Phuket, Thailand

After finally disentangling ourselves from the invidious clutches of Mr. Whiz, Mr. Mole and Mr. Thumb, the Malaysian trio who had managed to foul up nearly everything of ours they had touched, Herbert re-installed our original alternator, muttering darkly the whole time, and off we sailed.

The first twelve hours of sailing -- or motoring, I should say, because the prevailing winds at this time of year were still against us, and we waited until a calm before heading out -- brought us as far as Penang Island in good style. Once we passed Penang, however, the winds started picking up until we were once again beating into short, steep waves and 20 or more knots of wind.

As we started out, I had joked that instead of e-mailing my dad that conditions were fine -- as I had before, with disastrous results -- I should write that we had 30 foot seas and 50 knots of wind against us, thereby assuring us the fine passage we were hoping for. This suggestion was immediately and unanimously squelched, and I was issued firm instructions not to e-mail anything -- not a word -- about the weather until the passage was safely behind us. (I am getting something of the reputation of a witch, you see, with my ability to hex future events.) I obediently followed these instructions, not wanting to tempt the fates in any way whatsoever, and so I can now confidently disavow any responsibility for the nasty headwinds that bashed us for the last two-thirds of this particular voyage.

Apart from the incessant slamming into the waves that beating into the wind involves -- accompanied, on my part, by the inevitable physical response -- the other notable feature of this trip was the failure of our ostensibly rejuvenated alternator. A bolt on the alternator's mounting bracket had broken. Just great. Drilling out the bolt was more of a job than Herbert was prepared to tackle at sea, so he McGyvered together a very creative temporary solution -- using a screwdriver and a plastic twist-tie, he wedged the alternator in place, and amazingly, it worked. We kept a careful eye on it, but somehow it held together until our arrival at Langkawi.

Even once the broken bolt was properly repaired, the alternator, which had been working fine before we had sent it away to be machined, continued to give us problems. Once Herbert actually discovered sparks coming from it, spraying all over the engine room in a glittering golden shower. As I've already mentioned, Herbert had had a premonition that there was a reason why Mr. Whiz had been so reluctant to return the alternator to us. Now, as he took it apart, he found out why.

"I don't know if I'm going crazy," he announced with a frown, "but this just doesn't look like our alternator. The outside housing seems to be the same, but I'm sure that inside, the brush arrangement is different."

Indeed, as he investigated further, he discovered that Mr. Whiz had secretly mixed and matched parts from some other alternator and returned this hybrid machine as our own. Obviously something had gone very wrong during the routine machining of the rotor. However, in reassembling the alternator, Mr. Whiz had made a few mistakes along the way. In the end, to our chagrin, we were forced to give up on the alternator altogether and shell out money for a brand new one.

Herbert was morose and endlessly kicking himself that he had trusted anyone with our boat equipment in the first place. "That's it!" he vowed. "I'll never let anyone else else touch this boat again."

We were now at a beautiful marina resort on tiny Rebak Island, a satellite of the duty-free resort of Langkawi. This was our last stop in Malaysia, and we paused to collect ourselves after our frustrating struggles with fouled up equipment. The kids found friends on other boats and played with them building a fort with abandoned construction materials, while Herbert and I met one of the most interesting characters we have yet encountered on our trip.

His name is Harry Heckel, and he's from Norfolk, Virginia. Harry walks with his back hunched forward in the manner that very old, frail people have, and because of this pronounced stoop, doesn't stand more than about five feet tall. Harry is eighty-three years old, and from his painful posture and dwindling body, looks as if he should be living in a retirement home. Instead, he is sailing single-handedly around the world.

In fact Harry is on his second solo circumnavigation in his well-maintained 32 foot boat. When we met him, he had just returned from an adventurous overland trip into Nepal with his granddaughter, and was headed for Malaysian Borneo and the Philippines.

