Well the last Blog I told you that last Friday I was going to officially acknowledge my own wild and crazy spirit and jump into the ranks of solo sailors out here. I made a solo sail on my big beast 17 miles down to Falmouth Harbour Antigua. Well the exciting news is… I made it successfully… arrived before dark… sailed the whole thing… and…. the answer was only 4. I only passed out 4 times while doing it alone. I am impressed with myself, I calculated I would pass out 6 times, but I was able to fight off two of the feinting spells.
Solo Sail
So on the Friday morning of last week I got lucky as the boat anchored directly behind me lifted his anchor at 7am and left. This gave me plenty of room to fall off without hitting anybody. My neighbor cruiser friends Lyn and Mark onboard sv Roxy (whom I absolutely adore) were out shopping the day before in St. John’s… walked by a shop… saw this flag… and immediately thought “…this is soooo Lexi…. she has gotta have it…” so they bought it for me and gave it to me the night before my solo sail. It is rather silly that this present gave me so much joy and happiness. Anybody that knows me knows that I am obsessed with Pink and epitomize the rebel spirit.
I will acknowledge that as an aside, real pirates are not fun or funny and generally people should never look up to them or fly pirate flags on their boats. But…. I think a pink girl pirate flag is understood to not be a serious thing, no violence or horror attached or onboard. Mostly I love that it is pink.
I was extremely excited that the engine started with no problems. I had recently made an adjustment to a damaged fuel line and may have added some air into the fuel line system just before the fuel pump. With the engine purring happily I went up ion deck and got my mainsail ready to raise and walked the deck carefully thinking my way thru everything I would need to do and prepping everything I could.
The anchor came up without any problems and the winds were very calm that morning. I was able to cantilever my way forward to retrieve the anchor without needing to run back and forth between the engine and the bow. I skipped a passing out step that would have otherwise put me down. With the hook up WildChild began drifting away slowly and I had time to get back to the helm and get my girl under engine power and steer her out towards deeper water.
Once I got away from the anchored boats and into a stable 20 feet of water I turned her into the wind, told auto to hold her in irons and I ran up on deck to raise my main sail, then ran back to the cockpit to retrieve the tail of the main halyard and get her luff winched up tight…. and I passed out from the physical strain. I was not tethered in at the time but was in the center of the cockpit. I woke up on the bench, oriented myself and got back to the helm with room to spare before I would hit the reefs.
Rather pleased with myself for having just solo conquered two out of three of the hardest things I would have to do alone and only passed out once. Good girl. 🙂
The sailing at first started out very easy. I was running down wind, reefed mainsail only, and gently moving along at 10/5. Good speed and no need for the genny I stayed like this for about 40 minutes when the storms started rolling in over the mountain tops. Things did get a bit sporty and before long I was sailing 20/7 beam reach into close reach thru the storms.
Although 20 knots of wind is nothing new for WildChild or her brave captain it does get sporty and WildChild starts heeling over and hauling ass. I stayed tethered in as much as I could and decided it would be prudent to go down below and clip my PLB EPIRB to my lifejacket. If I fell overboard it would not help me if it was still clipped inside the boat.
After about an hour or sporty sailing the storms abated and the forecast 8-12 knots of steady trade winds made themselves felt. As I came around the south west corner of Antigua and had to bring WildChild tight to the wind I began to notice the swell pushing me backward and the current fighting me. I decided to dump the reef in the main and fly full sails to fight it.
It was when tacing WildChild alone… running… untethered… from helm to cockpit to work all the lines that I passed out the second time. I was filming this solo sail for future YouTube videos and you can see the Go-pro camera on my head and the Cannon camera was on a tripod mount and caught my collapse. It took me about a minute to recover and figure out where I was and what was going on. Auto had the helm though and I just finished the lines before I fell so the boat was doing fine without me for that minute.
