Ko Hong, Thailand

It's time to introduce you to a certain member of the crew of Northern Magic, one whose existence Herbert and I have tried -- unsuccessfully -- to keep under wraps. His name is Thunderbear.

Thunderbear is small, white and furry, and looks like many a stuffed teddy bear. Well, actually, his fur is now the colour of a raincloud, which is only fitting, considering both his name and his personality. Both his eyes are missing, one having fallen out in Cuba and the other in Grand Cayman. His shiny black nose is also long gone, and what remains of his snout is flattened from the administering of many punishments, all of them no doubt well deserved.

You see, Thunderbear is a juvenile delinquent, having been trained in the Beavis and Butthead School of Etiquette. Since he was given to the boys as a gift near the starting of our voyage by a business acquaintance who turned out to be something of a scoundrel, Thunderbear has become the repository of all the rude and antisocial behaviors we have tried to stamp out in our children. We haven't done too badly with the boys, but Thunderbear is another matter altogether.

As much as we have tried to suppress his crude sense of humour, Thunderbear's pug-nosed head keeps popping up at the most inopportune times with a pithy comment and his trademark snicker. Somehow, he has managed to become part of our everyday life on Northern Magic, whether we parents like it or not. The boys think Thunderbear is hilarious, and sometimes that incorrigible bear actually gets us laughing too.

The reason I have decided to lift the veil of shame and secrecy that has kept Thunderbear in obscurity for so long is simply because his perverted influence became very strong at the various islands we were now visiting in southern Thailand. For example, Thunderbear found the phallic shrine at Ko Rok Nok a source of tremendous hilarity, and in fact gleefully claimed ownership of its entire cache of giant carved wooden icons.

After we left Rok Nok, we sailed to one of Thailand's most outstanding spots -- described, in fact, as one of the ten most beautiful islands in the world -- Phi Phi Don. Thunderbear had a field day with this one as well: in Thai, the 'h' is silent, so Phi Phi is, of course, pronounced "pee pee", much to Thunderbear's delight. This gave rise to a whole new set of jokes, and even Grandpa somehow got under Thunderbear's influence, sending a birthday message to Christopher that read, "I hope you didn't have to go pee pee on Phi Phi".

We did have a wonderful time on Phi Phi, a funky little place full of backpackers, Internet cafes, cheap restaurants and a fascinating shanty town. We climbed sweatily to a lookout point, and were enchanted with the view of the hourglass-shaped island with two lovely beaches at its slender waist.

Speaking of slender waists, Thunderbear especially liked Phi Phi because of the predominance of lovely topless women on its beaches, something he commented on with a sly and knowing "heh, heh, heh". The men of Northern Magic, being well behaved, of course, didn't give the bathers a second glance. Thunderbear, however, gave a running commentary.

From Phi Phi we continued on to the large island of Phuket (pronounced, of course, POO-ket). Yes, yes, Thunderbear had a field day with this name as well. By now we were beginning to have to consider having our scandalous and ill-mannered bear tied up and gagged.

We managed to get Thunderbear reined in at last, and continued about our business in Phuket with a minimum of snide comments. We had assembled a long list of chores to get done here, our last stop before crossing the Indian Ocean, and ended up splurging and renting a car to help with the shopping. Herbert's list of projects was impressive, including installing our new alternator, fixing the starter, repairing the bilge pump float and the spinnaker pole, installing a new depth sounder, rebuilding our Aries windvane, performing an oil change, replacing our emergency starter battery, buying a new mainsail halyard, fixing the toilet seal, filling our propane tanks, buying spare fan belts and a half a dozen others.

We did take a couple of days off to tour around the island. First we headed to Patong Beach, Phuket's tourist and nightlife centre. It's a pretty rowdy place, featuring fine establishments like the ever-popular "Rock-Hard-A-Go-Go".

While the kids played in the sand of the beach, filled to overflowing with rich Europeans, Herbert and I prowled purposefully up and down the waterfront. Our mission: to find a shower. Northern Magic's watermaker, which normally provides us with fresh water, had not yet been recommissioned after our time away from the boat -- and between our alternator fiasco and all the work on Herbert's list, there hadn't been either the time or the necessary power to get it up and running again. In practical terms, this meant going too many days between showers.

