Hodierne was born in 1986 in San Francisco, California, to journalist Alicia Shepard and Robert Hodierne, winner of the Pulitzer Prize Gold Medal for Meritorious Public Service in 1981 for a series on Brown Lung Disease that afflicted textile workers, earned as part of the team at the Charlotte, N.C. ....and today a professor of Journalism at the University of Richmond.

Just before his birth, his parents sold everything they owned, quit their jobs, and bought a 32-foot "cutter-rigged" sailboat, after which he was named.

He briefly attended Emerson College in Boston, but dropped out after two semesters to focus on filmmaking.

[4] After the tour, he travelled to Kenya with co-producers John Hibey and Raphael Swann to direct a fictional short film about Somali piracy in the Indian Ocean called Fishing Without Nets.

Dramatic Competition for a feature film version of Fishing Without Nets produced and financed by Vice.