Pirates?

Groupy type of person yeh? ......... with a magnum 45 in his tunic?lol

 

Try Balikpapan....... largest single record of Australian community down here with Hotel Dusit and other five star hotel........... can get almost any tools. They even have their own embassy rep here at BHP.......... U are safe MUDNUT just drink less and type more lol

 

Heh ...... guys..... do you think equipment of HydroBlasting would cut up pirates like paper?................. Meaning hi jet of water more of 1000 PSI?

 

Another option would be using high pressure hose to push ball bearing in let say 50 a pop to the pirate........ Pure legal and forget about guns..........

 

yes the high pressure hose is a 12 gauge shot gun with 00buck.

 

Aint never meet a thief that didn't want ALL they could take. Stay clear or be prepared, real prepared.

 

Just a small thought on carrying fire arms or not! Remember When the pirate crew capture your boat 'cos your a whimpering do gooder, what happens to your wife and daughters - it aint nice to see them passed around the crew, for their mutual satisfaction! (the pirate crews not the women, and they won't stop at young girls either, your all dead so it don't matter) So please, at least have some respect for your family, if not yourself; carry a gun with enough bullets for the wife and girls and the final one for yourself!

 

ya just couldnt stand it could ya,,,,,,,,,,wally

 

What Walrus mean rather die of long exposure to dry torture better leave a safety bullet to end it clean................Right idea very humane

 

Weight the Options

Wow, thought I would check in on this thread later to see if anyone mentioned the attack that occurred last year in the Gulf of Eden. But before that, “Longliner” has it right and to add, anyone venturing out in open sea especially in known piracy infested areas should have the right (maybe take the right) to keep (as in hide away until 20 miles out) and bear (as in only when needed) arms in the interest of self preservation. Let’s put this in prospective a little. If you were taking your wagon into a deep wilderness say 500 miles from any town to include the Sheriff and his deputy, you would probably carry a gun and maybe knock down a deer or a few rabbits to eat. And you might just need to use it to protect your family from lawless bandits or Indians (no offense). Hey sounds like some story from my school history books, or even something I saw in a western movie. Having said that, why would anyone go out into the same wilderness on the oceans of the world (in cruise mode only) and just hope that the bad guys just rob us and go away or as someone said, just don’t look rich. Pirates go after small, large, rich and poor vessels depending on their reality of each. A Japanese guy built a home built wood boat 26ft called Hope. With his wife and near infant child took off to circle the globe, and while down in the south pacific, I think Malaysia, he noticed a fast sailing vessel of about same length but faster bearing down on him with a guy on the front holding a hook or anchor. Luckily he remembered that they didn’t have an engine and turned dead on the wind and motored for nearly a day before his nerves settled back to sailing. So you might say after reading this, “so what if the port authorities inspect my boat and find a weapon. Well that’s what extra cash and other trinkets are for. Or maybe they take your weapon and give you a fine. Look at and weigh the total risk factors. Dead and lost forever at sea, or pissed off and embarrassed at some little foreign port with people with nothing better to do than screw with you and your protection system. Pirates these days use radio’s, machine guns, fast boats and leave little to chance when approaching your vessel. Example is a pirate attack that occurred off the coast of Yemen in the Gulf of Eden. This cruising couple (Rod & Becky Nowlin with steel home built 45) stopped in on us in Okinawa Japan about 5 years ago. Rod had spoken of pirate attack near misses around the world and indicated that one must be prepared to protect themselves when at sea. I knew without doubt they had arms on board at that time, but it’s not something you directly ask a guy sitting in port in Japan. Then in March of last year he and another cruiser were attacked by pirates. Four good souls are alive today because of his self preservation attitude, situational awareness and a 12 gauge shotgun. I’ll import the story and let you read it for yourself. And in the words or Rod Nowlin, “ You had better be ready to stand on your own two feet” I think I’ll start a new thread on weapons of choice, concealment methods and other tactics when dealing with pirates and authorities. Enjoy the story 

 

The Story

Pirate Attack Reported to Yemen Officials

On 8 March 2005, two sailing yachts, Mahdi & Gandalf, were moving SW 30 miles off the coast of Yemen proceeding to the port of Aden from Salalah, Oman.

