Hey again guys. I realize I just posted a blog a few days ago so perhaps this is a little early, but I write when I feel like I have something I want to say. Yesterday (Thursday May 20th) for me now I had to sail down against the wind from Jolly Harbour Antigua to Falmouth Harbour to be here to renew my 90 day VISA this morning. I found crew to help me sail and it was interesting to say the least, I can’t stop thinking about it.

 

New Friend

So if we go back about 6 days ago i was in Jolly Harbour hanging out with my friend Mr. Jarvis the art merchant when this lady and her France French male friend stopped in to talk to Mr. Jarvis. I had given my old boat batteries to him to “dispose” of however he saw fit. I know these batteries are insanely expensive down here and my old ones would still hold about 50% charge. I thought perhaps he could re-home them to help out some local people.

This Canadian Lady had been talking to Mr. Jarvis about buying one of the old batteries. He told her that I was the girl to ask detailed technical questions about the batteries. I was happy to help and be upfront and honest. Mr. Jarvis took the money and she got a cheap battery with some life left in it. Everyone was happy.

This lady, and I want to try to be a little bit gentle here and protect her identity somewhat, so I will make up a fake name for her, and call her Carol. She is a Canadian lady, in her 50’s, a nurse, and it seems also a female sailing captain..! As I was beginning to feel like the only girl captain in the world I was excited to meet another chic captain and a Canadian girl to boot. How lovely is this. We chatted for a bit and had some similar experiences being treated like crap by men out here so we kind of bonded a little bit. She had also heard about me, rumors of a Canadian girl captain who is also a marine electrician had gone around the boatyard. Carol had been hoping to meet me.

She said she needed help with some electrical projects on her boat. I agreed to come have a look the next day.

I dinghied the 15 minutes from the anchorage back into Jolly Harbour the next morning and found her on her 42 foot boat tied up at the boat yards work wall. I came aboard and met her new crew (let’s call him Pierre) and Carol invited me aboard her vessel to have a look. Her story is interesting, and not my story to tell, kind of, so I will be brief about her history and details.

Essentially she bought this big old fatty cruiser sailboat here in Antigua about 10 years ago. She spends most of her time elsewhere working and life stuff and stores the boat in yards down here. The boat is an old beast and pretty bare inside. No house batteries, little electrical that works, no autopilot, missing sails, no electronics except a VHF radio, no lights, no radar, no water maker… well… blah blah blah… you get the point. Old floating condo.

So I was impressed when she told me she was going to sail it to Europe soon. I thought wow.. super brave lady… I like her. She shared a bunch of stories about her life as a female sailing Captain and how frustrating it can be having male crew, they don’t listen to a woman captain. AMEN I hear ya on that one sister. The more she spoke though the more I got the impression she did not actually do much sailing.

During the course of the conversation I mentioned that I was leaving to solo sail down to Falmouth the next day. She offered herself and her crew to come crew for me. I thought well how delightful. It could be fun to sail with another experienced chic captain and it could be interesting to make a new friend. Given how dicey hard it is for me to solo sail I thought well this is lovely, it will work out well.

 

The Sail to Falmouth

The next morning I dinghy back into Jolly Harbour to pick them up around 9am as planned. I was a bit surprised when they had bags and bags of stuff to bring with them for the day sail. Like 3 large backpacks full, plus a small day bag full of stuff. When crew flies in to stay with me for a month they never bring so much crap with them. This was just supposed to be a simple 4-6 hour day sail. I couldn’t see that they would need much more than sailing gloves and water bottles.

I was upfront and clear, bring your sailing gloves. She did not pack them..? Who goes sailing without sailing gloves, this sounds crazy to me. We get back to WildChild around 9:30am yesterday and stow away all their crap in my bedroom. I was clear with them, as I always am with anyone who wants to crew for me, we are going to do a short little Captain Lexi sailing class just to make sure we can all speak the same technical sailor language today. This is essential for us strangers to be able to work effectively as a team. If I holler tighten the main sheet… and my crew says… “what’s a main sheet?” the sail cannot possibly go well.

