Blog

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...

I was in Ambon longer than expected, five days to be exact. For most of my time there it rained cats and dogs and plastic bags. The wind was a ferocious jungle feline and sometimes there was lightning and the booms of thunder too. One day a floating fish farm...

I’m tied up to a floating fish farm restaurant in front of the city of Ambon. The dock is no bigger than a small house and it’s square shaped and made of long primary colored plastic pieces with netted gaps in between full of fish. In the center of it...

One should never go sailing if they have to be some place by a specific time. There can be no plans beyond your sailing plans which are as susceptible to shifting in the wind as sand. It was a total pipe dream to think I could make it 500 nautical...

I’m back on the water at a 60 degree angle to 13 knots of wind. The sea is flat and I’ve got a favorable current. The day is a real vision and d I adore the conditions, though the sun is muted and inside of me there is that secret...

I anchored among the emerald limestone islands of Wayag in Raja Ampat for a week. That place is a real jewel, a wild beauty, a tropical treasure. I can’t really describe it, I heard someone say, “trying to describe her is like trying to describe the beauty of a rainbow...

Morning came softly, slowly, still too soon. My sails are down and Juniper is being pushed back and forth in a see-saw motion by the waves that the storm created. The sea gets all jumbled after a hard blow and when you go bare poled your boat goes side on...

This has been one of those never ending days. I’m tattered. I don’t even know where to begin, with the abundance of logs and fish aggregating devices in the water, or the 50 plus knot squall that just blasted me the wrong direction for an hour and had me praying...

Life is moving too fast and it’s becoming more and more difficult for me to sail away from places. It rips me right up to depart and breath never comes easy my first day back at sea. I feel like a hole, like a locket without a secret, like a...

TG Okkiwi Sumberbaba, Woda, Yobi, Pulau Rosi, P.P. Paidado – these are the names of places that surround me! I don’t even know what it all means, but I like it. It’s evidence that I have sailed myself somewhere so very different from the South Pacific. Last night there was...

I have just sailed out of the Bismarck Sea and into the Molucca Sea. Hello Indonesia! I am still sailing above the same dinasour-looking land mass, but there is an invisible line dividing Papua New Guinea from West Papua, which is part of Indonesia, and I’m well beyond that line...

I’m back at sea and I’m so blue it’s making me sick. I’m crying. My heart aches, my stomach aches. I’m so swollen with sorrow I could throw up. I should throw it all up and start over again from scratch- new bones, new blood, no goodbyes. I could have...

My messages to Libre go like this, “Do you have any wind? I’m loosing my mind.” “What’s your position now?” “I got wind again!” “There was so much rain in that last squall! My galley and v-berth are soaked.” The conditions are so variable out here I feel like God...