Blog

People often ask me where my favorite place on earth is. I motorbiked through Nepal during the fall of the Maoist revolution, and drank ayahuasca in the jungles of the Amazon, and danced inside secret night clubs carved into the caves of Cuba. I communed with the slave-rebelling spirits in...

I kind of feel like I’m inside of a golden egg and I’m about to crack open and break out as something brand new, but I don’t know what that something is yet. You ever feel like that? I wonder what kind of gal is going to pop out? Maybe...

I’m anchored on a lagoon the blue of butterfly wings. I see sand beaches, long and empty. I hear the crack of coral. I feel the rush of the outer reef. Sea turtles slide by. Fish jump up doing the junebug. Slack-jaws hang on the surface, mouths open. And somewhere...

It’s not a cockroach on the $100 bill, it’s a cicada. Everyone told me that it was a roach, starting with three women in a grocery store and ending with someone from biosecurity. I don’t know if we were lost in translation or if everyone in Savusavu was lying to...

The first thing I did when I got to shore was hug a tree. I hugged that tree until it blushed, and the dirt beneath it shook, and the butterflies sang. I sang too and all the people stared because I’m no kind of singer, but my daddy is, which...

I have yet to see Fiji. I am in quarantine on Juniper until later today. How do I feel? Peaceful, pleasant, perfect. Like I could exist here forever. Alone. On this water without the touch of land. Like being able to sit in the cockpit and stare at the unicorn...

“(S)He who is not everyday conquering some fear, has not learned the secret or life.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson The closer I get to land, the more fevered I become. I’m sailing the Koro Sea towards Savusavu all swivel-eyed and slack-jawed. The swell is surging, the wind is rising, and...

I made It through the night with some glitter left over. I am in the future now, tomorrow plus 22 hours. I can see the peaks of Taveuni. I can taste the mangos of Mango Island. I can hear strings strumming a tender song. Last night I sailed through squalls...

I am in the calm before the storm. The sun is up, the breeze has no bite, and the swell is microscopic. It won’t last for long. Everything is about to wake up in a salt and sour mood. And I have an absolute splitting headache over the thought of...

I found something that I wrote during my voyage from Hawaii to Tahiti. It’s odd how easily I forget the things that I already know. July 2020 – “The past couple or days, some hours have drifted by without enough wind to toot a horn. I’m not really in a...

This has been a religious experience, all of it. My lessons: Don’t rush this. Don’t rush anything. Don’t force anything. Don’t chase the wind. Don’t try to change the wind. You can’t change the wind, you can’t change anything outside of you. Enjoy the wind for what it is. I...

I’m on Day 3 of 10 knots true wind or less. With the swell and sails I am making some progress. Sometimes the opposite of what I think is true, is true. Them sails don’t like to be full when the wind is light like this. You gotta reef them...

“When a halo rings the moon or sun, the rain will come upon the run.” Ice crystals cloaked last nights moon, creating a rainbow halo around it that was big enough to house a million wild horses. Squalls squatted on the horizon like trolls just beyond it. Mercurial microbursts came...

Don’t forget to look up, buttercup. I slept, honey, I slept. Not for long though. I went through some screeching squalls last night. Big rain. Rat-tat-tat-tat-tat. Juniper was soaring with her double-reefed main only. And Ruby, the hydrovane, held solid through it all. I didn’t have to lift a finger...

Baby, if your uncomfortable in the ocean then you just gotta change your relationship to the motion of the ocean! THE ELEMENTS Wait, before I get into the red light, can we talk about yesterday again real fast? About how it just went on and on and on, all night...

The wind is sublime and the swell tender. I’m watching the sun drop down a sea glass sky with clouds so perfect and cumulus that this could be a painting. I just received the below dispatch from 22 South, and I’m thanking my lucky stars that I‘m not in that...

This morning, while the stars still soaked the sky, I heard the blowing of a conch shell. And I’m like, “Creature of the abyss, does thy greet me, or announce thy plans to swallow me, or have I just been cursed to an endless traverse?” I think it’s the latter...

1 a.m. The moon is a lemon smile masqueraded by wine-colored cumulus clouds. I’m trying to make something of the wind. I ease the sails. I harden them. I ease them. Sometimes when I ease the main, I can hear it exhale, as if it’s been holding it’s breath, more...

There has been a renaissance of the wind. I am underway again after 36 hours as an empty bottle bobbing. I am moving. Slowly. The wind blows only 7 knots true. But moving. The light air sea saga continues and I’m just a trespasser sailing towards the sun. Movement, even...

My seashell rocked me back and forth across the sea and I drifted into a sleep as deep as a rabbit hole. Deepest sleep that I’ve slept in a long while. No wind to wrangle. No anchor to rescue. I was a ripple. I’ve dropped the sails and floated before...

Last night was crystal and the wind a perfect patter. I saw three fireball meteors cascade like a spell, so bright and liquid and long, that to bare witness to their glamour made meteors fall from my own eyes. I watched the stars radiate the sky until sleep cocooned me...