Arts And Crafts Cabin
The Art of Passing Pirates. The Reality of Sailing off Somalia by Gord Kerr
The sound came over the VHF radio in a French accent “Vessel off my port bow. This is Coalition Warship number four. Identify yourself.” The message was repeated with more intensity. Finally, message three triggered me to think maybe they were calling us. I decided to have a look with the binoculars. The sea state was extremely rough and we would rise and fall on waves, dropping like a sky diver free falling. Anywhere forward of the mast, you felt temporary weightlessness, ending with the crash of the bow into the next wave trough.
With binoculars I struggled to focus and scan the horizon, I caught the ominous grey silhouette of a naval warship in the distance. Yep, I’m pretty sure they’re calling us; the only other boat out here that we know of is almost 50 miles away. So I responded, announcing our pertinent information.The battle ship replied, “Stand by Ascension”. As we “stood by” the sound of the waves crashing into the hull was squelched by the sound of a turbine and rotor blades as the assault chopper, deployed from the deck of the ship, hovered over us. I looked up to clearly see the face of the pilot and another airman that actually waved to me while taking pictures from the open doorway. It would appear the military were not going to simply take our word on who we claimed we were.
Anyone back in the real world of TV, radio and mega-media, know about the dangerous region where passenger ships, yachts, and even super tankers have been taken and held for ransom. The waters surrounding Somalia between Oman, Aden and into the Red Sea are without doubt the most dangerous in the world. We are about to sail smack dab through the middle of this mess. People have been killed doing this! What am I thinking!
Anchored in the Maldives, off the south west tip of Sri Lanka in the Indian Ocean, our backdrop is a beautiful white sandy beach and crystal clear water. We are looking for a weather window to provide us with suitable winds and sea conditions to travel the 1100 mile passage to our destination, Salalah Oman. But the concern here isn’t really as much weather as it is pirates.
There’s always a small element of anxiety before any major passage. This passage is no different with the exception of a larger dose of anxiety. There were several other cruising boats in the anchorage all heading the same way. But we had been in the Maldives longer than planned already, and we also don’t like to sail in large groups where we are trying to dodge each other at night. A weather opportunity arose and we decide to leave ahead of this group. We will be in company with our friends on “Stardust”.
We organized a radio net schedule on the SSB or Ham radios, whereby all the vessels can talk to each other daily for safety reasons (health and security) and to trade weather information. These schedules normally include announcing our positions but in this case we don’t want to announce our whereabouts to potential pirates. We don’t know if they have radios available or not, but the other yachts and ships they have captured likely do, so they could listen.
It’s about 1100 miles from the Maldives to Oman and we felt we needed some way of tracking each other without actually giving a latitude and longitude. So we used a predetermined fixed latitude and longitude as a start point and gave our positions from that point in nautical miles and bearing in true degrees. This way we could plot boats on our charts but unless you knew the “secret latitude and longitude start position” it would be impossible to figure out the exact locations.
As we progressed northward leaving the Maldives, we saw nothing for a couple of days and had reasonable conditions. But by late afternoon on the third day, we saw a small vessel off our starboard bow. We watched intently through the binoculars and assumed it was only fishermen, until we saw a puff of diesel smoke rise from the craft and it started heading straight for us. As the vessel rapidly approached, we could see several men on deck looking in our direction. I radioed Stardust and informed “Looks like we have company.” Bob on Stardust said “Well we can’t out run them so I guess we’ll just have to see what happens”.
The vessel, heading directly at our beam, was no more than thirty feet away when they veered to parallel our course. As they pulled alongside of us about four feet away, we saw two men coming from the cabin to their foredeck. There was a lot of arm waving and gestures but we couldn’t determine what they wanted. Finally we understood that they were looking for cigarettes and beer! With a charade of our own we indicated that we had no alcohol and we didn’t smoke. They ran beside us with their noisy diesel for another five minutes, finally waved politely, and left. They headed back in the direction they came from, with our blood pressure and heart rate returning to normal.
Over the next few days the weather worsened. We had read the cruising guides that promoted wonderful sailing in the Indian Ocean, but for us that was not the case. As the wind built to 35 knots, the seas heaped up and we slowly got separated from Stardust. The design of their vessel, being much heavier than ours, limits their ability to sail up wind. Soon we were out of radar range, fifty miles apart to be exact.
Now we both felt like sitting ducks to the pirates. We watched the radar attentively and scanned the horizon looking for vessels. Our saving grace was that the sea state was so rough that no pirate in his right mind would be out in those conditions!
We continued uneventfully towards Salalah, Oman. On the second last day of our journey we heard “Vessel off my port bow. This is Coalition warship four.” Their helicopter hovered very close above us for almost 40 minutes with some type of scanner that examined our entire boat, I felt like they had x-ray vision on our boat.
When they finally left, they bade us farewell and wished us better weather. Two days later, we limped into Salalah, somewhat wet and beaten up by the severe conditions, but safe and sound. We dried ourselves out, licked our wounds, explored the dessert country and quickly regrouped for running the gauntlet to Aden,and the Red Sea. But that’s another story.
About the Author
Gord Kerr and his wife Ginny live aboard their Beneteau 375 and have been crossing oceans and sailing offshore for more than 7 years. In that time they have massed huge amounts of knowledge and experiences with travel and sailing. More information on their adventures can be seen at http://www.ascensionatsea.com
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