Blog

DAY 1 I wake up like a live wire. I’ve been waiting all week for the wind to turn north of east and today it is turning. I’m going to ride it back out to Fulaga in the south eastern most part of the Lau group- where the women are...

It was two weeks ago that I ripped my mainsail and so much has happened in my life since that I must cut it into small slices and feed it to you in vignettes, piece by piece, layer by layer. TWIN PISTON I hop a twin piston from Savusavu to...

With the mainsail busted and the air sucked dry of wind, the rest of our journey across the Bligh is a limp on an iron leg. We putter up to the uninhabited island of Yadua long after sunset. We don’t have any tracks for the pass, or cell service, and...

Oh honey, have I got a story for you, it starts like this.. It’s 4 P.M. and I’m on an aluminum dinghy in the Blue Lagoon. I’m thinking about how Fiji is a real easy place to never leave, all the islands, all the wind, all the magic. I spent...

I’m in a green and purple hammock that’s strung up in the cockpit between the stern pulpit and the boom gallows. The sea is rocking me like a swing, back and forth, high and low, and it’s way more alive and effortless than anything that hangs from a tree. I’m...

The Navandra anchorage is so rock and roll that it’ll make you throw up your Fruit Loops. Everybody’s leaving. The pirates and their Jolly Rogers are long gone on the horizon and I’m getting towed back to civilization by Zephyr. That catamaran is always doing something real nice for me...

It’s been a wild week on the water and I’ve been feeling like such a billygoat. It began with oil exploding out of my engine and ended with the bolts that connect my drive shaft to my transmission shaking loose and me running aground. I’ve been towed three times in...

It’s 7 AM. I’m in the water with my salt sister, Abi, and she’s singing songs about the stars. The sun is mighty bright and the boobies are flying ocean low. Black-tip sharks are roaming the reef, and the wind is blowing the crystals into long prisms that rain around...

It’s sugarcane cutting season in Fiji and the air is crisp and cool and perfect, like it always is in that space between seasons. I sleep beneath a wool blanket and wake up to a spastic symphony of birds singing  against a hot pink sky, and the splashing swarm of a...

You know what I love about the sailing community? You can be at a party and say, “Hey, let’s all go to Vanuatu!”  And someone responds, “Yes and after that, Papua New Guinea, and then Indonesia.” And we mean it. And we’ll do it. Soon. I feel like a boomerang...

I’m sailing away from the Kadavu lagoon. I’m leaving on a pure east wind and heading northwest. I must go with the wind. It’s always better to go with the wind. It’s always better to go with the water. It’s always better to go with the tornado. Name one thing...

Last night I had a bad dream with a turtle in it. I’m still in Kadavu, attached to the Mothership. The coral beneath me is Easter egg colored and the sunset is a dusty yellow rose. I’ve got seaweed in my hair, sand on my thighs, and mosquitos are buzzing...

Some stories are hard to tell, because to tell it, is to relive it. This is one them. It starts out with me on top of a coral rock, howling like a banshee, and ends with a boat robbery, where I am again howling like a banshee. THE ROCK: I...

It’s six in the morning. I’m anchored over a sand bar with only 5 feet of baby blue water below the keel. I can see seashells and sea cucumbers and yellow leaves that lost their trees. The islands next to me look like a pregnant lady who is very circular...

YANUCA (Pronounced Yanutha) I made it to the islands of fire walkers. I’m on a coral-skeleton covered beach on Yanuca Island in Beqa Lagoon. We are building a bonfire with drift wood and palm fronds. The sun just set and the teal water turned black. Heat lightning is flashing from...

I’m sailing along the Coral Coast, towards the island of fire walkers and mongoose. Do you know how good the wind feels in my face? Like silk spun straight out of the caterpillar. Juniper’s not fully fixed but she’s fixed enough. So what if my 12 Volt power outlet is...

My sister left Fiji after we rolled in mud like pigs and visited a Hindu temple where we stared at murals of a four-faced creator. Now I’m delirious.  The purity of the sky’s wilderness has been eclipsed by rainstorms and the hot red sunrise can’t find it’s way through these...

My little sister, Mary, is in Fiji and we’re waving the goddess flag. We’re on a long boat captained by a man named Scoby. He’s cornfed with a crab smile. I just discovered that I know his mom, Emma. She’s one of the best octopus hunters and we once floated...

I see a man on a kayak in the shallows. I paddle over to him. His name is Jonah. He’s in his late 20s with a sunfish smile and he’s collecting sea cucumbers, which are penis-shaped marine animals that sit on the sea floor. He’s after two types of cucumbers...

The past week was a soaking wet mush mash and I felt like one of those eyeless shrimps that lives inside of a volcanic sea vent. The clouds were all thunderheaded and they rose up so high and crept down so close that you couldn’t tell what was what or...

============================================================== WETTER THAN WATER Happy year of the Water Tiger! Over here it’s raining cats and dogs and the wind is whooping like a tramp on a fast train. I can’t see anything. It’s all wet and gray and the sun has stopped rising and setting too, but I’m back...