Sooo… I am on the fence about this one… should I or should I not tell you the last words about Monkey man….??? Hmmm…
I think…. yes… he is the one who chose to make our lives public with the YouTube videos… So if you are a regular subscriber maybe you have come to know him a little bit… maybe you are interested in how his story has ended?
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I must admit I feel kind of bad for the guy.
Monkey’s big life long dream has been to go sailing full time. He did the work hard and support a family thing for 25 years but upon his retirement he wanted to live his dream. His Ex-wife at first supported him and agreed to go sailing with him but as it got closer to reality she stomped all over his dream and refused to go. That ended their marriage because, as Monkey always said, he didn’t want to sit on the balcony waiting to grow old and die.
So he left her and pursued his own sailing dream.
At some point we met up and put our sailing dreams together.
Monkey really had it made hitching his dreams to me… I can fix or build anything… and I am a fabulous captain… very good at the sailing stuff. I can even go so far as to say that I am a wonderful human being and if you ask Elena I am a joy to be around…. fun funny playful humorous and trustworthy.
Monkey blew that though. He just had to let his bad side take over… he just had to tear at me… had to hurt me… had to drive me flippin nuts… he just had to destroy our relationship. Until his bad behavior escalated one day about a month ago that he got himself kicked off WildChild.
He found himself now alone but still hungry with his dream. And Monkey is a very stubborn and determined human being.
So he took the buy out I chose to give him and he left with $11,000 of my money… and I agreed (because I am actually a very nice person) to give him the $10,000 worth of scuba gear I bought with my money… because going scuba diving was also his big life long dream. I didn’t have to give him anything.
And Monkey all on his own went to Florida and bought himself his own boat. The vessel (named SummerTime) was a 1981 C&C 36 with a swing keel. 4 foot draft. The boat was in pretty good shape and was a decent boat. Better than the one he used to own before he met me.
So even though Monkey is the one who destroyed our relationship… I think my conscience is clean about the break up. I did not steal anything from him… I did not take advantage of him… I did not kick my abusive ex out on his ass. I helped him set himself up at a better level than when I met him.
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So if you are a regular reader you know what happened hmmm… 3 weeks ago when he (as his own captain of his own vessel) tried to cross the Gulf Stream from Florida to the Bahamas… he turned the 15 hour crossing into a 3 days and 3 night affair and marooned his vessel on the beach in Florida near Vero Beach.
After talking with him about that crossing… what went wrong… the answer is lots and lots of things. And all of them stupid mistakes Monkey made himself. Like he tried to aim his boat at the point he wanted to go… in the gulf stream you have to aim 40 degrees south of where you want to go because the current causes a remarkable side slip. He should have sailed south 20 miles along the Florida coast (out of the current) before turning east into the gulf stream.
His chart plotter was oriented north up… and that confused him… and he was not smart enough to just adjust the setting to course up. Easy to do on most chart plotters. So his brain could not orient the visual spatial information to understand which way he was going. He of course had a simple compass at the helm that could have given him a bearing to follow but he did not understand that either. Too complicated for him.
And… thus his complete and total failure on his first voyage.
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So… the persistent monkey gets help and people rescue him and help him get his boat off the beach and towed back to the Fort Pierce inlet near a boat yard.
He gets his boat lifted out and he makes (very bad) repairs to his damaged rudder. He chooses NOT to repair his steering but instead chooses to use the emergency tiller arm.
He chooses… for some mysterious unknown reason… to try and follow me back across the Gulf Stream to the Bahamas (May 26th). Despite it being very obvious his boat is not ready… not safe… and he lacks the skills and ability… He chose to cross anyway.
As you gather from some of my last posts… that did not go well either… at some point he broke the emergency Tiller arm. Sheared it right in half near the point where it goes into the rudder post. Somehow he got rescued again and towed into West End Bahamas…
While we were trapped by the trade winds in the digital black hole of Great Sail Cay for a week… (without any idea about Monkey’s status) he was safe in the marina.
Last Friday (May 3rd) he got a ride to Freeport and got his broken tiller Arm welded.
