Blog

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...

So Juniper and I are connected to the back of this barge and we are both being towed by a tug at about 2.5 NM per hour. The wind is in the 30s, the sea is throwing chunks of water all over the place and I find out quickly that...

Read to the end to hear about the most colossal mistakes I have ever made. Or just skip to the last day. DAY 1 “Juniper, Juniper, Juniper, this is the Coast Guard.” I’m almost outside of the Cilicap Harbor channel that is industrial and bubbling with boats of every dimension...

Day 1 I’m back out in the salty jungle! The name of this particular jungle is the Indian Ocean. It’s my first time meeting these waters. There is something frigid and firecrackery about them. And all of the particles in the air above them have been infused with a mixture...

I’m still thinking about those white horses in the Lombok Strait. How they galloped towards me, leapt out of the sea with some ancient boundless energy, collided halfway up the mast, and smashed onto my body with a breathtaking and frigid force. How all of the floorboards were floating. How...

So many things have happened since I last wrote to you; mayhem on a visa run to Malaysia, surfing on a party island, a failed attempt to sail into the Indian Ocean, etc. After the whale sharks I made it to Medana Bay Marina in Lombok. It’s a narrow channel...

I wake up with a blue lagoon behind me. Starfish are lying in the sand. The sun is a yellow submarine. I’m wearing a baby blue crocheted nothing and side tied to the silver race boat that’s decorated in flames. Nemo, the three year old onboard is saying “Olivia, Olivia...

Dragons are real babe. I have spent many days in the land of dragons and my eyes don’t lie. I got so close that I could see the green-brown scale of their skin that sheds like a snake, and their fat feet with lady long claws, and the fork in...

Day 1 I had one docking accident six years ago and ever since then I’m never at ease doing it. The harbor master and my new hotel mafia friend help me with my lines while I rattle around at the helm. I weave my way outside of the harbor and...

On a sailboat, where one is at the whim of the wild and capricious ways of Mother Nature, it is paramount to be flexible in regard to one’s intended destination and one must never be in a rush. I am over the moon about my decision not to tack around...