The Voyage of the Northern Magic: A Family Odyssey

by Diane Stuemer

  Swinging over the abyss of the engine room using overhead handholds – Herbert was deep inside, bent over, and so was slower to extricate himself – I burst outside through Michael’s hatch to discover that the boy in distress was Jonathan. He was lying on his back motionless on the ground beside Northern Magic, his terrible scream still piercing the air. He had fallen off the ladder.

  With one hand on the boat, I leaned over and grabbed the metal scaffolding to climb down. The instant I did, my body sizzled and jumped with a powerful electric shock. I released the scaffold reflexively and cradled the hand that had grabbed it, zinging with pain up to the wrist. Now I realized what had happened to poor Jon, and it was more serious than just a fall. An electric shock had thrown him from the top of the ladder.

  “Honey! Get here right away! The boat’s electrified! Get here right NOW!” I yelled. There had to be a short circuit in the boat’s power. The instant anyone connected the boat with the ground, through the metal ladder, they completed the circuit, using their own body to conduct 240 volts of electricity. As long as the power was still surging through the boat’s metal decks, stanchions, and lifelines, I had no way of getting down to help Jon.

  By now, Michael had sprinted up. Seeing me jump back from the shock, he had the presence of mind to run over to the outlet that connected us to external power. As soon as he pulled the plug, I gingerly touched the ladder. This time receiving no voltage, I climbed down as quickly as I could and finally knelt beside poor Jonathan.

  “Mom, I got shocked,” was all he could say.

  The whole marina had heard the commotion and we were now surrounded by a ring of ten or fifteen concerned people. Without moving Jon from the wet ground, Herbert and I carefully touched and prodded, saw that toes were wiggling and all body parts working, before helping him up. After grabbing the metal stanchions of the boat and getting the shock, he had fallen three metres, landing flat on his back. But nothing was broken, and the shock itself seemed not to have hurt him.

  “When I grabbed the boat and got shocked, it seemed to hold me there for five seconds,” he told me a few hours later, his eyes glistening and his lips trembling just a bit in response to the painful memory. “I couldn’t move. My whole body was on fire. Then when I was falling, it seemed like slow motion, like I was twirling through the air.”

  But Jon bravely got up, climbed that ladder again, and got to eat jelly-beans in bed for the next hour. In short order, he was back on his feet, sore, but none the worse for wear. His guardian angel must have been standing over him that day, because it could have been so much worse. “You mean his angel was standing under him,” corrected Michael. “He’d better not fall again, because his angel probably got squashed.”

  While Jon was recuperating, Herbert got to work finding out what had caused the short circuit. Even with a metal rod connecting the boat to the ground, the instant external power was reconnected, the hull of the boat was electrified again. After ten minutes of experimentation, the culprit turned out to be our battery charger, which we had bought brand new just two weeks before. Herbert threw it away without attempting to repair it. The next day Jonathan was back playing soccer, climbing up and down that ladder like a monkey, as if nothing had ever happened. But now, before grabbing the stanchion on the boat, he gave it a little tap first.

  Soon Northern Magic’s hull was smooth and newly painted once again, and we were just about ready to get her back into the water. But a number of huge lows were churning their way across the Mediterranean. We were attempting to cross this difficult sea in winter, a season when few other sailors left their cosy marinas. Our entire purpose was to avoid these winter storms. The nasty weather system was just the excuse we needed to explore Turkey. So, instead of sailing to Greece, we rented a car and found our way to the vast inland plains of Asia Minor.

  We saw many wonders and marvels on our trip, more than I can write about here. The best of them, however, were the underground cities and cave dwellings of Cappadocia. Virtually invisible from ground level, these four-thousand-year-old underground cities had hundreds of chambers on multiple levels, large enough to accommodate tens of thousands of inhabitants in a labyrinth of interconnected rooms: stables, wineries, kitchens, storerooms, living rooms, baths. We explored two of the more than forty that exist, clambering up and down claustrophobic passageways and tunnels, narrow ramps and winding stairways, getting lost in a maze of chambers that led us eight storeys and fifty-five metres underground. This was surely the stuff of childhood fantasies.

