves her and is faithful to her and is waiting for her and her family to return again soon. Enoch noticed the Christian cross I wear around my neck and told me all about his experience with God and he is very spiritual, he trusts God.
Just a lovely man.
Well Kyndy did meet Enoch and she discovered, that although the government has forced the closure of all bars and restaurants in Antigua and Barbuda until Feb 17th, due to Covid, Enoch was still offering to sell grilled lobster for take away (understand that in the islands down here they do not say “take-out” food… they say “take away” food to mean the same thing).
Kyndy, being the lovely girl she is from North Carolina thought it might be nice to treat her Captain to a beach grilled lobster the next day. I thought it was a splendid idea and accepted her offer via WhatsApp text. Kyndy arranged it with Enoch.
The plans were set.
My big excitement for Barbuda is always the snorkeling. Kyndy was disappointed with it, maybe I hyped it too much, but she told me it was fine… she thought it would be more like in Hawaii. Everything is relative I guess. I have never been to Hawaii and I think the Caribbean reefs are just wonderful.
I took Kyndy out to snorkel the reefs just to the south edge of the anchorage as helicopters occasionally buzzed overhead bringing rich people to and from the island in the heat of the clear Caribbean day.
I am beginning to discover a meditative spiritual experience while hovering above the reefs in my wet suit, weightlessly floating above the life below. I am always on the look out for Nemo, he got lost you know and his dad is looking for him… 🙂
After a lovely afternoon of snorkeling we packed it up and returned home to my yacht patiently waiting for my return. Kyndy and I rinsed of with the rainwater cockpit shower and got changed into presentable dry clothes for our excursion to Enoch’s and our Lobster treat. Sometimes we live like rich people on WildChild. 🙂
We get the dinghy up onto the beach and saunter over to the empty picnic tables as Enoch is grilling our lobster and awaiting our arrival. Life is just wonderful and how amazing is this.
Enoch only serves the grilled lobster, as he is not a restaurant, and you have to bring your own plates and forks and side dishes. Kyndy and I get all setup on a picnic table and lay out our food stuffs we brought for our picnic and Enoch greets us with smiles and happiness. What a sweet guy.
Kyndy and I enjoy our beach meal and Enoch is polite and stays away doing whatever as we eat. When we are finished he comes over and strikes up a conversation with us. Did I mention he just loves cruisers? Kyndy is a very nice and friendly girl and the two of the chatter away about different things. Kyndy is curious about the island.
Somehow or another the conversation turns to Enoch is going hiking nearby tomorrow morning and there are a bunch of trails around there, would we like to join him for a hike?
I am not so interested in hiking and had to run the water maker the next morning and do my laundry in my bucket so I declined the generous offer. Kyndy however was interested in getting to see the island though and she agreed to go with him. They made plans to meet back there the next morning at 9am.
As we were dinghying back home that evening Kyndy asked me if it was safe to go hiking with Enoch. I assured her of course, he is a very nice and gentle guy, very safe.
I have mentioned before that I am very gullible and naïve.
Enoch the Horrible
So as Kyndy relates to me later… well that was pretty horrible.
Kyndy swims to shore the next morning and meets Enoch at his bar at the appointed time. Enoch is waiting for her and seems happy to have her company. He leads her off into the semi arid desert scrub brush along some remote trails. They are getting further and further away from people.
I do not know all the details… Enoch lead her to some three sided lean-to shack thingy that he says he used to live in. It has a mattress inside.
Enoch had been prying into her in the conversation leading up to this place.
“are you single?”
“Where is your ex-husband?”
“Do you like sex?”
“do you miss having sex?”
“I can make you feel good”
“we could have sex right here?”
“Sometimes French men want to watch me having sex with their wives”
“I like a hairy vagina and I will lick it real good for you”
Kyndy is a sweet Christian girl from the mountains of North Carolina. She has been married for the last 25 years and has never been exposed to this kind of treatment before. She has no idea that being soft gentle and polite with this predator is only encouraging him. She has never been exposed to the dark side of men before, even she says her ex-husband was a very wonderful man. Kyndy does not realize how dangerous the situation is. She has been lured into the bush away from anyplace anyone will hear her scream. The man only ever had one thing on his mind the whole time. The nice guy he appeared to be to me was an illusion. Or was it? This was the real Enoch… or was it?
Perhaps he is both opposing identities at the same time.
Enoch accepts her refusals though and they continue the hike to another spot with a mattress on the ground. Enoch keeps trying for that tasty white vagina he is so close to. Kyndy keeps politely deflecting his interest without hurting his feelings. The wolf can smell the white vagina, the sheep has no idea she is near a wolf, the wolf is insistently hungry.