At about 0900 two outboard powered boats, about 25 feet long with 3 men in each one, passed off our stern moving south at about 25 knots. An hour or two later they returned, one coming quite close and looking us over carefully. The second boat passed our bows but quite a ways away.
These boats were obviously not engaged in a normal activity such as fishing, etc. At that time we were south of Al Mukalla, Yemen. The area around Al Mukalla is well documented as being a piracy problem area and we started watching carefully for anything out of the ordinary.

Our position was 13 degrees 28 North 48 degrees 07 East.

At about 1600 we observed two different boats approaching us head on from the SW. These boats were 25-30 feet long, had higher freeboard and diesel powered. They were coming very fast directly at us. There were 4 men in each boat. The boats separated at about 200 yards, one boat ahead of the other, coming down Mahdi’s port side and firing into the cockpit. The other boat was firing an automatic weapon at both Gandalf and Mahdi from ahead, more at Gandalf. These guys were shooting directly at the cockpits, and obviously intended to kill us. The first boat swung around behind Mahdi’s stern to come up and board us. At that point I, Rod Nowlin aboard Mahdi and armed with a 12 gage shotgun loaded with 00 buckshot, started shooting into their boat. I forced them to keep their heads down so that they could not shoot at us. I am not sure I hit anyone at that point although I could see the driver of the boat crouched down behind a steering console. After firing 3 shots at them their engine started to smoke and I swung around to shoot at the boat ahead. At that point, I saw Jay Barry on Gandalf ram that boat amidships almost cutting it in two and turning it almost completely over. I turned back around to shoot again at the boat behind Mahdi and that is when they turned away from Mahdi and were heading toward the stern of Gandalf. Gandalf was beside us, about 100 feet away. The bow of the pirate’s boat came right up against Gandalf’s stern and two men stood up on the bow to board Gandalf. That was a serious and probably fateful error on their part. I shot both of them. That boat then veered away and I shot the driver, although I am not sure of the outcome because they were farther away and I did not knock him down like the other two.

Mahdi and Gandalf kept going at full speed to put as much distance between the pirates and us as possible. As soon as we were out of rifle range we looked back and both boats were drifting and appeared to be disabled.

If Jay on Gandalf had not had the presence of mind to veer over into one boat and ram it, the outcome of this attack would have been totally different. All they needed to do was stand off a ways and shoot us to pieces with automatic weapons. We were extremely lucky. We broadcast Mayday calls on all VHF and HF radio frequencies, including two HF emergency frequencies supplied by the US Coast Guard a few days before.
The Coalition Forces in the area were supposed to be monitoring these frequencies. There was no response except from a commercial ship in the area on VHF 16 who approached and observed the disabled pirates for a bit, then sailed along side of us for 2-4 hours until dark to make sure we would be all right.

The pirates were well organized and well armed. There were at least 4 boats involved. They had set up a picket line out from the Yemen coast probably at least for 50-75 miles, so if you transited the area during the day they wouldn’t miss you. The two boats that attacked us appeared to have come from the south.

There has been speculation in the past that this ongoing piracy problem off the Yemen coast was being carried out by Somali pirates. Given the number, type of boats involved, and the direction the spotter boats came from, this does not appear to be correct in this case. This problem is getting worse and the pirate attacks are getting deadly. One could only expect that the Yemen Government will take more direct action. At the very least, allow yachts to group in Salalah, Oman and at some point on the NW Yemen coast to request an escort along the Yemen coast.