If I spent all day telling you how much my heart condition frustrates me …
… I would never express it fully …
but I refuse to let it stop me from living my life well …
I passed out again on the next tac a half an hour later. The third and fourth tacs though did not put me down. I had kind of figured out a way to reduce my physical exertion and pause to breath heavy and pump up my blood pressure and blood oxygen level between tasks. I had once watched a documentary about fighter pilots undergoing G-force training and remembered what the doctor told them to do to fight the brain blood loss from the blood pressure drop. The same principles apply to my body dropping its own blood pressure on me.
I was rather pleased with myself.
The rest of the sail, although painfully slow upwind fighting against more waves and current and swell than wind, went well enough. It just took time and patience and tactical thinking to claw my way against it. I arrived in Falmouth about an hour before dark. I did pass out again after dropping the mainsail alone, as it requires some running and fast action. I got the sails put away alone about 200 meters outside of the channel entrance to Falmouth Harbour and motored my in.
My friend Peter was there in his dinghy to greet me and lead me to an open spot near his anchored yacht. I managed to get my girl safely to anchor again and even Peter expressed he was impressed with how well I handled my yacht alone… “you did good girl” he tells me in his thick New York accent.
Captain Lexi the solo sailor girl…
Something I have found interesting… is I have been asking around among some of my female cruiser friends if they have ever sailed their boats alone, without their husbands… all answers are always NO …. and then when asked would you ever… NO WAY. Many of the husbands though have handled these same boats alone without their wives.
I am all pro girl power and gender equality… but we do have to acknowledge that men and women ARE different… and it seems solo sailing is one area where it shows the most. I have met about a dozen solo sailor men out here and ZERO solo sailor girls out here. I am the only one I know of. Female captains that sail with their husbands all the time do not count.
Visa Worries
Although this is not really sailing related it is part of my life. My 90 day Visa will expire on Feb 1st, (very soon) and this worries the crap out of me. Antigua never envisioned a system where the whole world would be closed down for a long time and “tourists” would need/want to stay longer than 90 days. Most of us “Yachties” as they call us… stay for our 90 days then sail on to other islands. This year… hundreds of us… are here… and CANNOT sail away to anywhere. Hundreds of us will all have our 90day VISA’s expire in the next few weeks and inundate the Antigua immigration system with requests for VISA extensions. A system which does not really have a process for tourist VISA extensions… they treat it as an application for residency and work VISA’s. It requires all kind of paperwork and medical tests and fingerprints and expensive fees.
I have mentioned before about my bureaucratic stupidity and negotiating my way thru this paper work maze just terrifies me. AND… what if they deny my request…? Then what…? It would be super bad for me. I just heard of a solo sailor on Frieleuse who just got denied a VISA extension and had to leave a few days ago.
The great news is though… that other wonderful cruisers have seen this problem coming, and have finally convinced the Antiguan immigration minister that this is something they need to address. Lyn from SV. Roxy has been diligently helping with this and supporting Karen from lighthouse Yachting and another lady whose name escapes me now. The minister, who is currently in 2 week quarantine herself after travelling abroad, has told the yachties to make a list of all the affect sailors and she will grant us an extension to give her time to address this problem and try to help us.
So fingers crossed this goes well… or the next blog might be me getting kicked out of Antigua and sailing off alone into the sunset with no place to go. I do hear St. Martins is open… but I don’t want to solo sail there on Monday.
Eeeek…. 🙁
Snorkeling and Turtles
Now that I have arrived in Falmouth I have been able to hang out with my friends here. Here I will try to pick up your spirits as you look outside to scenes like this…
Because you are living in a Northern climate and get to enjoy winter… but really would prefer warmth and sunshine… let me share mine with you..
I will show you images from my life around me here. Maybe it will cheer you up and you can live thru me for a few minutes…
I have friends on SV. Emily Morgan who arrived here from St. Lucia last weekend and they are anchored over in Freeman’s bay on the English Harbour side. Yesterday I dinghied over to the public dinghy dock here in Falmouth and walked across to English Harbour where Bones and Anna picked me up in their dinghy and we went over to this great snorkeling spot near the pillars of Hercules.
