Bill O'Leary is busy on Boxing Day. While back to business in Phuket, Thailand, by midday, he attends first a Muslim ceremony on the beach, and then a Buddhist service in a hotel to remember the 5,500 tourists and local people who were swept to their death by the tsunami of Dec. 26, 2004. Three thousand are still missing.
On that ill-fated day, Bill -- an Australian professional USL code mariner -- was motoring out of Boat Lagoon, a marina on the east coast of Phuket. "I was onboard Blowfish, a 38-foot-long (11 1/2-meter) speedboat I'd built 10 years before. I was with its owner and his family, another family also with two kids, and three of my own children."
Suddenly his mobile phone went off.