A research chemist by profession, during the second world war Harry had actually been offered a position on the Manhattan Project, the top secret program that ultimately delivered the world's first nuclear bomb. He had turned it down, he said, because he hadn't thought the project would succeed. We had a wonderful evening with him, discussing everything from world history to religion, and found him irreverent, incisive, and sharp as a whip, his formidable knowledge of the world a real challenge to keep up with.

Harry retired in 1972 and set out sailing with his wife, cruising with her for more than a decade. Her sailing days finished abruptly with a diagnosis of breast cancer, but after her death Harry continued on, single-handedly circling the globe while in his late seventies. He looked so frail, I couldn't help but wonder how he could cope with the fatigue that goes with single-handed sailing, but every day, when I saw his white-haired, bent-over figure bustling energetically around the dock, I was filled with admiration.

Harry is a pragmatist, doesn't believe in God or in anything that can't be duplicated or verified by scientific observation, and has a very realistic view of the next ten years of his life.

"Once I have to take more than I can give, that's it for me," he told us over dinner in our salon. "As soon as people have to take care of me, I have no interest in living."

"My doctor was doing some tests on me the other day," he continued, "and I told him that now it doesn't even matter what he finds -- prostate cancer, AIDS, doesn't matter anymore to me, since I'll probably live another five years even if I get them."

"The doctor just wagged his finger and said, 'Just you stay away from those brothels!'"

We didn't ask Harry whether he was scared of becoming incapacitated, alone on the ocean, and how he expected his sailing days to end. But he's living his life to the fullest, and we felt enriched and inspired from having had the privilege of meeting this remarkable man.

We now sailed for Thailand, our last stop in Asia before setting off across the Indian Ocean. There are many small islands between Langkawi and Phuket, our ultimate destination, and so we decided to day hop between them.

The first day we started early and motor-sailed 60 miles across the Thai border to Ko Rok Nok, a tiny, uninhabited island. From our anchorage we could see there was some kind of shrine on the beach, for there were conspicuous pieces of colourful material tied around an old tree. As we clambered over the rocks to visit this holy place of worship, the boys leading the way, Michael abruptly turned back and said, with an expression of pure disgust on his face, "Oh man, this is gross!"

Jon chimed in, "This is a shrine for mating!"

Indeed, we found ourselves in front of what was clearly a phallic shrine, decorated appropriately with dozens of large wooden carvings of -- well -- let's just say they had an unmistakable shape. Visiting fishermen, who use this island as a daytime stopover, had obviously been worshipping here for many years, because many of the carvings were ancient and weathered, while others were brand new and brightly varnished.

It was funny to imagine the fishermen carving these wooden representations in their spare time, then carefully painting them before prayerfully adding them to the shrine. Some of the carvings were made from logs more than a meter long, others even longer, and painted in all kinds of gaudy colours. While a few were standing upright, most were stacked in a big pile like firewood, but they all shared the same distinctive form and function.

Our kids found the whole display totally disgusting, and couldn't get away from it quickly enough: "How can you stand there and look at this, Mom?"

After the boys beat their hasty retreat, a group of about ten Thai fishermen arrived, and I tried to wipe the bemused grin off my face and display what was, I hoped, an attitude of appropriate respect and admiration. One of the young fishermen invited me to videotape him as he stood reverently in front of the shrine, placing his hands together in a praying gesture and closing his eyes for a few moments before finishing his prayer with a little bow.

One of his buddies, who, appropriately enough, wore a carved bone phallus around his waist, lifted up a few of the larger specimens and demonstrated his manliness to me by hefting them onto his shoulder. I nodded and smiled approvingly, which I assumed was an appropriate response, all the while feeling pretty ridiculous about filming this lavish display of masculinity.

None of the young fishermen spoke English, so I never got to ask them whether they were praying for fertility, potency, or perhaps that they might become endowed with -- uh -- proportions equally majestic. Nor did I find out whether their hopeful prayers, whatever they may be, are ever granted.

On second thought, perhaps some questions are better left unasked.

Note from your web masters:
Click here to see a map of the islands that the Northern Magic visited in this dispatch..