  We continued into the heart of Cappadocia, with its bizarre badlands landscape becoming more and more weirdly eroded. Soon we came upon the first fairy chimneys, strange natural pillars with peaked caps. Upon arriving at a hilltop and taking our first look down at the small town of Goreme, I simply had to throw my head back and burst into peals of laughter. Arrayed before us was a perfect little goblin village of troglodyte cave houses, carved right into a forest of fairy chimneys. Smurfville!

  The Smurf houses of Goreme were sprouting out of the earth everywhere, like mushrooms. It was as if God’s giant landscape architects, busy at their serious work of sculpting the majestic mountain peaks to the north and south, had shooed their kids away with giant blobs of Play-doh and instructions to amuse themselves. The resulting creation surely had to be the neatest, cutest, most delightful place we had ever seen. The fairy chimneys created by these fanciful kid-giants came in all shapes and sizes: tall, thin ones, short, stubby ones, straight ones, tipsy ones, even really silly ones with three caps sprouting out from a single base like a jester’s cap. And the Cappadocians had further refined these wacky and wonderful formations by hollowing them out, cutting little doors and windows in them, and turning them into houses that are still in use today.

  Down into the valley we descended, still periodically chortling as we meandered through narrow, winding streets with Smurf houses on every side. We gigglingly found ourselves a wonderful small hotel constructed right inside a fairy chimney, and then went horseback riding among the strange goblinesque cave houses, monasteries, and churches.

  We put thousands of miles on our car, touring most of Turkey’s most memorable sights. What an under-appreciated jewel of a country! At Istanbul’s Grand Bazaar, we endured the requisite pestering by innumerable carpet salesmen, all of whom had special deals for us. I couldn’t help but remember what a very nice carpet salesman in Goreme had told us after taking us through his factory’s excellent demonstration of silk making and weaving. He had paused over one traditional design that represented the five times each day Muslims are called to prayer. “Good Muslims pray five times a day,” he had told us with a grin. “Bad Muslims sell carpets.”

  From Istanbul we continued on the European side of the Sea of Marmara, driving towards the battlefields of Gallipoli and on to Troy, the site of the Trojan wars, and Ephesus, Turkey’s greatest archaeological site. The stunning façade of the Library of Ephesus blew us away. I was reluctant to take my eyes off it, so taken was I by its beauty, even two thousand years after being built.

  We drove into the exotically named city of Izmir to find a hotel for the night. Somehow we took a wrong turn and found ourselves driving down a tiny pedestrian shopping street crowded with stalls and shoppers. That cobblestoned street led to another, even smaller, and then to an even smaller one, just about as wide as our car. As we drove through the maze, the only car in sight, we were like Moses parting the Red Sea – only the Red Sea was made up of mildly annoyed people wondering just what we thought we were doing. We eventually got out, but not before having collapsed with laughter.

  We were back in good form again, laughing a lot and playing silly pranks. But after we returned to Northern Magic, I was struck by a melancholy sense of finality – that the ending of this last wonderful overland excursion in some way symbolized the end of our journey. The next time we would use those well-travelled backpacks would be to pack up our things and take them home. It would have been easier, perhaps, had we
not loved Turkey quite so much.

  We were now spending many hours discussing our return to regular life. Herbert was more eager to get home than I was, more tired of living in the cramped confines of the boat and dealing with the constant worries and repairs. My feelings were much more mixed. While it would be nice not to have greasy engine repairs constantly done in the middle of my living room, for four years I had been surrounded by the four people I loved most, while doing what I loved best – exploring the world, sharing our discoveries through my writing, making a small difference where we could. I was more than a little nervous about having that magical bubble burst.

