Blog

I’m making moves further south and having one rodeo of a day on the water. The wind is a firecracker and the swell is so high it just almost completely covered another sailboat that was passing me by. Sad to say, I’ve already broken something today. I spent the night...

I don’t even know where to start; is it with the fireflies in the forest lighting up the night, or this beautiful perfect wave that I can’t stop surfing, or the karaoke party at the Warung on the beach that I just had with all the other sailors, or the...

I want to write to you flowery things, but I am sailing—or motor sailing, rather—and I am so tired that I am seeing triple. Three bows before me, three morning stars in the sky, three fishermen fat on flying fish. Also, I swear up and down and on my grandma’s...

There I am—soaked in oil, sweating, and swatting away these black bugs that are as big as horses. Next to me is Phil from Sunbird, and we’re aligning my hot pink engine. It’s hour five, and we don’t know when it will end. We keep pushing and tweaking the engine...

It’s 6 a.m. and I’m weighing anchor off an island called Rubiah. It’s a tourist hot spot in Sabang. The tourists are mostly Muslim and come from all over Indonesia and Malaysia. They snorkel and dive and ride around on colorful double-hulled power boats that remind me of a house...

I’m still in Sabang where all the fish are purple, all the cats are short-tailed, and there is one fancy perfume shop that looks like it belongs on the streets of Dallas. I have also never heard such wails coming out of the mosques during prayer time. It’s like the...

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...