Blog

I’m in the witches’ cauldron — that bewildering compression zone at the northern tip of Madagascar, where the Mozambique Channel collides with the Indian Ocean in a tangle of currents and tides and wind rips. Even under sunny skies, the water behaves like it’s a full blown storm. Local fishermen...

Whoever has been praying with me for fairer winds at the cape, thank you! I’m seeing 35 knots up there on the latest forecast instead of 40. A lot can happen between those 5 knots, and it feels like a real blessing! A prayer answered. I’ve come to the conclusion...

Day 23 12°37.131’S 54°21.643’E. I am so close to Madagascar I can hear the lemurs, even though I don’t even know what sort of sound they make. But everything makes a sound. Doesn’t it? Does it? Is there something soundless out there? I don’t think so. Even deep space and...

I am hallucinating land on all 360 degrees of the horizon. My eyes have been like this for two days. I suppose they are hungry. Yesterday was a long, wide cloud. I had a dance party to the song Crimson & Clover by Tommy James and The Shondells to cheer...

Day 21 The sun rises, but I can’t see it. All I see are thunder boom-booms behind me. I’m nervous they’re packing some of that freaky wind the boogeyman rides in. I keep a keen eye on the clouds but carry on toward the Mascarene Plateau. My depth sounder doesn’t...

Day 20- Sumatra to Madagascar. Today is all blue skies, with puff clouds shaped like dragons, women, and castles. It’s mystifying how a storm dies by just fading back into air, like it was never there. I think AWO is in the astral now, with all the other funkadelic things...

Day 19 on my way to Madagascar. Position: 12°0.392’S 63°58.829’E. A thing is just a thing until it has a name. Isn’t that the truth? The swirling chaotic low-pressure that I’ve been dodging, has now been deemed a Tropical Depression and given the name AWO. It sounds like the name...

It’s been blowing 30 knots with rain on and off all damn day. The sky, the wind roaring out of it, and the howling sounds all around are rattling. I don’t go outside unless I have to. I’ve spent so much of this voyage hiding in the cabin that my...

There was a ship in the Briney Deep, The Briney Deep, the Briney Deep, Skies so dark no sun did glow, Waves so tall the fish lay low. The wind it moaned like the tigers cry, The sails were torn, the mast was high, The stars were lost, the compass...

It’s day 14. I am more than halfway to Madagascar. The conditions have been on the rather violent side for the majority of this sail. There have been highs and lows and moments when I can’t discern if I’m having states of delirium—or is it perhaps clairvoyance? What’s the difference?...

Day 13. The boat is no longer a death trap, though it is still a flying fish burial tomb. The sea appears to be subsiding slightly, but moving about the cabin is still dizzying. One 13-foot wave pushes me to starboard, the next to port. They are coming at me...

Forgive me for not writing yesterday. My mom always said, if you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all, and I didn’t have anything nice to say about the ocean. But now I can tell you. Day 12 out here and hell’s bells, it is really...

I’m on my 11th day out here in the Indian Ocean. I finally make it to 10° South and clear of the convection clouds. I fall off the wind and start breathing again. Day drifts into night and it’s all a real dream. I can see the stars for the...

The day shows no sign of rain. The swell reminds me of a precipitous country hillside and occasionally a wave crashes onboard. There are clouds but the sky is blue and bright between them. I sleep and sleep some more. Now it’s sunset and there is no sunset, only a...

Sometimes the only way to get around something is to go through it. I have been watching this strange-looking area on the GRIB (weather) files for a while. I kept thinking I should go more south, but I was doubting myself. Then all morning yesterday Juniper was trying to sail...

I am near the Afanisy Nikitin Seamount. The exact position of my sailing ship on this spinning planet that orbits a blazing, gaseous star named Sun — known for its solar flares and magnetic mischief — which drifts in a galaxy that is just one among billions in a universe...

The elements around me are constant — the sky, the sun, the sea — yet they are forever evolving: bigger, smaller, wilder, dreamier, higher, heavier, redder, bluer, deeper. Each day feels like I’m sailing into a new dimension. This dimension I’m in now is moody — like a wild animal...

The night started out dazzling. Winds in the teens, a sky laced with celestial bodies. I was lying beneath it all, sleeping like a dandelion drifter, until a squall hit me hard. I couldn’t see boo turkey. No moon, no stars—just darkness. Black. So much nothing. So much confusion. Wind...

The rain takes the wind from me for most of the day yesterday, but I find it again around sunset. That’s when life gets all wonderland. Rainbows in the sky, dolphins jumping at my bow, wind in the teens, sun setting. An intoxicating voodoo spell made of all my favorite...

I’ve spent all day on a beam reach with the wind between 13–16 knots and Juniper averaging 5. No rain, no other boats, just blue and blue and blue — and thoughts of you. The swell is a little over 6 feet high, and the sea is a touch lumpy...

The afternoon sky went muddy with rain clouds. There were fishermen up ahead and on the patch of blue beyond them all I could see for miles and miles were these white balls floating on the surface of the water in a uniform fashion. I figured it must be some...