Ship or sail?

A cruising couple faces their toughest decision in 12 years of world voyaging

- NEVILLE HOCKLEY

After nine years of drift-ing peacefully between friendly South Pacific isles, enjoying warm receptions along safe shorelines, and — besides the occasional outburst from Mother Nature — quiet, uneventful passages, we’ve crossed the equator and returned to the Northern Hemisphere to face one of our toughest cruising decisions in 40,000 nautical miles of world voyaging.

Since my wife, Catherine, and I left New York in 2007, it has been for the most part carefree sailing. Sure, we’ve made a few difficult decisions along the way, which is to be expected, like how to deploy two anchors to weather a tropical storm, deciding how best to sail “uphill” for more than 2,000 miles from New Zealand back to Tahiti, or weighing the pros and cons of riding near gale-force winds at Norfolk Island. But none of these compare to the significance and uncertainty of our most recent dilemma.

Last year, after 18 months exploring Australia, we entered Southeast Asia and sailed Dream Time, our 38-foot Cabo Rico, north up the busy western coast of Malaysia along the Strait of Malacca, a congested and notorious waterway boasting the world’s highest concentration of piracy attacks. Tens of thousands of tugs, tankers, and containerships hauling 30 percent of global trade — 5 trillion dollars’ worth of goods — squeeze through the region each year. But thankfully, for cruisers at least, pirates only swing their grappling hooks toward commercial vessels, leaving tiny recreational crafts to pass unmolested.