 

 

Also I wanted to get some idea about Carol’s knowledge skill level. If she was another skilled sailor chic this would be a delightful day, but I had a bad feeling. Speaking with her, although she spoke well of her years and years of sailing experience she did not seem to know very much about sailing. I have been out here long enough to know that most boats have owners not Captains.

It took me only 5 minutes to figure out this girl knew absolutely nothing about sailing. She could not answer the most basic sailing questions, not a clue in the world. It was not my intention to embarrass her in front of her new found French crew so I played it off as though I was just trying to teach him. After all he is French and does not speak much English, I speak very little French, thus I explained to Carol that I just wanted to help her crew learn the English words so he could help us today.

Pierre was lovely, interested in trying to grasp what I was saying and trying to learn. Carol however, was very tuned out, bored, uninterested, and trying not to learn anything. There is a way about her. I never accuse people of being ADHD, its not their fault if they are born this way, but it can be hard for others to deal with. She was also very self interested and self absorbed, hot chics can be like this, very princess’ey. You could tell that in her younger days she was a hottie and spent most of her life using her looks to get by. She constantly interrupted to tell us she was hot and sweating, or hungry or thirsty or bored. My quick 20 minute lesson showed me that she understood nothing… I say clearly again… NOTHING about sailing.

I got a nervous feeling in my stomach. If you can remember a blog a few months ago about the stresses of being a Captain taking responsibility for baby crew.

Next I transitioned to a quick deck walk thru to explain where all the sheets and lines are on my yacht, every yacht is laid out differently. It is the minimum responsibility of any Captain to give their crew a quick safety briefing and walk thru before taking them sailing. Carol did not know what ANY of the lines were called…! Nothing… she knew nothing at all about the names and functioning parts of a sailboat…! The knot of tension building in my stomach only got worse.

Pierre however, who had raced small sailing dinghies back in France decades ago listened intently, tried hard to hear and understand the English words, and wanted to learn. He was excited for the day’s sail. Carol complained… “I thought we were only going out for a little fun sail… let’s just go… there is no need to talk about things… I’m hot.. let’s just go..” her whiney princess tone beginning to grate on me.

OK fine.. let’s just do this thing. Worst case I can sail alone and just have them as passengers. I put Carol on the helm, as she is the only English speaker and she is a “Captain” with a decade of experience I figured she should at least be able to drive the engine, do the easy motoring parts.

The winds are light as expected and I slowly raise my anchor alone from the bow, using the cantilever technique. Pierre watches with interest and soon WildChild is drifting away. I holler back to Carol “okay anchor off bottom… go into gear… steer us out on the same course I came in on… GO…” the chart plotter in front her has a pink line to follow out. The anchorage is shallow in Jolly Harbour, lots of shoals and sand hills, the water is only 10 feet deep and I have an 8 foot keel. It is important to drive out in the slight underwater valley to get out and not hit any other boats while doing it.

With Carol at the helm, doing the simple point and drive work following the line, I was able to secure my anchor without passing out. I came back to stand beside her at the helm and just over watch everything. Somehow, she could not do it. Like she could not follow the simple course out of the anchorage. She started wildly over steering like a rookie and teetering the yacht left and right wobbling around.

Ummm… ok… this is worse than a baby sailor…

I don’t say anything I just gently and softly click the button to turn on the autopilot. I hit the red 10 deg button once and just let my favorite robot do the driving. She watches me turn on the autopilot, she feels it engage, yet she is still holding onto the steering wheel trying to manually steer. I have to gently tell her to “just take your hands off the wheel… let auto do it..”. I am soft gentle and kind with her but its clear, this girl is dangerous.

Dumb is very dangerous on the ocean. When people come on your boat, and honestly understand what they do, and do not know, are honest about their skill level, its fine. They listen learn and help. But when people are deluded into thinking they know way more then they actually do and will not listen… this is dangerous.

