I do get accused sometimes… of being pessimistic. Lexi life is wonderful and we need you to be more optimistic. I admit I do try to be more positively oriented and try to see life with the rosy colored glasses everyone else seems to see the world with…. but sometimes its hard. I do not think of myself as pessimistic but more realistic, I fully understand life involves both ups and downs, it is how we handle them that matters.
I had told you before that American Airlines employees had opened my blue check on bag and stole everything out of the smaller front pouch. Of course I understand that life is wonderful and having ones stuff stolen is no reason to get pessimistic. I certainly would want to keep a chipper and positive attitude for the happy benefit of everyone else.
When I told the Airline employees at the check in counter that my bag got robbed… the very lovely ladies very helpfully told me in a very nice polite tone that this was not their department and that there was nothing they could do about it. When I got to my destination I was more than welcome to log onto their website and submit a baggage claim online. Use the proper channels you understand. Well of course… the proper channels… that sounds proper.
So as a very happy nice polite Canadian girl I fully submitted to the system and did as I was told, have faith, the world is a great place, everything will be fine. I submitted the claim as soon as I got to my two week Covid prison.
Wonderfully… a person did actually reply. A properly trained corporate brick wall. She was very nice, very polite as she fucked me. I remain positive and happy about it though, I’m a good sport, a nice proper victim.
I thought I’d share the email correspondence with you for shits-n-giggles.
I think I am funny
Now lets be clear… their own website says you only need to provide receipts for items valued over $100. Of course now they change the rules….
I had submitted an itemized list with values of the missing good on their claim form.
Now I am a funny girl… or at least I think I am funny…. trying to have faith in the system… despite a deep inner understanding this is unlikely to go well for me… I thought id stay light hearted and playful. Let’s see how they like it when I give them back the kind of corporate lawyer nonsense they are giving me.
but maybe humor is relative…. The corporation of Lexi… funny stuff…. I’m thinking at the very least this might be original for the lovely airline employee who is going to fuck me… might as well give her a smile…
Now of course I am completely sure where this will go… nowhere… they are hiding behind a ridiculous corporate policy… to make the theft look on the up and up of course…
but let’s play it out anyway… optimists everywhere are sure the world is a lovely and fair place and of course the good nice corporate airline is going to take responsibility for their own employees stealing from luggage forced and trusted to their care right…? Like the right thing to do here is not complicated…. take responsibility… investigate and make amends.
The right thing to do for us the little people, amongst the code of ethics we were all raised with, we all naively believe in, is clear…. corporations do not exist on this ground though do they?
Nice brick wall… very good… you are reading from the corporate script very well.
For some legal reason they never explain to me it seems important to them to speak with me on the phone. I am sure a lawyer has trained them how to do the rope a dope and manipulate the corporation out of responsibility with a bunch of fancy stuff we the little people do not have a chance of understanding or even knowing about.
She is faking empathy very well…. but notice… no useful action…. pretty smart huh…
but of course my stuff is stolen… but everything is fine… just great… a few hundred dollars worth of my stuff just stolen… but its fine…. it’s not Tawnya’s stuff… her stuff is safe… its not your stuff… you don’t care.
Maybe sailing Captains are all characters… maybe we are all strong and brave and perfectly willing to stand up for ourselves…. even when we know we are on losing ground.
POW…. I smack em back with perfect logic and reason… foolishly like we are battling on logical or reasonable ground… silly Lexi…. there will be no reason here… wrong battle field…
but of course lets stay optimistic… remember everything is wonderful right…
What do you think I get in reply…
Now I knew where this was going from the beginning… but to acknowledge this would be considered pessimistic ( a huge crime in its own right ) and of course… if we are pessimistic then obviously we will cause the bad thing to come on us… we can victim blame. So I stayed positive and optimistic… yet it did nothing to deflect the bad from landing on me… so how do the optimists explain it now I wonder?
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So I have been trapped in my Covid prison for about 13 days now. Nothing is new or has changed. My wonderful new crew Alex is still free to come and go everyday. He is having a lovely time exploring this island. We did get 3 days of record breaking rain and he got stuck in here with me for three whole days, he started climbing the walls. I am probably tougher than he is, I have had 15 weeks of Covid prison this year alone, I am getting good at imprisonment.
The other day though, in one of Alex’s wanderings, he was allowed into the boatyard without having to give his name or fill out any paperwork. Somehow the rules never seem to apply to him.
He came back and showed me pictures he took of WildChild in the yard only 600 meters away from my prison. He though it might cheer me up, and it did…. until I looked more closely.
I am not sure if you can tell from this picture, I will get better pictures when I am finally allowed to see my girl, but…. when you put a boat up on the hard…. you are supposed to make sure it is level. It is an important little detail.
The other thing is… when I put the boat up here… speaking with Lindsay the yard manager… I was very clear with him…
“ …WildChild has a very slim narrow keel… you cannot rest the entire weight of the boat on the keel alone…. YOU MUST put 50% of the weight of the boat on the jack stands… it is very important…”
They even have a place on their official forms where we the captains are supposed to put in writing any special care instructions for them. I wrote it in there too.
The response from Lindsay was he got a little offended with me… he became indignant…
“….we have been doing this for over 20 years… we are very professional… we know what we are doing… it is a little insulting you would even suggest we would be anything less than professional…”
Well…. when they took WildChild out of the water, I was here for it, and watched as they set her down in the main boatyard. I watched as the yard workers received no instructions from Lindsay, and they did not read what I took the time to write on their forms. As they were setting the jack stands I saw that they were putting all the weight on the keel so I stepped in and told them they have to put half the weight on the stands. They were annoyed with me, but they complied under my watchful supervision.
pay attention to these details… look in the picture below.. this is the starboard side of the keel…
Then after I left… they moved WildChild into the back storage yard. Without my supervision and I am sure without Lindsay’s supervision either.
I began to look closely at the pictures Alex brought me back. Remember I showed you earlier that when they moved her into the storage yard they did not level her, she is bow up and stern down.
It is pretty clear they did not put half the weight of the boat on the jack stands as I had been very clear with them about. Most of the weight of the boat is on the very thin back edge of the keel, causing it to crack.
That crack is in the solid lead… I do not think you can weld lead. The crack is about ten inches long going horizontal from the back towards the front. I do not know yet details about how deep it is as I am not allowed to go to my boat yet for Covid you understand, but Alex says it looks like it is cracked right thru. Notice the bottom paint has been separated, where it was flexed. Also there is mud encrusted in the little curl on the bottom edge, almost like it was in the mud?
Of course I was not here, I do not personally know what they did. I can only gather the evidence. I do know that they did move the boat back there.
Now… I need to stay optimistic about this too right. Lets all be positive. They only cracked my keel and took $4000usd from me for the privilege of caring for my boat. I paid them to care for my boat and they damaged it, seriously damaged it. This cannot be fixed. If it breaks while sailing it could kill me, the ocean is a hard unforgiving place.
How do you think this is going to go next…?
I will go down there soon… inspect it for myself… and politely bring it to their attention.
What do you think they will do about it… realistically…
Optimists will say they will of course take care of it….
Pessimists will say you are screwed girl… they will never even admit it… they will do nothing about it.
But what is a realistic assessment though…?
Go ahead and guess.
I will tell you the results later as they happen… so stay tuned…
Captain Lexi
……………………….. the depressed girl trying to stay positive ………