Blog

Morning was about to break and the strawberry full moon was hanging above the jagged peaks of Mo’orea like a prayer. I have lost track of days, months, and moons, and this moon was not the flower moon, as I have been calling her, but she bled across the sky...

Every time the sun goes behind a cloud, I realize how cold and colorless the world would be without it. Tahiti is 30 nautical miles away. I can see the outline of it’s shape rising up from the sea and disappearing into the sky. I will sail past it through...

The sea is blistering and I’m cooling off inside of a memory. I am sitting in the kitchen of the first house that I ever lived in. My sister is there. We are making pom-pom art. Our dad comes home with some VHS tapes and tells us to look out...

We hoist anchor at 10:30 a.m. Downwind on a flat lagoon. Bliss. The anchorage near the south pass is hot. Boats and people have exploded like firecrackers along it’s shore. They are waiting for Flower Moon. I think about stopping, even furl the jib, but I have a hard time...

Here are more of my musings, ramblings, wanderings. Last night I dreamt that the wind picked up something fierce. 60 knots. When I “woke up” both whisker stays were broken and the whole anchor chain had popped. I had only 10 feet of chain left and nothing tethering me to...

I fall asleep not long after dusk and wake while the world is still colorless and the last star has yet to fade. I watch the sun open up it’s golden eye and splash, drip, drench, it’s rays onto everything. Grey to green. Black to blue. Purple to white. Morning...

It is raining cats and dogs and they’re getting all hot and heavy with Juniper. I let the rain loosen me. I whistle back at the wind that carries it. Raindrops slide inside my butterflies. I‘m a puddle. Liquid and languid. But the fish, they are flying. The rain stops...

I am water camping. In a salt desert. Rich in fish and sharks. It is moon faced and next to nowhere. I drink drops of rain. My power is the sun, and the sun is a speckled sun. I’m living the slow life. I wear only a loincloth aboard Juniper...

South Fakarava is a cold drink and my first day is dream pop. I wake up after visions through the night that I am hunting for a purple pearl in a cold lagoon. The dream told me, “Do not pick the pearl, let the pearl pick you.” I Make coffee...

It’s 9:30 a.m. The sky is white with clouds. Storms breaking between. I want to sail the lagoon south, but need sunlight to see all the coral along my path. I spot a sailboat heading into the channel. I will follow them. I turn the engine on and run up...

Sixty black birds with white heads have been circling Juniper for days. Fishing the fish that swim beneath us at anchorage. They perch on the bow pulpit, then pounce; water flies, wings tangle, fish freak, guts get gulped, birds laugh. Only my boat. Only this spot on the water. All...

It takes me two days to gather enough strength to blow up my dinghy, Daisy, and row to shore in Fakarava. The day we arrive, I just work and eat and sleep and call Te Mana’s mom to apologize for the rough sail that made the cousins sick. She was...

The cousins and I pull into Toau around sunset. The pass is a piece of cake. I catch a mooring just in front of Inapo. I dive up and down the mooring to make sure it’s safe and there are so many sharks that I wet myself, but I’m already...

I left the boatyard on Saturday. On my own. The steel boat will now be destructed and the preparation for that will take time; removing all diesel and other fluids, belongings, etc. and I was itching to get back on the sea. The cost of the my mistake- leaving my...

Dream the dream. Dream, dream, dream, dream. Make me the moon and let the sea spill out of me. I am laying down on the bow of the boat. It’s 1:11 a.m. and I’m wearing sunglasses. It’s the Super Flower blood moon lunar eclipse and my eyes are all over...

I feel as though I bored you to bits with my quarantine story. Quarantine is a new part of my adventure from now on, for who knows how long. And honestly, I don’t know what fascinates you about me, so I just tell you everything and let whatever sticks, stick...

I went from agates and salt ponds in the Sea of Cortez, to quarantine at a luxury hotel in Tahiti. Seven days down. Three to go. Then, if I pass my fourth COVID test, I will be set free. Free to catch a plane to the Tuamotus and reunite with...

Tuesday: The morning catches fire and blooms all kinds of blue and pink on the white sands of the crescent beach. It’s 6 a.m. My head is a jubilee. I’m remembering all the nights that I spent in Bangkok. When I was a feather and anywhere was an oyster. When...

Sailing the Sea of Cortez is like sailing on another planet. Cherry-colored-cactus-flower-desert-mountains pile up past the clouds, plateau into mesas, then drop down into seafoam water that’s as smooth and transparent as sea glass. And there are sirens and mega-toothed monsters and THIS is my Shangri La. The sun shines...

I step aboard the 52 ft. Catamaran. It’s unearthly; part-spaceship, part-skyscraper. I can’t see my own face, but I’m pretty sure that it looks just like the face of an animal that froze inside a block of ice- a lot of fight mixed with frozen flight.  A man named Carlos...

I dream about a Tahitian man singing over a hard-boiled egg. It’s a wild kinda singing. More like high-pitched shrieking. I like him. I want to follow him wherever he goes. A bunch of green flashes before me. Then I’m on the catamaran in Mexico and it’s really a spaceship...