I knew I was in trouble.

We motor out the back of the anchorage and I go about 3/4 of a mile out to find 20 feet of water depth and explain to them the dance we need to do as a team to get the mainsail raised. Carol is annoyed and irritated with me for explaining things and she does not want to listen. Pierre is listening intently trying to understand.

I put Pierre, the big strong man up to haul the main halyard at the mast and I put Carol on the coaming to watch the lift, make sure the sail doesn’t get caught into the lazy jacks or running back stays as it goes up, and she has to pull in the slack halyard to the cockpit thru the clutch AS Pierre is doing it.

I have been as calm careful and helpful as I can be explaining all this to an irritated Carol “who already knows everything”.

OK I bring my big girl into the wind, send Pierre up on deck, Carol in position.

I bring her to wind… and when I’m ready set the autopilot and make the call… I command “OK HAUL THE MAIN”…

Pierre does great, very good man to have on deck. He did a great job. Within 5 seconds Carol screws up. She is sitting inside the cockpit, not looking up to guide Pierre, and not hauling in the main halyard slack. She is just like a passenger enjoying the show with no idea she is supposed to be doing something.

I tell her.. “hey carol… you gotta stick your head out and look up… remember… you are supposed to watch that the sail doesn’t get hung up on anything..”. She seems surprised but then does stick her head out to look up, “its fine” she says dismissively.

By now, this dance does not have a pause button on the ocean, Pierre has a huge pile of rope at his feet and he yells at her to haul it in.

The entire simple basic sailing dance is now on pause and screwed up because the proud “Female Captain” doesn’t have a clue.

 

 

We do eventually get the full mainsail up. I had given myself LOTS of sea room to perform this task anticipating problems like a good captain should. Carol was difficult to work with though… doesn’t listen. Mainsail set, with me giving lots of verbal instructions to hand over hand step by simple step my new dumb idiot crew, we set course. With Pierre’s help, by now I had given up on Carol, we got the full genny out and set. Close reach port tac out towards the outer shoals 2 miles offshore.

During this whole time there were also other problems I was dealing with about Carol.

The day before I was clear with her… A boat can only have 1 captain right…? Can you handle submitting to me on my boat and let me be the captain? She wholeheartedly agreed yes of course. In practice though not at all. She is used to being in control of everything and commanding everyone around her. I was also clear… no matter what your past experiences sailing are… on my yacht EVERYONE WEARS A LIFE JACKET…PERIOD. Are you good with this, no problem she tells me.

She would not put on her life jacket. Whined about being too hot. Kept arguing with me that its fine I am a good swimmer. It’s fine I don’t really need to wear it until we are actually sailing. Once the sails were set, engine off she said she doesn’t need to wear it because the ocean is so calm today. She kept arguing with the Captain and giving excuses why she doesn’t have to follow orders. The girl just will not listen. She will not submit.

I don’t push the issue too hard. I do not engage in arguing or engage her faulty logic. I am very calm and gentle and patient with her. She is a moody one and I know how to be soft with her, but she has truly annoyed me now. Pierre… no problem… as soon as I said life jackets on.. he put his on with no complaints. At one point she even told Pierre to take his life jacket off… because he “looked too hot” she said. The girl is just chaos.

 

 

You guys know that I LOVE seeing girl power at its best. You have seen pictures of some of my previous crew, even tiny ladies… able to move the main traveller up towards the wind. Carol could not do it. And we were in light wind conditions, it wasn’t that heavy. She just does not have any girl power at all. She was more interested in looking good in her bikini than being a good sailor. She refused to listen to my advice about how position for better leverage on the line.

Also the only thing I told her they needed was sailing gloves. She told me yes she brought them. Then when it is time to go sailing she pulls out her own gloves and has no gloves for Pierre. “He’s fine she says.. he doesn’t need gloves… he has thick skin on his hands” she tells me defiantly. FUCK this bitch is starting to get on my nerves. Anybody can and will burn their hands on heavy sailing ropes under thousands of pounds of force.

