Esnyder

Beware, be aware and learn

My first advice would be to generally trust your red flag instincts during initial discussions with Ellen, or anyone for that matter, no matter how small, including her stories about previous captains, which may not be appropriate or accurate? One story about a Captain (ex boyfriend ) that comes to mind is ”Mr LagoonMan” as she laughingly nicknamed him. Although convincing, I now question her version of events? My experiences with Ellen is a mixture of positive and negative, but let’s start with the positives, from the brief amount of time onboard and brief amount of time on the helm under sail, Ellen seems to read the wind shifts and steers to them quite well, I would say, at a very acceptable level. She attended to unused lines well, keeping them tidy. She was willing and seemed to enjoy cooking. We shared cooking duties, and the two meals she prepared and cooked were enjoyable! She offered constantly to wash up dishes etc. Personal hygiene etc is good. She’s a pretty good conversationist during small talk and has some interesting stories. She says she loves to sail, and clearly loves to swim! The negatives, which of course some can be deemed subjective. In my opinion Ellen spends an excessive amount of time online, is often preoccupied and distracted with phone time, to the point where it felt anti social! I was providing free internet via personal hotspot so I guess agreed internet times could solve that. I consider myself an over user also when alone, but I reduce/adjust my time online significantly when other people are onboard! Ellen is an extremely left leaning American politically, and is very willing to verbally voice her disapproval of, and also heavily criticise the current Trump administration and literally everything they do, usually under the subtle guise of talking about the tanking stock market, which I did happily listen to! But on occasion after offering alternate info or questioning/challenging her info/opinion, she would become quite hostile, defensively interrupt and talk over me persistently in disagreement, and on occassion even simply walk away. It felt like it’s her way or the highway! BTW I will also question/challenge extreme right political views if in conversation, with often a similar reaction! Ellen would sometimes question my way of doing things, and even in the moment question/challenge/ignore my instructions, ie during anchoring. In my opinion one explanation is, it’s because she’s distracted by her own internal dialogue! Whatever the reason she would then justify her behaviour by defensively saying she thought this or thought that, rather than simply following the instructions! There’s a time and place to discuss techniques, reasons for them and alternative techniques that crew may feel could be better, which I welcome those ideas and suggestions, in fact I have implemented over the years a lot of other peoples ideas/techniques! However, in the moment is not the time to question/challenge an instruction or tried and tested technique! The major negative for me is a trust issue, when Ellen on two occasions tried to renege on the agreed costs, including on the day she departed when she tried to underpay me, by again coming up with a justification for reneging, and then also claiming that was all the money she had on her, even after supposedly withdrawing enough money to pay me from an atm 2 days earlier! For this reason I now distrust her and would recommend future Captains require she pay the agreed amount in advance. The final and most disturbing one was on the morning of departure. I was preparing my breakfast downstairs as she was hand washing her cabin bed linen and towels, because she didn’t want to pay laundry mat fees! She told me she was going to have a break in between washing and go for a swim, but instead and unbeknownst to me, she hailed down 2 French guys on a tender, acting in distress and claiming she was in danger! Oblivious to this, I was in complete shock when these 2 men entered my boat! They quickly realised the situation was not as Ellen portrayed, as they witnessed me merely cooking breakfast and later told me they initially thought the reason for the hail was there was a medical emergency on board! They kindly took her to the dock while at the same time clearly frustrated with her inability to follow their instructions while boarding their tender, and probably because they were already quickly on to her shenanigans! The 2 French guys suggested I check her bags before they leave, to make sure she hadn’t stolen anything, which I did. As I write I haven’t had a thorough check of the boat but I think all is okay in that regard? I am in the meantime left to do the hand washing she clearly didn’t want to do. If you want crew on board who is alligned with your own very extreme left inflexible political views, and you love to blame the worlds woes on the right only, also someone you will have on board for free or contribute toward food etc. only, maybe Ellen is for you? There’s a good moral to this story, but I’ll have to give that more thought.

4th Apr 2025