Rodney J. Nowlin, USN Retired March 11, 2005
S/V Mahdi
Jay Barry
S/V Gandalf


April 21, 2005
Abu Tig Marina
El Gouna, Egypt

Addendum to Official Report of Attack on the Sailing Yachts Gandalf &
Mahdi




The attack on Gandalf and Mahdi, which occurred on 8 March 2005 in the
Gulf of
Aden was perpetrated by pirates (?) or terrorists (?). They did not act
like normal pirates (how do normal pirates act?). They were certainly
trying to kill us from the outset. There is a very real possibility
that it was an attempted hostage situation, especially if advance
information was sent from Salalah, Oman that 4 US boats had departed for
Aden, Yemen. The 2 slower boats were 20-30 miles behind us at the time
of the attack. The real motivation for the attack will probably never
be known. You would like to think that it is possible to transit the
area at night, but the area of reported attacks is too large. You make
your decisions based on circumstances at the time and live with them.
We have had a lot of feedback concerning the attack from various
sources. Most of it supportive, but also some from armchair pundits
uttering stupid and ignorant comments and questions. “Walk in our
shoes”! The whole episode was very traumatic and we will not respond to
any of those. Read the attached report.
We have been in contact with Commander Webber, USN at 5th Fleet
Headquarters in Bahrain concerning the attack. He seems to think that a
commitment to provide an escort for yachts grouping in Salalah, Oman and
requesting an escort is possible, but there will have to be some
pressure applied from higher sources (“political”?) or it probably won’t
happen. Let’s not attempt to put all of the pressure on the US Navy.
There are yachts from numerous nations affected. The international
yachting community has the capability of applying some pressure to their
governments to follow up on this (please do so).

As far as we can determine that at the time of the attack the US Navy
and the British Navy were patrolling the Arabian Sea and points north.
The German, French and possibly Italians were in the Gulf of Aden. One
of the yachts with us was stopped in the Arabian Sea, SE of Oman by the
US Coast Guard for a “safety inspection”. They asked the Coast Guard
for emergency HF radio frequencies that the coalition forces would be
monitoring and were supplied with two frequencies. We tried calling on
these frequencies over the next several days. It turned out that they
were fictitious, and no one was listening. One was actually a broadcast
station. All of us tried contacting coalition vessels by VHF radio to
clarify the frequencies but no one would ever respond.

At the time of the attack we broadcast Mayday calls on all known VHF and
HF radio frequencies. The only response was from a commercial vessel
(see report). This vessel sent out reports via satellite. The next
morning a German warship was close by and we were able to report the
incident to them. This was 12 hours after the attack and they hadn’t
heard anything about it. When we arrived in Aden we gave the Yemen
Officials the report and had a long talk with the Yemeni Coast Guard
commanders. They are just getting organized and do not presently have
the capability to actually patrol the Yemen coast. They stated that a
lot of the Yemen coastal areas are tribal and the central government
doesn’t have any control at all. They also warned us to be careful of
retaliation by the families of the bad guys. We then contacted the
authorities in Djibouti to voice our concerns about retaliation and
requested that they keep an eye on us between Aden and the entrance to
the Red Sea. They assured us that they would inform the naval
authorities so that they could provide assistance. We did manage to
contact a French warship outside of Aden when we left there. They had
no information about our request for assistance and if you can believe
this, didn’t even know about the attack 8 days before in their patrol
area! They did consent to watch over us until we made the entrance to
the Red Sea, where we stayed on the west side going north. No sense in
tempting fate twice.

Gandalf was struck by bullets about 14 times. Mahdi was struck 3 times.
Fortunately none penetrated the hulls and no one on either boat was
wounded. Thank goodness for steel boats!

Conclusion:
Emergency HF radio frequencies, like 2182 MHz, no longer exist in most
of the world. No one is listening. Any request for immediate
assistance will probably come from a commercial vessel in the vicinity,
but commercial vessels are not capable of effectively dealing with
attacks of this type. At the most they might scare the attackers off.
These attacks happen so quickly that unless you had an actual escort in
the immediate vicinity getting help quickly will not happen. The
“Coalition Forces” out here are a myth. It appears that there is no
central authority i.e. no one in charge. The right hand does not know
what the left one is doing and most certainly there is no communication
between them.
You are on your own out here and you had better be prepared to stand on
your own two feet.

