Olivia Wyatt, Filmmaker & Sailor

Up in Your Business with Kerry McCoy

Born in landlocked Little Rock, AR, Olivia Wyatt moved to Rockaway Beach in New York after college and fell deeply in love with sailing. Today, she's captain to Juniper, a 34-ft haunted sailboat moored in the Soloman Islands of the Pacific Ocean, in addition to being an award-winning filmmaker, TV producer, and writer. Olivia has worked on racing boats, boat deliveries, and international charter voyages, with over 11,000 nautical miles to her credit. Along with her passion for the sea is her calling to meet and bring awareness of endangered, indigenous people through her sailing adventures, storytelling, and filmmaking. Her 2015 feature-length documentary Sailing the Sinking Sea is candy for the senses. You swim underwater, sail on turquoise seas, learn sea gods’ mythology and watch Moken couples fall in love. Today Olivia has set her sights on the 2026 Golden Globe race. Some of the rules are: Sailors must sail alone, non-stop, in retrofitted sailboats using 1968 technology. The race starts in France and sails from West to East around the Great Capes. Interestingly, more people have been to space than have rounded the Capes, and Olivia will be the first American woman to do so solo. Tune in to hear firsthand from the brilliant, brave, beautiful, ambitious, award-winning ethnographic filmmaker and sailor, Captain Oliva O Wyatt.