On our excursion to Patong we were therefore armed with towels and shampoo, hoping to find some kind of freshwater shower on the beach. Up and down we prowled, but alas, we trudged back sweatier than before.

On the crowded main strip of Patong we noticed a man with a small gibbon, selling Polaroid snapshots to tourists. The baby gibbon sitting on the fence post beside him was huddled in the same crunched up pose that had tugged at our heartstrings when our own Magic the gibbon had sat that way. Its owner kept grabbing its little black hand and offering it to us, but the baby pulled its hand back and wrapped its long arms forlornly around its knees, looking up with big round eyes.

There might have been a time -- although I doubt it -- when we might have found this cute, and even had our photo taken with the poor creature. But now we understood so much more about the illegal animal trade and how much closer this is bringing an already threatened species to extinction, so all five of us responded to this display with horror. In order for this young animal to be captured, ten other gibbons have died -- mothers defending their children with their lives, and babies being accidentally shot or crushed to death when their mortally wounded mother plummets from a tree.

Herbert couldn't restrain himself, and began lecturing the man, hoping he would see that instead of pleasing tourists, he was angering them. The man, however, either couldn't or wouldn't understand and just kept grabbing the gibbon's hand and holding it out to the children. Finally we shook our heads in despair and walked off.

Just a few minutes later we passed another gibbon man, whose animal was sipping tea out of a plastic bag with a straw. This time we didn't bother arguing, but just wagged our fingers and shook our heads accusingly as we marched by. It is illegal to own a gibbon in Thailand, but that obviously doesn't matter much.

Later, in our car, we passed the first gibbon man again, and saw that he was surrounded by a gaggle of admiring tourists. They were laughing and clucking around the frightened little gibbon, who was still struggling unsuccessfully to withdraw from their attentions. The tourists had no idea the price that had been paid so that this one little animal could be made available for their brief moment of pleasure.

We returned to the boat with heavy hearts.

There is a gibbon sanctuary on Phuket Island, and so the next day we headed off there. On the way, we passed forests of rubber trees, planted in neat rows. They are tapped for their latex, in the same way maple trees are tapped, except instead of buckets the latex is collected inside coconut shells.

This sanctuary was quite different than others we have seen, with human-gibbon contact kept to a minimum. We told the staff there about the animals we had seen at Patong Beach.

"We've heard about those gibbons," a young British volunteer said, shaking his head in disgust, "but there's no point in sending someone to seize them, because we actually have no more room to put them. Our facility was designed for 30 gibbons, and we already have 53.

"So we have no choice but to leave them where they are, as awful as that is."

Upon leaving the sanctuary, we passed a small cascade, which reminded us that we were no closer to finding a shower than we had been the day before. By now we were beginning to both feel and smell rather ripe. As we passed the turnoff to a marina, however, an idea struck us, an idea so appealing and perfect that you could practically see the little light bulbs appear over our heads. We did a U-turn and headed in.

Like many others in Asia, this marina was part of a posh condominium resort. Parking near the swimming pool, which winked and nodded at us in encouragement, we strode confidently past a sign that said, "Please present your membership cards", while nodding at the uniformed staff standing nearby. We felt fully justified in doing this -- we were, after all, prospective customers, weren't we?

While the kids played in the pool, Herbert and I scoured the rest of the grounds, trying to find the shower block. We couldn't ask any of the staff where it was, lest we give ourselves away, so we walked smilingly around as if we were wealthy yachtsmen out for our Sunday stroll rather than fresh water desperados engaged in a secret reconnaissance mission.

Finally we found a little shower, well hidden behind a Thai massage establishment. Eureka!

One by one we traipsed through the massage parlour, wondering how long it would take before we would be discovered as imposters and get tossed out on our ears. But the masseuses just nodded and smiled, and finally we were all delightfully fresh and sweet smelling again. Unless you have gone five days in the tropical heat without a shower, you can have no idea exactly how wonderful this felt.

As we jumped into our rented jeep and drove away, squeaky clean and giggling naughtily, I wondered why it was that we didn't feel guiltier about our underhanded tactics.

Only later did I realize the obvious: Thunderbear made us do it.