 

I had came across this boat name HOPE and a family of Japanese at Admiral Cove Marina in Port Dickson..but that boat looks like it is made from epoxy,( cold mold ?) not wood, lifted up to perform some works on it about end of December 2005.They just arrived from Langkawi at that time. Are you sure it is Malaysia? Malaysia are not located in the South Pacific region.I do try real hard to believe your story without prejudice but I found it is hard to believe 'pirates in a sail boat' in an area where even fisherman are using Mitsubishi, Nissan or Hino turbo..(those reconditioned lorry engine are very cheap..USD 800.00 - USD 1000.00) in the Straits of Melaka..it is common to see boats from Indonesia with 4 or 5 X 200 horses Yamaha outboard..in Langkawi Island those ferry used Ka Me Wa water jet..in the South China sea the only one that dare to venture without a big reliable engine is the Yacht man from all over the world..no locals in their right mind will do that..I'am sorry..real hard for me to believe.
*Those blue and red fonts are for highlighting purpose only..

 

Yup....... confirmed by Indonesian reader....... we use truck engine Nissan 8 cylinder for work. Only fishermen with trimaran and sail.

Maybe what they saw is Pinisi boat with sail not furl but with engine.?

When I spend 12 hours a day on the net my english tend to be funny mixed with dizziness........................

 

Sorry, correction is in order

Ok Ari,

I had the details wrong. I searched through my printed archives of cool stuff and found the article written in Cruising World, Jan 98. The name of it is "A Question of Balance" I just re-read this chilling story of a man's quest to circumnavigate the world with a rare honorable spirit. I'll try to PDF the story into the forum later. Anyway here is the corrected story. Masato Fujimura builds 23ft strip plank in 5 long years called Hope II. They sunk just a short 60 miles away when another sunken ship split her hull during tide change. Repaied they sailed to Hawaii, Palmyra, Fanning & Christmas Islands. Wife found to be pregnant, and went home to give birth to a girl named Mai. Moving further into the story they re-joined and went to Darwin, Bali, and more. Then when in the Jave Sea near Borneo he saw a traditional Indonesian fishing sailboat about 3 miles away. They were coming toward Hope II. The boat had no engine, no nav lights and was making over 10 knots downwind. There were eight men on board with one on the top of the mast giving directions of Hope's course. One guy stood on the bow with a hook to catch him. Scarred shitless for the live of his family, he remembered no engine and turned to windward and escaped. He couldn't sleep for 3 nights. Yet further on they ended up in Okinawa where the local Maritime or now called Coast Guard woudn't let him go any further unless he paid a 4K fine for a boat inspection extention and buy a life raft. Long story short they left the boat in Okinawa and flew back home. A friend of mine saw the boat years ago down south of the island. Hope you liked the other pirate story, it came from the horses mouth.

 

It is a personal choice.

I have found this thread both fascinating, educational and also a little sad.
After reading through all the posts, I then went on to study what other information is out there on this issue.

For me, my opinion has not changed that greatly as to what I would do (and plan to do if my dream of sailing round the world ever materializes).
I would most surely carry weapons, big weapons, and I would have no doubt that I would use them against such people if I had to.

One thing though, in defence of Seadogs, is that among the experts out there this issue is clearly divided.
Seadogs position is definately not that of a minority whack-job, wimp, narrow minded, or unrealistic person. It seems to be a opinion formed through just as much rational thought and personal intuition as those that appose it. Furthermore, I even think that seadogs position might be the better for all of us, even if it did come at a cost to himself or someone following his advice. Some 'out there' have argued that for individual sailors to arm themselves will simply lead into a sort of arms race scenario, where pirates will forever be forced to obtain the bigger weapons, and adopt the more pre-emptive ultra-violent strategies. And like seadogs says, the chances of outgunning the pirates would have to be pretty slim.