This is a popular snorkeling spot for tourists for a good reason. There are open mooring balls for your dinghy and the water is so clear around there. I did not want to pass up the chance to snorkel such a wonderful place and my friends were happy to include me in their plans.
The water was so clear and the rock formations were spectacular. The currents and waves are a bit stronger here but there were also more large fish than we normally see. If you swim over the cracks and crevices and pay attention you will see such a wonderful variety of smaller fish hiding in the safety of the rocks. Wonderful to watch.
Further in towards the beach in Freeman’s bay is the wreck of an old (from the 1960’s) whale hunting vessel that sunk in the shallow water. It was not by any means a large vessel or historically old enough to conjure up images of Lord Nelson hundreds of years ago but it is in shallow water and is a nice easy snorkel. It was full of fish living in the pilot house. The area around here is sandy covered in grass.
Bones shouts to me that he saw a big sea turtle just about 50 meters towards deeper water. I love swimming with sea turtles and will always take the chance when I can get it. I swam over into the greener water and kept a close eye on the grasses 10 feet below as I went. I found him peacefully munching away on the sea grass as I hovered above him for 20 minutes getting video and pictures of him.
I have decided to name him Turtle eyed Joe. He was so cute like another Joe I know.. 🙂
What was odd about this sea turtle sighting is that although his shell was probably 24″ in diameter… he had these two 18″ long Remorrah fish stuck to him catching a free ride. I had never seen this before. It must have been inconvenient for poor Turtle Joe as they attached on his underside and he was resting on them like struts and they made it hard for him to lay close to the bottom to feed. The fish getting squished into the grass under Joe didn’t seem to mind though.
After a wonderful afternoon snorkeling with wonderful friends we returned to Emily Morgan for snacks and conversation. Eventually Bones drove me back to Nelsons dockyard where I could begin the walk across to Falmouth bay before dark.
Misfortune and Fate
Perhaps we can view the world from a more predetermined perspective if we choose. Maybe we could think the story of our lives is already pre written. Maybe we like to think we have free will and we are in control and the deciders of our own fate….
maybe…
Not all sailing stories end well. Not all sailing dreams go according to plan. These human stories are the ones that fascinate me. I collect them like nuggets of gold and sometimes get to share the clues I find with you.
It was while dinghying back to Nelsons dock yard among the mega sailing yachts docked there that I looked off to the east and saw these sailboats along the shore over there.
It seems this is where abandoned boats go when their old grey haired owners suddenly face an unexpected medical problem or personal problem. I had heard about the half sunk yacht wasting away a slow death in English Harbour.
Another story I have heard is that somewhere over here is this old guy… his boat no longer has any sails on it… and he has been here for over a decade. Apprently… when you find him in a bar… he tells people he is here to kill himself drinking himself to death with booze. This is the end of his sailing dreams. He is here to die with his boat. I wonder if it is one of these along here or one of the ones over in Freeman’s bay… Hmmm…
An interesting way to choose to end a sailing dream huh…?
This interesting yacht is anchored right now in Freeman’s bay just in front of my friends on Emily Morgan. They tell me no person has come or gone from this boat for a week, no owner around. It has a hatch open and the waterline is fouling up pretty badly. It is clearly deteriorating. I know nothing of the yachts story… its sails are still mounted. It appears as though it was abandoned in a hurry. Upon close inspection you can see it has been there for some months. I wonder why someone would paint their steel boat with Zebra stripes… put so much love and effort into their boat… then suddenly abandon it at anchor? I am dying to know the story… or maybe the owner got Covid and died suddenly? I dunno…
I have no idea how the story of WildChild will end. I hope it does not end with misfortune or at the bottom of a bottle of booze. I hope my fate is not prewritten and I hope I get a choice in the matter. It is why I worry and struggle and stress out here…. I struggle to end my story well someday.
Life on WildChild is still good… she is in good shape and is well taken care of by her owner. She sits peacefully at anchor waiting for my return.
Cheers sailors
I hope your life story turns out well too.
Captain Lexi
…. the happy peaceful and content wild solo sailor girl …