But… it’s technically her crew… he trusts her… he follows her… I would have to fight thru her to protect him, and I am unwilling to do this.

 

I was also clear, once I explained what tethers and jack lines were (because she had no idea), that on WildChild, once we are underway, nobody will go up on deck not tethered into the jack lines. WildChild is a twitchy race boat that sails on her side. I know my girl, I know how many sharks are out here, I know how long it will take an untrained inexperienced crew to get turned around to pickup anyone tossed overboard.

As soon as the sails are set, this girl goes up on deck standing on the high side completely un-tethered in, life jacket not done up. I shake my head. Fucking girl just won’t listen and seemed determined to push the boundaries. There is NO REASON for her to be up there other than to be defiant and difficult. I am trying to figure out if I will bother turning around to pick her up if she falls off, she is not technically legally part of the yachts crew manifest. Maybe the 4 mile swim to shore will teach her a hard lesson.

For the record… I would never leave any crew behind no matter what… so relax…

As I get WildChild out thru the outer shoals and we setup in deeper waters I set the autopilot and put out the fishing line. We all settle back to wait a few hours for the offshore tac.

Carol had been interrupting the sailing by being generally selfish and self absorbed. As “we” meaning mostly Pierre and I were adjusting sails together, me using what little French I can remember and the universal hand signs, Carol is not even trying to help or interested in helping or even aware of what is going on with the boat. She amazes me.

Anyone… who would even dare to say they are even a simple sailor… would understand the basics of what is going on with the wind and what the boat is trying to achieve. Like if you know which way the ship needs to go then you know how to help your team get there. This girl does not have a clue, or even any interest in the global picture of the sailing at all.

AND A CAPTAIN…. well to be a captain you MUST be globally aware of everything.

This dumb chic is completely clueless.

She should never ever tell anyone she is a captain.

She should not even tell anyone she is a sailor because she is fucking awful at it.

Worst crew ever

She is… at best… a pretty boat wife.

Once the yacht is setup on course she cannot get everyone’s attention on her. She does not engage in conversation, she has no interest in anybody other than herself. She says she is tired and goes downstairs to sleep the whole sail away. This was safer for me and everyone to have her out of the way anyway.

 

Killing Again

Pierre sat with me at the helm, despite the language barrier we managed to get thru some lovely conversations together, as international people can do. He was delightful to have onboard, wonderful helpful crew, and I learned an interesting human being. This was his first sail in the Caribbean and his first sail on a “big boat” like WildChild. He loved it.

He was so excited when we caught a fish soon too. We hooked a small (2 foot) barracuda. So small we dragged it for a while as we didn’t even realize we had something on the line. Pierre actually noticed first.

I have a local friend, Neville in Falmouth, who says if I ever catch a barracuda to not release it but give it to him, the locals love eating the barracuda and do not worry about the “fish sickness”.

When it came time to bring the fish onboard, I had asked Pierre if he could kill it for me, explaining it makes me cry. The man said no problem. I pull the fish into the yacht and it is on the cockpit floor. I run down below and grab the knife and hand it over to Pierre. He holds it like a dainty purse and does not un-sheath it. He does not know what to do. The fish is suffering and flopping around. As the seconds tick by and the fish is clearly suffering, Pierre finally lets out that “he has never killed a fish this big before”, he doesn’t know what to do.

 

 

Oh fuck… I burst into tears… I know the Captain now HAS to step up to the plate, I suddenly realize I am about to kill something right now and I am not emotionally ready to. With tears streaming down and apologies spewing from my mouth I grab the knife, Pierre gets out of the way, and I grab the fish and cut its neck at the spinal column behind the head, blood everywhere.

Neville will be happy, Pierre is enjoying the excitement, I know I will have nightmares tonight. Carol unhelpfully tells me to stop crying.