  The night after we returned from our overland trip, this gloomy sense of finality somehow brought to the surface a much deeper fear. In the darkness, a great black horror of death came over me. I had experienced a feeling of pure, sharp fear like this only once before, the day I learned I had cancer. Perhaps it was because I had been blessed with so much that the knowledge that one day I would have to give it up felt so terrifying.

  My moment of darkness redoubled my urge to make sure I made the most of my brief time on earth. I realized I could never stop living my life with passion, that I would never be content with going back to the life we had lived before. Herbert and I had already made a promise to ourselves not to forget the dying rainforest and its creatures in Indonesia, nor the struggling people of Africa. We had somehow to find a way to make a contribution. What was the point of going through all we had experienced, of learning all we had learned, if not to use it?

  The next morning I looked at our three precious children with a painful lump in my heart, feeling so proud of them and at the same time dreading the moment I would have to give them up. Soon I would have to share them with school, friends, and girlfriends. Some day I would have to say goodbye to them forever. How would I ever be able to bear not having them with me, not being the most important person in their lives? How could I bear losing the togetherness we shared in our tiny, water-borne home?

  Michael had surely grown up on the trip. He was turning into a man right in front of my eyes. This trip had given him confidence. By now he had survived storms, piloted us through reefs from the top of the mast, and had taken charge when we were hit by lightning. He was dreaming big dreams for the future. Yet this was also a young man who brought me flowers, told me regularly that I was beautiful, and gave me back scratches when I was having a bad day. He even gallantly lied about the all-too evident effect the chocolate I consumed on this voyage was having on my tummy.

  He could be argumentative and still needled his little brothers, but Michael was a magnet to small children and stray animals, who instinctively recognized his large heart.

  Underneath the playful persona, which Michael performed to perfection, of a self-absorbed egotist named Magnum Opus – or sometimes the equally narcissistic Gloateus Maximus – was a sensitive, loving, and articulate young man. What a wonderful husband and father he would make some day. I could already visualize a flock of grandchildren.

  Of all of us, Michael was by far the most eager to get home. We had known from the beginning that Michael, who was now almost fifteen, was the boy on whom we had the most tenuous grip. How right we were to have pushed the trip forward so quickly. If we’d waited even another year, it would have been too late. The call of approaching adulthood would have been too powerful for even this magnificent adventure to overcome. Mike often wished that he was biking around our old neighbourhood with his friends (and girls – oh yes, there was always something about girls), but just a few weeks earlier, in an unguarded moment, he had told me, “Confidentially, Mom, this trip hasn’t been too bad.”

  As for Jonathan, who was about to turn thirteen, he had developed a strong sense of compassion and a desire to do something to help the rest of the world. Jon, the real traveller of our three boys, had probably learned the most about the world. He had been greatly moved by our experiences in Asia and Africa. Where Michael had been depressed by the poverty, Jon had been able to appreciate the things he had in common with the people living in it. Many a time Jon would be the one to hand out treats in an Indonesian village, or give up his toys or even the hat off his head for a poor African child. He was always the first to extend his hand in friendship. He had no trouble overcoming any barrier of culture, age, or language. Jon had a great big smile, which he used often, and a heart to match.

  Hard-working, responsible, cheerful, eager to please, Jon, when asked to help around the boat, invariably replied, “Sure, Dad!” Jon’s alter ego was the obnoxious Thunderbear, a stuffed bear he impersonated who’d been given to us early on the trip by someone who’d turned out to be a scoundrel. But in reality compassionate, responsible Jon was just the opposite.

  Christopher was still something of an enigma, smart as a whip but as stubborn and as bull-headed as … well, his father. (Herbert feels that I, too, had something to do with it. In fact, he argues that I am solely responsible for the trait. But he’s wrong.) Christopher was nine now. Super competent in some things, helpless in others, he hadn’t yet quite learned that he was capable of anything. One day, when he figures that out, he’ll be unstoppable.

  Christopher was still my sunshine boy, a bit babyish for his age, exploiting his role of lastborn child to the hilt. He really needed to be back in school, learning how to play with children his own age. And yet how I dreaded losing his constant loving, even if he sometimes made my head spin with his never-ending stream of talk!