At this point I should say that I am not in anyway a 'gun person,' I do actually advocate increasing gun control, I do actually despise most non practical usage of guns ie. hunting for sport not food, and I most vehemenently disagree with what might be crudely labled as (in the traditional American sense) 'the right to bear arms' within civil society.)
In short my 'politics' on guns is distinctly one sided.

The problem is that out there on the big blue ocean, any romanticised idea of civil society or universal respect for human life, is simply a dangerous idea to hold. In the big blue, on a boat, the confines of ones society ends where the water begins, and there is no one but yourself to defend or enforce any values or systems of respect that you intend or assume to carry with you.
Sure enough, like seadogs says, brandishing or carrying a gun could get you into more trouble than not. However this would depend upon details of the situation and intentions of the pirates- details and intentions that you would have no idea of until it was too late. Maybe they would just take your valuables, and send you on your way. And maybe, if you pulled out your shotgun and or fired a few shots, this might end up getting you killed instead.
But, too many people have been killed, and are being killed, at the hands of these people when there was clearly no need or provocation to do such.

For me, I would rather die attempting to defend myself from a situation that may not necessarily have required it, than to get executed like a sucker, gagged and burned in a fridge, shot in the head, or just thrown overboard.
I have quit smoking cigarettes, a fair while ago now, because I simply could not deal with the possibility that one day I would get something like lung cancer, and think to myself,
"jee that was really stupid, I should have known, I did know, I knew there were risks, and I took them, but I wasn't actually prepared to loose."
To me, this arming or not arming situation is similar to this.

I am fundamentally (usually) all for taking affirmative action as an individual, that benefits the group, humanity and the planet, as a whole. Even if this comes at a cost to me. My study and plans for the future are based loosely around this concept, in ecological, economic and social ways. However there is a line that I will not cross. My pascifism knows distinct bounds. I am no saint, I am no Dalai Lama.
If someone was to insult me, offend me, or take from me, then I may do the so called 'turning of the cheek.'
But, if someone was to attempt to seriously hurt or kill myself or any of my loved ones, then without a shadow of doubt or hesitation I would kill them just as i might kill any other animal or creature that threatened the same. I would not feel remorse or guilt. I think this is what is (to use that heavily loaded term) natural.

Thus arming oneself when sailing through these places, and being prepared to use such, to me, is the only thing I could possibly do. I am simply not prepared to sacrifice my life to the hands of some brutal maritime murderer, for the greater good of slowing the arms race.
I am not saying that I would be some gun-ho shooter that would pop off at any suspicious boat or person.

The strategy that seems to work best, and the one I would adopt, would seem to me to be that of simply demonstrating the power of ones arms, and ability and commitment to using such. A freind of my father who has cruised around the world a couple of times, and who went heavily armed, has apparantly had to fire off more than a few times grenade launchers into the water, simply to demonstrate that if a fight was picked, then it would get very ugly. In his case this affirmative action stopped before it had trully begun (if they even were going to) any incidents of contact occuring.

One hassel of all this is that one must be prepared to go through all the proper rigmoral of declaring ones arms when entering countries, or face the rather horrific possibility of being locked up for not.

Another point worth mentioning, as done on
http://www.yacht-piracy.org/en/index.htm
is that there is really no point in carrying firearms unless they are stored in a readily available place. Many a sailor who has cariied guns has not had the time to actually use them before it was too late. This is obviously a concern to any that might travel with children. But, no doubt solutions to these issues could be found.

So for me, the issue is clear. If I was to sail through these places, then I woul surely arm myself.

However, I think that we must be carefull to not insult or demean other peoples personal choices on the matter. Some people may be so apposed to guns, or unprepared to actually use them, that non-arming is the only way they could or should possibly do it. No matter how foolish those from the other side may think them.

I would rather fire off a few rounds, or grenades than let these guys get close to me, my loved ones, or my vessel.
What about you?
(p.s. no offence if they are actually not pirates....)