The afternoon sail was… mostly boring… as sailing really is. Carol went back down below to sleep the afternoon away. Pierre and I kept each other company at the helm. When it came time for the offshore tac Pierre and I did it without Carol. It was just easier without her, she just gets in the way.

 

 

The 2 hour straight shot to Falmouth harbour after the tac was fine. Winds 15-18 knots on the bow, waves 1-1.5 meters on the forward quarter. Easy sailing, just smashy.

About an hour out I was getting really bored, I thought it would be rude of me to put my headphones on and listen to BBC podcasts as I usually do. By now Carol was up in the cockpit, and had to be asked twice to put her life jacket back on. Carol spent a few minutes telling me not to be bored. Trying to logic argue me into submission…? Just really stupid behavior. For you younger readers… do you know the term “OK KAREN”…? Carol was a Karen. You just have to say OK KAREN to her and just ignore the stupid shit she says.

Instead I asked them if I could bring up my speaker and play some music. They consented and I stuck to my older songs for them and my easy vocal songs. I stayed away from my heavy metal stuff.

As we made our approach to the Falmouth harbour entrance I turned off the music, to Carol’s complaints, as we needed to begin to get ready to drop the sails and switch to motor to get in.

 

Two Stories Here

I was sailing towards the west cliffs at the harbour entrance, sailing close hauled, into the wind, starboard tac. For my non-sailor readers out there… this means that I have traffic right-of-way over pretty much every other boat in the ocean. Every other boat in the ocean needs to give way to me.

I am sailing tight to the wind and towards the cliffs because I will need to make a sharp right turn to head to wind in the harbour opening to drop my sails. There is a big fucking rich 60 foot multi million dollar CAT, proudly flying a huge American flag coming towards me. He is sailing (shockingly as CAT’s almost never sail out here) down wind port tac crossing me from my left side towards my right side. He is on a collision course with me. He MUST yield to me. He doesn’t. Fucking dumb ignorant rich old fucking white people with more money than brains who know fucking nothing about sailing at all.

Can you tell he got me angry…?

As I was mentally calculating the wind angles, vectors, CPA and rules watching this guy in front of me I realized… We ARE GOING TO COLLIDE…  the dumb fucker is not going to yield. He is not adjusting course to yield. He is going to ram us…!

Fuck… I don’t have time to explain anything to my crew. I jump into action. I realize that if I just bear off and go behind him, at my current high speed 7 knots on a close reach, I will be in danger of hitting the cliffs behind him. I need to bleed off my speed and duck behind him. I run up, dump my genny, begin furiously manually hauling it in to about 50% then quickly sheet it in again to repower my yacht so I can control my vessel.

I then run back to the helm and begin making the course corrections on the autopilot as the guy is now 100 meters in front of me off to my port side. My brain is getting speckly white spots as my heart condition is about to put me out. I struggle to breathe and stay conscious. I realize the autopilot is not correcting fast enough. I click off auto and grab the wheel by hand and crank it hard over to port, falling off the wind and pass 40 feet behind him. Then I have to get my girl now back tight up into the wind to avoid hitting the cliffs fast approaching.

 

 

I think my adrenaline rush is the only thing that kept me from passing out. I am screaming at the guy as we cross…. DUMB FUCKER LEARN THE RULES OF THE OCEAN…    LEARN ABOUT RIGHT OF WAY ASSHOLE… I scream into the wind towards him. There isn’t even anybody at his helm. They are both up top playing with their sails completely oblivious. The white haired old fuckers stare at me blankly and my crew exchange worried glances.

Sailing life on the ocean… sigh…

Then about five minutes later, incident forgotten about, I am getting WildChild into the wind to drop her own sails. I get Carol behind the wheel again and once I get my girl into the wind, and set the autopilot to do the steering, I put Carol behind the wheel to babysit it and follow any instructions I might need to holler out from the deck, like course corrections. I go up alone to drop the mainsail.