  Where Michael played at being the self-absorbed Magnum Opus, and Jon the boorish Thunderbear, Christopher had a number of alter egos. Sometimes he transformed himself into Baelog the Fearless, a mighty Viking warrior, brandishing a sword made from the nearest stick. He and Michael engaged in stick fights on the beach by the hour.

  After our experiences with gibbons, Christopher turned into Denny the Gibbon, a cheerful little soul who swung around our boat on his long arms, played silly pranks, and laughed a happy gibbon laugh. Christopher’s plan was to find a cure for AIDS, win a Nobel Prize, and with the prize money go back to Borneo and establish a gibbon sanctuary.

  But lately he had become enraptured by a popular kids’ game called PokéMon, which had turned him into a loveable fuzzy yellow animal with a lightning tail named Pikachu. As I sat typing at my computer early one morning, Christopher climbed out of his bed with a furry yellow toy under his arm, and came over to whisper in my ear. “Mom,” he said, “Pikachu would give up his life for you.”

  We did live on a cramped, often uncomfortable little boat that was smaller than our master bedroom at home, we did have to worry about storms and pirates, but I also had the constant companionship of a little mop-headed boy who, at least fifty times a day, snuggled up beside me to tell me that he loved me. How could I not feel sad our trip was coming to an end?

  25

  Captain George to the Rescue

  Soon we were off, sailing west as always. Sadly, we didn’t stop at any of the islands we passed in the Aegean Sea, each of them with its own niche in the fabulous history of ancient Greece. Our long, overland sojourn in Turkey had put us behind schedule, so we bypassed the many islands with alluring, half-familiar names and headed straight for the Greek mainland.

  We had more than the usual assortment of minor mechanical problems on the two-day passage, starting with a broken fan belt, a baulky bilge pump, and a failing cooling-water pump. During our first night of the passage, our mainsail gave up as well. It parted completely along one seam, its two severed parts flapping limply. With the mainsail gone, we had to rely on the motor and its suspect cooling system even more.

  After two days at sea, sailing across busy shipping lanes, dodging cargo ships and tankers, we approached the sprawling metropolis of Athens, where an endless field of low white buildings sprouted on tall, sparsely vegetated hills, capped by a halo of haze. By now, a flaky bearing in our water pump had completely flown apart. Somehow, Herbert had managed to patch things together sufficiently to keep us g
oing, but he knew his repair wouldn’t last long. We hoped it would buy us the two hours we needed to make it into harbour.

  Two hours later, the pump was still hanging in there as we circled behind a breakwater at the port of Piræus. Marina staff hadn’t answered our radio calls and, once we’d arrived, had been slow to direct us to a berth. As we hovered in the centre of the marina, motor idling, I thought briefly how funny it would be if the water pump gave up right now, when we were so close. Fifteen minutes later, just as we began to follow the marina skiff that was finally escorting us to our berth, I found out just how funny. The wobbly water pump fell apart, chewing up the new fan belt in the process, the engine overheated, and, in the end, the marina staff had to tow us, humiliatingly, into our berth. Hilarious.

  After a two-day struggle to comply with official requirements to check into the country, we spent the next days attempting to find the parts we needed. But we grew more and more disillusioned. It seemed no one wanted to help us or even talk to us. When we attempted to ask people for directions in the street, they raised their shoulders like shields and marched the other way, pretending not to notice us. Shopkeepers ignored us. We felt like pariahs.

  “It’s probably not just Greece,” Herbert kept reminding me, trying to convince himself as well. “All of Europe could be like this, especially in big cities. Europeans are just not that friendly.” Whether this was true or not, we found ourselves more and more anxious to leave. Even a visit to the Acropolis and the architectural marvel of the Parthenon – for me, the fulfilment of a lifelong dream – failed to raise our spirits. In fact, after only a single tiring visit into central Athens, a long walk and subway ride away, we took a vote and decided not to go back.