by Dan Bloom
This is how Holger Jacobsen, a German national who has been living in Taipei since 1982, describes the beginnings of a long trans-Pacific sailing cruise almost 10 years ago with his Taiwanese wife Moira Yeh, (who, yes, once appeared as a Penthouse magazine centerfold under the stage name of Ye Qianyi:
"Just before Christmas 1994, we left for Cabo San Lucas in Baja California. We intended to go offshore for about a 100 miles, sail all the way down, and then head back in. ... We left very early in the morning and sailed with very light winds out of San Diego Bay. That is as far as we got, because once out there, the wind died. However, that suited my Taiwanese wife and me just fine, as we were in no way anxious to get seasick right away! So when it was my turn for the first 'night watch' of the journey, I took two of our garden chairs and put them on the boat's foredeck. With my feet propped up, warm clothes and a hot drink, I just sat there and looked at the lights on land and at the stars above me. It was very quiet and so was I. What an extremely nice feeling to sit out there in peace and quiet with the whole Pacific Ocean ahead of us."
Jacobsen and his wife, a former 1999 Penthouse centerfold girl and cover model who is a native of Taoyuan, have recently published a book (in Chinese text only) about their long sea voyage in a sailboat called Dharma Bum II. The book was published in October by Tongyo Cultural Affairs, a small publishing house on Nanking West Road, and it received widespread publicity in the Chinese-language press here. The book is titled "Yong Chuang Nan Tai Ping Yang" (Brave Adventuring the South Seas), although the Jacobsens say the real English title is "Destination Paradise."
When asked about the couple's trip and how the book came about, Jacobsen said in several emails: "After 16 days we were in Cabo San Lucas in Mexico where we stayed for a couple of weeks. Then we did a long stretch, 26 days sailing to Hiva Oa in the Marquesas Islands. We stayed there for about a month. Then it was on to the Tuamotus, where we spent another month or so and then on to Tahiti."
The Jacobsens, currently 43 and 33 respectively, run a language center in Taipei, and when they arrived in Tahiti during their voyage in 1995, they received a letter from the manager of the center who said he was going to quit soon.
"I had to be back in Taipei to take over in July," recalls Jacobsen, "but at the time the engine wasn't working. In order to make the deadline, we left for Tonga anyway and subsequently got hit by lightning, which fried everything electric on the boat. A squall also ripped the mainsail in two, but somehow we made it all the way to Tonga. The whole trip had taken ten months, and I just made it back in time to save our language center from ruin..."
When asked about the couple's adventures during their 10-month odyssey, Jacobsen noted: "One time, while I was up in the mast in Hiva Oa, I got attacked by hornets. And after we were hit by lightning, Moira went up the mast and one of the shackles opened by itself. Fortunately I'm a security nut, and she hung by three wires instead of only one."
When the Jacobsens sailed into Tahiti, they were surprised to meet an 8th generation Hakka man named Christian, who introduced the couple to the Chinese community there. "They were amazing", Jacobsen said. "We were literally guests of honor of the Chinese community, and they showed us the island. We also met some real characters on our trip, for instance a guy named Robert Adair in Tonga, who only had one leg, sported his hair in a long gray ponytail with a long gray beard. Looked just like Long John Silver. He told us he'd been living on boats for about 30 years. And we met a chap named Roy Starkey, from Britain, who poured himself a boat out of concrete and had been living on it for 20 years or more."
What does one eat on long sea voyages? According to Jacobsen, his wife did most of the daily cooking, and it was "gourmet" style, ranging from Szechuan and Peking dishes to Mexican, Austrian, American and Thai cuisine.
"Moira spent an inordinate time in the kitchen most days, and we both gained about 5 kilograms -- very uncommon on long ocean passages," Jacobsen noted. "We also had 220 liters of Californian wine and an enormous quantity of American beer on board!"
The book was co-authored by both husband and wife, with Jacobsen writing chapters in English, which his wife later translated in Chinese for the Taiwan edition which is still available at most bookstores islandwide and online as well.
Asked what comes next, Jacobsen confessed that he and his wife want to go on another sea voyage after they have children, perhaps to the South Seas "when they are old enough to appreciate it, but before they hit puberty, maybe when they're around ten or so."
While the current book is in Chinese, Jacobsen has written an English-language account that is making the rounds of publishers. "It's already written, a novel about sailing, romance, adventure, culture," Jacobsen says, adding that it is available online for free (http://www.wownet.net/~holger/).
Readers, especially male readers, but female readers as well, are probably wondering how the Penthouse model part of Mrs. Jacobsen's life came about.
Mr. Jacobsen explains: "My wife and I both wanted some good quality nude photos of her before she got too old, just for ourselves, as a keepsake. So we went to a local photographer, but it was all very expensive and the quality was rather poor. So I sat down one day and on a whim wrote two letters to both Playboy and Penthouse. Penthouse phoned back right away and assured us that Moira would be cover girl as well as centerfold and that we would get the pictures, too. So we signed a contract the same day."
However, when the August 1999 issue of Penthouse hit the newsstands in Taiwan, the Jacobsens were hit by a media frenzy. "We were totally unprepared for the impact," Jacobsen recalls today.
"Call us naive, but it had simply never crossed our minds that being a Taida (NTU) graduate -- Moira majored in finance -- would make that much of a difference. However, when the issue came out, suddenly all magazines wanted her pictures or an interview or something. And then the TV stations came calling. It was really quite amazing."
Both Holger and Moira are dedicated writers and teachers, and modeling for skin magazines is no longer part of their lives. "That's in our past now, over and done with," says Jacobsen.
Both husband and wife attended the famous Iowa Summer Writing Festival in the U.S. in 1999 -- Jacobsen also attended in 1998 -- and are looking forward to more writing adventures in their lives. "We didn't do this book for the money, as you know there's not much money to be made in writing this kind of book in Taiwan. We just consider the entire adventure, the modeling, the sea voyage, writing the book and doing the publicity to support the book, an interesting and enriching part of our life."
The book was the subject of recent stories in weekly magazines such as NEXT and TVBS Weekly, and while Jacobsen says the NEXT got it right, the TVBS magazine story did a very poor and utterly misleading story.
The cover of the book shows a sexy woman aboard a sailing yacht, and yes, it's Moira Jacobsen herself. When asked why the two of them are not on the cover of the co-authored book, Jacobsen says: "Because a cover photo of a sexy girl is better! And anyway, she is famous, I am not."
When Moira was asked what was the most memorable part of the cruise for her, she replied by email: "When we sailed into a little bay on the island of Tahuata in the Marquesas, suddenly there were all these dolphins. Hundreds of them! They were jumping out of the water, turning in the air and crashing on their backs. It was an amazing spectacle! The show went on for hours and we just couldn't get enough of it!"
As for the reaction by friends and family in Taiwan to the book's publication, she noted: "The reaction has been mixed. Most people have no idea just how much effort writing a book is. On the other hand, some people said they enjoyed reading it a lot and said that they understood us much better now that they have read the book."
The book was published in paperback an edition of 3,000 copies, which is normal for a print run in Taiwan, according to publishing industry sources. But the post-publication publicity that has followed the Jacobsens' book just might lead to another writing opportunity, somewhere down the road. Or down the next sea lane, wherever their sailboat might take them next.
And where's Dharma Bum II now?
"Sold," says Jacobsen. "Sold it."
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