3 days ago he texted me that he was going to sail 80 miles to meet up with us in Crab Cay and could we wait for him…? (If you know anything about sailing you know 80 miles is too far to try and solo jump in one day…. at 5 knots that is 16 hours)… but Monkey was determined to catch up with me.
So it seems that about half an hour after leaving West End his tiller arm broke again. So he was floating helplessly in the sea of Abbaco in a vessel he was unable to steer. He managed to throw the anchor… (the whole sea is like 15 feet deep so you literally can anchor anywhere).
It seems… he sat there spiritually devastated… just a completely broken man. At some point some other boat showed up and asked him if he was in distress… ( I assume he made a VHF radio call for help..? ) Also a local Bahamian man in a boat was there too.
Monkey jumped on the other Sailboat and just abandoned SummerTime right there 3 days ago. He told the Bahamian guy he could just have the boat and all its contents. He gave everything away.
Monkey crewed on the other Sailboat as it made its way to Cape Canaveral Florida Sunday ( Yesterday May 5th ).
He is currently alone and broke in Florida with nothing.
He tells me his own Brother and Sister refused to take him in.
He said he has to return to Canada but I don’t think he has any money or any place to go.
He has finally accepted the end of his dream… and I think this is both tragic AND a great relief… he was going to get himself killed. At least now he is alive and not doing dangerous things. He is safe on solid ground. Life is easier on land than on the Ocean. The Ocean is very dangerous and Monkey lacks the skills and ability to achieve his dream. Stubborn determination is no substitute for skills and ability out here.
So maybe it is better for him to accept this. The sooner he accepts that he is not able to go sailing the sooner he can allow some other door to open for him that he is better suited to. Find some other hobby or interest. Get an apartment and live like a normal old man.
So raise a glass and say a prayer for the Monkey man now… he needs all the prayers to get him through this dark time that he can get.
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I am very pissed off with him and refuse to talk to him ever again. So this blog will be the last you ever hear about him from me.
I bought him a brand new $600 laptop 4 months ago and he destroyed it in his first crossing. I gave him a Samsung Galaxy tablet with Navionics on it and he destroyed that too. I gave him one of my hard drives full of TV shows and movies to watch.. he destroyed that too… all within a week of being in his own.
I wasted $21,000 dollars on helping that guy achieve his dream… I sailed 300 miles to supply his vessel from WildChild’s provisions…. I gave him blankets, towels, food, Our first aid kit, our EPIRB, half our dishes and kitchen utensils…. I gave him a hundred dollars and paid with my own money to help him fix his boat in Florida… AND HE JUST ABANDONED EVERYTHING.
Stuff we need on WildChild. I freakin need an EPIRB and it is going to cost me like a thousand dollars to replace. Again within 1 week he just gave everything away.
He was the stubborn one who begged and begged me to help him achieve his dream… I sacrificed effort time and money to help support him ( my ex-boyfriend… my abusive ex-boyfriend )
And he torpedoed his own dream within 1 freakin week… He stubbornly backed himself into a corner and fucked himself over and doesn’t even care about the cost and sacrifices other people made to help and support him… all for nothing.
And he texted me yesterday asking me to give him money and pay to turn (my old cell phone I gave him to be nice) the cell back on. He wants me to pay for him to have a cell phone on a US plan to make his life easier…. NOPE… No Fuckin way…
What a fuckin waste.
I am fuckin done with that Monkey…
Not my monkey not my circus anymore….
The cord is now completely cut….
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Cheers Sailor fans…
The good news is life on WildChild is fabulous. Elana and I are having so much fun together. It is so awesome sailing with someone competent and helpful on board. We are just best friends and living a great life… we have so much fun.
We are more than a month behind schedule though… we need to be south out of the hurricane zone by June… we should have left a month ago to go south… So now we are going to have to sail pretty hard to make up for lost time. WildChild needs to sail at least 600 miles south in the next 3 weeks.
again the cost I am still going to have to pay for helping Monkey… wasted our valuable time… but its done now.
Cheers
Captain Lexi