Seventh Heaven
I’m in seventh heaven, darling. This morning I woke up, looked outside and I saw a man in the water with a fat head. I mean his head looked like the freaking moon, all white like that too! And I was like who is that loon, because it’s winter here...
SLEEPING BANANA
It’s 6 AM. Juniper is a disco, fish are flying across the water, and the sun is a dusty rose thorned by clouds. I feel like I’m in some body of water swimming around, but I can’t see anything and I don’t know which direction I’m going, and all I...
CINNAMON SKIES
Sometimes I want to write to you, but I’m afraid of what is going to come out of my head, so I don’t. I just stare at the sea and the stars instead. I stare at them so long that they become shy and uncomfortable, as uncomfortable as you feel...
LIFE ON MARS
500 DAILY ERUPTIONS I am in the back of a pick-up truck with eight other people. We are sitting on wooden benches and getting bounced around like yo-yo’s. The road is all roots and mud if you don’t own a truck in Tanna, you’re walking. I see a lot of...
THE GANG IS ALL HERE
I wake up feeling like I’ve been cooked in hot fat and lookin like something that the cat drug in. There are no squalls as far as I can see, but I can’t see that far. The gang is all here at anchorage; Complicity, Libre, and NV (with the orange...
VOLCANO GODDESS
It’s 5 AM. I wake up and wrap a piece of purple dynema on my head like I’m Tarzan or a hippie or a gal named Olivia whose lost at sea in search or herself. I do this ritual every morning on the ocean and every night I take it...
SAILING IN A BLACK HOLE
The sapphire of the sea is exquisite today and it makes me feel the same way I feel when I look at a flower. I’ve been chasing the wind all day, it’s an illusive thing that keeps slipping away. I’m out here sailing on scraps of light air. It’s been...
UNEARTH ME
My mystery ghost ship is back. Cleopatra! She is off my port bow, holding steady with me as I go. Nobody aboard has invited me to swim in the pool yet, but the sky is black and moaning and raindropping anyway, so I couldn’t go even if they asked. I...
A BITTER BREW
The sea is a bitter brew today. Sunless. Wind squalls. Frigid. Rain squalls. Gray. Head squalls. Lifeless. Body squalls. The swell is a touch smaller, but I’m still getting bounced around. Now I know for certain what a pinball feels like inside of it’s machine. At the squalls crescendo, the...
FAREWELL FIJI
I’m just out here staring at the sea and sky. Everything is the color of stone and this day feels just like a night without stars feels. The whole world is howling and biting and I’m wishing it would be different. Its not that it’s not beautiful, every mood of...
THE BLUE EEL
I’m eating a papaya and listening to Big Papa when I got a call from Timo, the Italian on the orange flamed race boat. He’s flipping out, “Olivia, there’s a tsunami warning. You need to go to shore and talk to the eel.” From the way Timo’s spewing his words...
EVERYTHING WENT SIDEWAYS
Hi Darling. Sorry I left you hanging from a banana tree. Everything went sideways and the grief of it all comes at me in strange waves. It all started two weeks or so ago and it’s wilder than fiction. You can’t make this stuff up if you wanted to, even...
FORKED BY LIGHTNING
I leave Fiji in a month- call all the horsemen, all the saints and savages, all the twirling acrobats, all the sirens with their lady heads and bird bodies. Tell them all to beat the bongos, blow the conchs, and fire dance. Tell them to hoist the flags on top...
Modern Day Ocean Explorations
Hi darlings. I have just been grinding away over here. Fixing leaks, getting a new bimini made, varnishing wood, and doing the last adjustments on my new rig. I am in the Vuda Marina. I can never go back to Denarau after being in this place. It’s a real cruiser...
THE RIG
I’ve had so many men up my mast lately, one every day of the week. My Italian friend, Timo, who lives on an old race boat that’s painted silver with orange flames flaming off of it, is up there right now. He’s just below the spreaders shouting, “Mamma Mia, Mamma...
CYCLONE KEVIN & THE WIZARD
“They are predicting 55 knots for cyclone Kevin. The owners of these moorings want all the boats to get off of them..Over.” Don, the palm reader and eldest member of my boat tribe, is announcing on channel 68. Cyclone Judy is still kicking up wind and my head is fizzing...
CYCLONE JUDY
There is heartache in the wind, the sky is made of stones, and my boat is an unknown planet. The edges of Cyclone Judy are thrashing all around and Cyclone Kevin is hot to trot on her tail. Judy has worked her way up to a category 4 and I’m...
The Knee, The Fridge, The Ferry, The Battery
There is a breeze of transcendence blowing across my body and a water lullaby lapping against my skull. It’s all so beautiful- the South Pacific sea colliding into me. I want to bottle it up and send it to you. I would wrap it in a silver ribbon and write...
17° South & 177° East
It’s been a long time, I shouldn’t have left you without a dope beat to step to. Just joking, you know that song? Where am I? 17 degrees south and 177 degrees east. All those sevens are something special- just like heaven. With the cyclone season I’m not drifting too...
THE HOLIDAYS IN FIJI
The rain just wetted my face and woke me. I had to get up and close all of the hatches. It’s too bad too because I was dreaming about a jewel, an opal to be exact. T’is the cyclone season here in Fiji. There is so much rain and so...
YOGA IN BALI
I arrive to Bali- the island of Gods- guided by a purple crab. I’m in the mountain town of Ubud at a yoga retreat center that is surrounded by rice fields and I don’t know how the crab got here. Ubud means medicine and it’s a place, like the sea...























