500 DAILY ERUPTIONS I am in the back of a pick-up truck with eight other people. We are sitting on wooden benches and getting bounced around like yo-yo’s. The road is all roots and mud… if you don’t own a truck in Tanna, you’re walking. I see a lot of people walking, they pop out …
THE GANG IS ALL HERE
I wake up feeling like I’ve been cooked in hot fat and lookin like something that the cat drug in. There are no squalls as far as I can see, but I can’t see that far. The gang is all here at anchorage; Complicity, Libre, and NV (with the orange flames). Volcano ash laces the …
VOLCANO GODDESS
It’s 5 AM. I wake up and wrap a piece of purple dynema on my head like I’m Tarzan or a hippie or a gal named Olivia whose lost at sea in search or herself. I do this ritual every morning on the ocean and every night I take it off and put a headlamp …
SAILING IN A BLACK HOLE
The sapphire of the sea is exquisite today and it makes me feel the same way I feel when I look at a flower. I’ve been chasing the wind all day, it’s an illusive thing that keeps slipping away. I’m out here sailing on scraps of light air. It’s been my slowest day on the …
UNEARTH ME
My mystery ghost ship is back. Cleopatra! She is off my port bow, holding steady with me as I go. Nobody aboard has invited me to swim in the pool yet, but the sky is black and moaning and raindropping anyway, so I couldn’t go even if they asked. I set my sails for the …
A BITTER BREW
The sea is a bitter brew today. Sunless. Wind squalls. Frigid. Rain squalls. Gray. Head squalls. Lifeless. Body squalls. The swell is a touch smaller, but I’m still getting bounced around. Now I know for certain what a pinball feels like inside of it’s machine. At the squalls crescendo, the gusts fast fly me across …
FAREWELL FIJI
I’m just out here staring at the sea and sky. Everything is the color of stone and this day feels just like a night without stars feels. The whole world is howling and biting and I’m wishing it would be different. Its not that it’s not beautiful, every mood of the sea is beautiful, it’s …
THE BLUE EEL
I’m eating a papaya and listening to Big Papa when I got a call from Timo, the Italian on the orange flamed race boat. He’s flipping out, “Olivia, there’s a tsunami warning. You need to go to shore and talk to the eel.” From the way Timo’s spewing his words all fast, but loose I …
EVERYTHING WENT SIDEWAYS
Hi Darling. Sorry I left you hanging from a banana tree. Everything went sideways and the grief of it all comes at me in strange waves. It all started two weeks or so ago and it’s wilder than fiction. You can’t make this stuff up if you wanted to, even if you had the most …
FORKED BY LIGHTNING
I leave Fiji in a month- call all the horsemen, all the saints and savages, all the twirling acrobats, all the sirens with their lady heads and bird bodies. Tell them all to beat the bongos, blow the conchs, and fire dance. Tell them to hoist the flags on top of a naked volcano high …
