Blog

Crossing the shipping lane in the northern part of the Malacca Strait is like a game of dodgeball—except the balls are fast-moving nuclear weapons fifty times your size. Oh what a chaotic maritime corridor! Add in the turbulence of water blowing in from the Indian Ocean, the monstrous wakes from...

Notes from that strange space between Thailand and the straight of Malacca… I left Chalong Bay for Sumatra—just me, the wind, the dolphins, and one very pink engine. A bird’s nest fell out of the mainsail when I went to hoist it. I’ve had gecko eggs and a hornets’ nest...

I took a day off after the charter—it was my first real day off in over four months—and I crashed down hard like a plane falling from a swollen sky. I didn’t rest much, only that one day. I just lay there, listening to those cool birds that moan and...

My boat floats, baby! Do you know how good it feels to take an entire boat apart and put it back together again, only to see the dang thing float? Real good. Better than watching the sunset or having a blessed encounter with a whale. I was on the hard...

IThere I was working on Juniper on a Sunday, like I do every day. I was in the cabin changing hoses and cleaning bilges. It’s around 11 AM, and I’m not eating or sleeping right still. My friend Timo—the raucous Italian who ran the boatyard in Fiji and lives on...

With a crack in one eye and a fractured mind, I yell out, “I have unearthed every inch of my boat, and now everything is being rebuilt. I’m not certain it will be the same boat in the end. Must I rename it?!” No one hears me but the caged...

I’m totally bewitched by the boat and the race. It’s 2 AM. Why am I awake? Because of the boat. I fell asleep at 8 after a long day of working hard like a buffalo. I woke up with a strange fiberglass rash on both wrists, which made me scratch...

I know it’s been a coon’s age since I last wrote to you. Life’s been a wild ride. Juniper and I miss the water. We’ve been on the hard for over two months now, and sometimes land feels utterly confusing. Juniper doesn’t know who she is without floating, and I...

I’m still moving and grooving in the dusty, dirty particles and tinkering at the very edge of shape shifting. It’s consuming all of me. This refit in Thailand. I find it rather unhinging too. I am alone, in a foreign country, doing this massive thing, and I’m so very often...

New Year’s was lawless on many levels, perhaps the most memorable one I’ve ever experienced. All of the beaches were bursting with people cracking commercial-sized fireworks and sending 4-foot paper lanterns into the sky. Things were popping and exploding across the sand, and there were thousands of people in sequins...

Happy holidays! I hope that they are down right magic and that you are swimming in sparkling waters. I hardly see anything beyond this boatyard which has everything you could ever desire, including a fire show and an ice rink that I have yet to have time for. Santa is...

Thailand is a real trip. The Elephants steal my sugarcane, the monkeys nab my lime, and I’m very often lost. Beyond that, my life is kind of like groundhogs day. I live in this Thai bubble. Everything is right here. My room, my boat – which is like an evolving...

I have so much to tell you about the refit and wood and fiberglass and birds. And did you know that if you weld marine grade stainless steel – which is non-magnetic or very low magnetism to begin with – and it cools too rapidly, then the crystals inside go...

The other day I showed up to work on my boat and there were two birds in ornate cages hanging beneath it. Nibbling bananas, singing away. I walked around the yard and found more birds in cages, all surrounding the boats that Nai is orchestrating repairs on. At first I...

I’ve been on the hard in Phuket for eight days now. The name of the place is Boat Lagoon. What a heart shake getting here was. The marina is up a mangrove river that has to constantly be dredged and can only be entered on the high tide. Even on...

I exit Pangkor island, there is a small mushroom island to my starboard and a long crocodile island to my port. The current is pushing me out into the strait and there is rubbish floating all around. I’m trucking along, mistaking floating trees for fishermen and styrofoam for fish floats...

I ride in a golf cart through the hills to a place called The Tiger Club. It’s a joint without walls and a wrap around bar right on the sand. It’s somebodies birthday so there are a lot of smiling faces, and fireworks, and karaoke, and a woman who can...

I have missed you darling. It’s been a ride and communication proved impossible. After 30 hours, 3 planes, a ferry, and a golf buggy, I made it back to Juniper in Batam. She had mold growing visibly in many places and smelled wretched, so the first thing I did was...

I am in a very swank marina that is attached to a 4-star hotel, Nongsa Point on Batam Island. The trees are full of monkeys and the water is rich with super yachts. It’s the cream of the crop here. Just across the water from me I can see Singapore...

It took me 18 days to get Juniper Frankensteined back together after getting ripped to bits by 46 knots of wind and a tug named TB Johan Jaya. These days when people ask about the specifics I just say it was a lethal mixture of a droopy-eyed human against the...

After all the breaking, I broke. There goes my mind, melting into a waxy mush with a dying flame. I feel cursed by the bad juju of all the western witches, I feel stupid, I feel like something in the heavens is screeching to me that I’m on the wrong...