“I could make sweet good lovin to you..” he keeps trying to get access to the white vagina despite being told no thank you a dozen times.
At one point he places his hand on her vagina (outside her shorts) saying how much he likes to lick vagina. At one point he asks her for a hug and places his hands down on her ass.
The sweet girl has no idea she has just been sexually assaulted. She has become the victim of the man. Anytime anyone touches your private areas in an unwanted way, that you do not consent to, it is sexual assault. Kyndy brushes his hands away and doesn’t make a big thing of it. She still thinks its no big deal.
I think the girl is lucky that much bigger man was in the mood to accept her continuous words of “NO” without resorting to physical force. If he had been in a different mood… there would have been nothing she could have done about it.
It’s official
MEN SUCK…!
Kyndy’s Demons
Please forgive me, as I am terrible with timelines sometimes. We stayed for a few days in Barbuda then sailed back to Antigua like last Tuesday (Feb 9th 2021) I think. The sail was again medium sporty but this time we had the winds on a broad reach from behind. The motion of the boat is very different going with the waves than it is going against the waves.
I wanted to push Kyndy on this sail to step up and be crew, after all its why she is here, to help make my life easier, this is not a free charter, she is not on vacation. I have gone to a lot of effort to give Kyndy a fantastic sailing foundation. I have been patiently explaining things to her over and over again. I have never put so much effort into repeating myself for a crew to learn. Come on Kyndy… its time to become crew. I need your help for the sail back.
If you have been following the tales of Captain Lexi you will know that I am totally all about girl power. My whole schtick is empowering girls to believe in their own inner strength intelligence and power.
Someone stole Kyndy’s girl power. I could not figure out how to give it back to her. I knew she understood what I had taught her. I knew she knew what to do. I knew when I asked her questions about sailing things I have taught her dozens of times that she knew the answer… but…. she would not give it. She would self doubt and undermine herself and fail to step up to the plate. Sometimes she would even first instinctively mumble the correct answer… then quickly fumble stumble and tear herself apart with doubt.
Kyndy has demons of her own to contend with it seems. The silent voices of people from her past whispering in her head that she is just a girl and cannot do this stuff. I cannot hear her demons but I can watch their effect as she tears herself down, self sabotages.
I know how to teach people how to sail.
I was unsure how to give her back her girl power.
The sail back to Antigua went fine. Another 30 miles with me at the helm the whole time and me basically solo sailing again. I could give her simple direct one item instructions, “tighten the port side genny winch please” and she could do that. If I said trim the sail… she could not do that. Too many steps but I have spent days teaching her what that means and what to do. I have explained to her how to trim a sail in great details for 9 days now, mentally she should know this by now. I know she knows it but she refuses to apply it. Kyndy is a smart girl acting dumb.
We arrived in Jolly Harbour Tuesday afternoon a few hours before dark. We had a little incident I will not get into too much, where Kyndy was at the helm motoring while I lifted the anchor to reset it, when she rammed WildChild into full speed and tried to zoom my girl into the shallows. I saved the mistake but my faith in Kyndy was not growing. It was a very stupid thing to do, defying common sense and reason.
Restoring Girl Power
The nest day (last Wednesday Feb 10th) my friend Sher agreed to come sailing with us down to Falmouth. Sher is returning to America on Feb 11th and this Wednesday the 10th was my last chance to hang out with her but I HAD to sail that day. My crew needed to go to Falmouth to get a Covid test to be able to fly home this Sunday Feb 14th thus forcing the Wednesday sail. So I thought coming sailing with me for the afternoon might be a lovely thing for Sher to enjoy before she returns to land life.
Also with Kyndy failing as crew I thought it would be good to have the help of another sailor for this next trip straight into the sporty winds. We know that I CAN do this alone, as I have just done it two weeks ago alone, but I do not WANT to do it alone.
So Wednesday morning we dinghied into Jolly Harbour and picked up Sher and brought her out to WildChild. With us three girls on board we quickly got the dinghy engine lifted off the dinghy and stored up on the rail board and secured the dinghy on the davits for this coming sail. The sooner we set sail the sooner we would arrive in Falmouth.
The sail is about 12 miles contouring the coast but about 17 miles tacing out and around the reefs in deeper water. The forecast was for 17-23 knots of wind from the east, and we had to go east. The waves were forecast at 1.7 meters on top of a 1.5 meter easterly swell coming from the same vector. This meant that sometimes the waves and swell will add together and be 3 meters (9 feet) high. Sometimes they would deconstructively interfere and be quite small and calm for a second. The waves will lift buck and rise and fall seemingly randomly and we will get tossed around. Nothing horrible but straight into it, it will be smashy smashy poundy poundy again.