I get the sail down and packed away just fine. No issues but it does get my heart rate jacked up again. By the time I am coming back into the cockpit WildChild is now motoring towards the east end entrance cliffs. I had hollered to Carol from the deck several times… “ok I’m done packing the sail… fall off to starboard away from the cliffs…” to no response from her. By the time I get back behind the helm I can feel I am about to pass out again, The last thing I said to her before my lights went out was…

“… ok turn off the autopilot… steer out to sea away from those cliffs…”

Then I went out. I fell on the bench seat behind Carol who was standing at the helm.

When I come to I can hear alarms going off… I struggle my way back into consciousness and try to get up to take over the helm…

That dumb fucker did NOT turn off the autopilot… but rather… it seems… fought with it until she physically overwhelmed it into error mode…! Like how colossally stupid is that…! This girl is just so sailing stupid its unforgivable. She didn’t break anything, thank goodness. I took over the helm and didn’t say too much about what she did. I just let it drop, there was nothing productive I could say.

I did get anchor down, second try, it dragged the first spot. Carol seemed to be in a big impatient rush for me to hurry up and drop her off onshore. So I did.

Glad that’s done.

***

 

Visa Appointment

Ohh…     about the Visa appointment thing this morning.

So it seems… for whatever reason… last Wednesday (May 19th) after posting that last blog, the local immigration people sent me a whatsapp text to make an appointment for me. It was weird that they wouldn’t just reply to the email, like they did last time, and weird that they whatsapp texted me, as I didn’t give them my whatsapp number… but the lady was wonderfully kind, super polite and apologetic. She was more than happy to give me a Friday morning appointment at 10am to come in to apply for another 90 day visa extension. She was super nice about it.

So today (Friday May 21st) I went into their office an hour early, to fill out some pre-paperwork and make my appointment. They are always so very nice here, as polite as Canadians are, lovely people. The girls in the office were very kind and extremely helpful to me with filling out the forms and all the different papers. It was a very pleasant experience right up to the point where I passed out and fell to the floor..!

Yeah… so its like super hot here all the time.. like 35 degrees C and today around 65% humidity There is Sahara desert sand coming in on the trade winds making the air feel heavy and very muggy here lately. So hotter than normal. I was wearing my nicest clothes, full length white skirt with my double top, the long sleeve thin grey shirt over my spaghetti strapped pink crop top. Standing patiently in line the second time, wearing my Covid mask suffocating me in the heat. No chairs to sit down in. No air-conditioning.

I guess I started getting the warning signs in my head while standing there, but started going white while still standing up. So my brain kinda faded away unable to think. I was still standing but probably began to wobble. I don’t know what happened next…

I woke up sitting on a chair somehow… sore back.. people around me… someone called an ambulance I guess… I was confused and disoriented.

It can be embarrassing for me.

Usually if I have friends around they can help me when I go down, mostly do crowd control for me and keep everyone around me calm. Usually if I felt myself going funny in the head I would go to my nearest friend for a “hug” and they all know that means get their arms under mine and help hold me up… I am trying to not hit the ground. But I am all alone without protection, nobody to turn to so I went down.

So I guess I worried and surprised the strangers around me when I went down. It probably took me 5 minutes to come back. I think I must have been close to heat stroke in the un-air-conditioned office with no chairs and wearing my Covid mask which began to suffocate me. Thank goodness there was another yachtie in line ahead of me who knew enough to pull the mask off my face so I could breathe again. Thank you stranger.

That was rather embarrassing for me… but good news… I got the Visa extension without a hitch… ha ha ha… I am now good here until August 21st 2021. I will need to get south and hurricane safe before August anyway.

I was going to sail around to Carlisle bay this afternoon.. but I am having another bad heart day. My chest feels heavy today and I can feel my heart fibrillating. I decided to make the next short sail tomorrow morning instead.

Anyways…

Later sailors…

 

Wild Captain Lexi

 

….  today hot and not feeling well    …