The sail went amazingly well. Something happened inside Kyndy. Suddenly in the presence of another sailor girl Kyndy stepped up to the plate and did fantastic. Kyndy did not fumble or self sabotage and play helpless, learned victim. Maybe Kyndy did not want to look foolish in front of this other stranger. Kyndy suddenly became focused attentive and useful. She stopped screwing up and self sabotaging. Kyndy was suddenly a competent crew, just like that. Suddenly everything I had been teaching Kyndy came together in her head and Kyndy was schooling Sher.
I was beaming with pride as Kyndy suddenly began explaining everything to Sher, the new person, to explain things to her. I gave a whoop of joy and gave my student a big high five as she suddenly graduated into baby sailor useful crew. Kyndy was teaching Sher how to properly position her body to grind a winch and how to move the very heavy main traveler up to windward. Things just yesterday Kyndy was screwing up.
It was never about Kyndy not knowing what to do, she had the best teacher and the best education, it was always about this girl facing down her inner demons and beating back the voices of the past that were disempowering her. “You are just a girl” are words we have all heard before.
KYNDY FINALLY FOUND HER GIRL POWER
and I was so fuckin proud of her….
Head Fish Murder on Board
If you remember in the last blog I was wondering about what lure do I need to use to catch a Tuna instead of always and only catching Barracuda. Well removing the last Barracuda broke 2 of the tines off the last quid lure hook thus forcing me to change to a different lure.
I had this little green one in my fishing tackle box and had never used it before. I am a terrible fish psychologist and I have no idea what lures look more or less attractive to various fish at various times of day in various conditions and speeds. All of the details of real fishing pro’s are way beyond me.
But the green one was still new and shiny and I paid a lot of money for it, so why not give it a shot for a while.
Well it turns out the answer to the question was the green one. Holy crap this is a good lure.
WE FINALLY CAUGHT A TUNA….!
As I was reeling the fish in I realized it was not a Barracuda and I was amazed and shocked. I got so excited. For a little while I saw a second fish, I assumed to be its mate, swimming along with it. This gave me the impression it was a mahi mahi for a minute. Mahi Mahi live and swim in pairs and often when you hook one the other one will follow and stay with their mate for as long as possible. The girls onboard felt bad about this, we felt sorry for breaking up the married couple and we felt we should just release the fish to not hurt the other ones feelings. How sad it would be to lose your mate so suddenly. Our empathy was in full drive.
Yep… it’s true… we are girls… all soft mushy and emotionally sensitive.
As the fish gets reeled in closer to the boat I realize it is not a Mahi Mahi but rather looks like a TUNA…! I start shouting in Joy… how fabulous this will be for dinner tonight. Finally $800 in fishing gear and 3 years later I finally catch an edible fish on the ocean. This makes this an $800 tuna. There is no way in hell I am going to NOT eat this thing.
This… however… presents us with a problem.
Someone has to kill it…
We are all soft and sensitive girls who do not want to hurt anything.
My crew are both vegetarians.
I am a meat eater, I know where meat comes from, I know every time I eat meat something died to provide it. I get this logically, but emotionally I just cannot do the actual killing.
I am the Captain… I realize with a sickening feeling inside… I am about to murder this fish. Today is the day I will be stepping up to the plate and facing this dreadful nightmare. This was another internal line I have been clear about from the beginning of this sailing adventure… I do not want to ever have to kill anything… I am too soft sensitive and empathetic to commit this act. I am always clear with crew, if we catch anything I can fillet it… but you have to kill it. In the past cried as I release the hook out of the fish we did catch and release. I cry because my empathy is so high I cringe in sympathetic pain as I pull the hook out. Now I am about to end a life, end a consciousness.
Ohh fuck I dread this…
I dig deep inside and summon my strength and courage. I am the Captain… I must be strong and do this… I am strong… I can do this… Let’s go face the blood bath.
Instinctively all human beings get that blood belongs inside the body. When the blood stays inside the body it means life. When there are puddles of blood flowing around your deck it means something bad has happened, someone is hurt, injured or dead. It does not feel good to be covered in blood, blood on your hands and arms and legs and splattered around on your deck. It is not a good feeling inside. I felt horrible doing this… but I faced it.
I admit… I wish I had a man onboard to do this killing for me.
They don’t have any feeling about killing fish, often no feelings about killing other people.
Maybe there is a reason they have evolved this way.
Men hunt… women gather…
Its primitive, ancient, and biological, its in our DNA.
Cheers sailors…
…. the Tuna was delicious for dinner ….
Captain Lexi