It’s Not the Sea:

an encounter with pirates


2008


    The sound of a diesel engine was unexpected. 

    I was standing in the galley, waiting for water to boil for coffee.  I had been awake for only ten minutes, after a night of broken sleep while my 37’ Heritage One Ton, THE HAWKE OF TUONELA, ghosted west under cruising spinnaker before a light breeze.  

    We were out of Bali, heading toward Cocos Islands, one hundred miles south of Java.  I’d had the ocean to myself ever since Bail disappeared astern three days earlier.

    I hurried to the cockpit, where in pre-dawn light I saw a boat about our size was coming toward us.  She was close, only a few hundred yards off the starboard bow, on a course that would carry her to within a boat length.

    I seldom use the engine at sea and routinely put a spray cover over the ignition panel.  It takes only a few seconds with a screw driver to remove, but at that moment I didn’t have a screw driver in my hand.

    As the other boat passed starboard to starboard I saw that it was a gray fishing boat, flying a tattered Indonesian flag, with one man at the wheel and five more standing or sitting on the deck, facing toward me. 

    The boat slowed, turned as she passed astern and came alongside to port, matching our three knot speed.  Only five yards of water separated us.

    In my more than four circumnavigations, fishing boats have often come over to inspect my boats.  Sometimes the men aboard have made gestures asking for cigarettes, which I don’t have.  So initially, although this boat was too close, I wasn’t especially concerned. 

    I looked at them.  They looked at me.  Then the man at the wheel yelled something, and I noticed that two of the men were masked.  One had a balaclava pulled down over his face; another a tee-shirt with holes cut for his eyes and mouth.   I thought:  These guys are coming.

    Having to react quickly is not unusual on a boat.  Things break without warning.  One minute everything is fine, and the next is chaos.

    I don’t recall my thought process at that instant, but I knew I had to do something.

    Leaving the Monitor to steer, I went below and took my handheld VHF--the only radio I carry--from its cradle beside the chart table, climbed back into the cockpit, where I held it up for the men on the fishing boat to see, then pretended to talk into it, believing that they would not know its range is less than ten miles.

    My bluff worked.

    After a long half minute or so, the other boat increased speed and went off to the west.

    As soon as they moved away, I removed the spray guard from the engine panel and started the Yanmar.   I furled the drooping spinnaker with the Facnor gennaker furling gear, lowered it to deck, and dropped it through the forward hatch.

    I was none too soon, for in a few minutes the fishing boat came back.

    As it neared I gave the Yanmar full throttle and turned south at a right angle.  For a minute or two it followed, then turned toward two similar vessels I had not noticed a quarter mile away.       

    Full throttle on THE HAWKE OF TUONELA only produces 6 to 7 knots in the best of conditions.  The fishing boat could certainly do more; but I had caught the Indonesians by surprise.  Glancing over my shoulder, I was relived to see that they were not following.

    I kept the tiller for ten minutes, then re-linked the Monitor control lines.  I know that steering under power is hard on the Monitor, but I didn’t want to take the time to switch to the tiller pilot.

    My next reaction must be seen in the context of my past. 

    In 1982, while sailing the 18’ open boat, CHIDIOCK TICHBORNE, up the Red Sea, I was imprisoned by the Saudi Arabian authorities for a few weeks on suspicion of being a spy.  I was completely helpless.  It was a despair I did not want ever to experience again.  I now made a cold decision to defend myself.  Not to avoid being robbed, which I would not like but, having lost everything I owned in the world twice before, could accept; but because I did not want to fall into the hands and questionable mercy of others.

    I do not own a gun and never have.  I do have a flare gun that I had never fired.  I dug it out and found seven flare cartridges packed with it.  I put one in the chamber.

    I rejected my two aluminum boat hooks as being less strong than a dinghy oar to one of which I secured my longest kitchen knife with hose clamps.

    The actions of the fishermen had shown indecision.   While it would be five or six against one, I thought that if they saw that the first to come aboard was likely to be hurt, none would be willing to be first.

    THE HAWKE OF TUONELA powered south at full speed beneath a beautiful, sunny trade wind sky.  There was no sign of pursuit.

    I moved my passport, ship’s papers, my wedding ring, and most of my cash into a hiding place in the overhead.  I couldn’t find a place to hide the computers and my Nikon DSLR.  I left my wallet with a couple of hundred dollars in a drawer near the chart table where it would be easily found if they did make it aboard.

    As the wind came up, I set sail.   The course to Cocos of 262º was too far off the wind, so I held us a bit closer for speed and THE HAWKE OF TUONELA responded by making 6.8 knots.

    I did not recall seeing a radar dome on the boat, and as the distance from the encounter increased, thought it unlikely that they could find me again or would try to.

    Nevertheless I test fired the flare gun.  Having such a projectile hit you would at least be distracting.  I removed the spent shell and loaded a fresh one.

    I did not turn on my masthead tricolor light that night.


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    There are pirates and there are pirates.

    Most I suspect are amateurs who happen upon a target of opportunity, and what might work with them would be useless against the heavily armed professionals of the Somali coast, who presently hold more than a dozen ships and one hundred and fifty crew members hostage.

    At sea a month after my encounter off Java, I heard on the BBC that two French citizens had been taken by Somalis from a yacht in the Gulf of Aden and were being held for a ransom of $1,400,000.  I felt enormous empathy and sympathy for them.

    Ashore a week later I was pleased to read that the French government had launched a commando operation, freeing the French couple, killing one pirate and capturing five others.  This was the second such successful operation by the French this year.  Somehow I doubt the U.S. government would have done as much to free me.  I applaud the French.

    My own experience was sufficiently disturbing to taint what was an otherwise pleasant sail to Cocos, and to return to mind frequently since. 

    I offer no advice to others as to what they should do in a similar situation; but time has only strengthened my resolve to resist an act of piracy if possible, even though resistance might result in greater retaliation as it did with Peter Blake.

    During an interview I was once asked what in one word sailing means to me, and the word that came was “freedom.”  I love being alone in the monastery of the sea, and that freedom is what I would defend, not my possessions.

    My earlier experiences in the Red Sea were sufficiently unpleasant so that I never intend to return there; but I have given thought to being better prepared against amateurs.

    Carrying a firearm on a boat considerably complicates clearing in and out of countries.  But simply displaying a gun would have been enough off Java.  And if I had had one, and if necessary, I would have used it.

    I am writing this back in my home in Evanston, Illinois.  When I return to Durban, South Africa, where THE HAWKE OF TUONELA is docked, in January 2009, I intend to learn whether I can legally buy a firearm there.  I don’t yet know that if I can, I will.  But I will find out. 

    I have also tried to find better places to hide valuables on board.  The location I used in the overhead is fine for small items; but I have yet to discover a place for my computer and camera where they would not easily be found by pirates yet remain accessible, because I use them on a daily basis at sea.  Perhaps this is another reason to back up your hard drive and hope that pirates don’t steal the backup as well.

    Most of the places I visited in the 9,200 miles I sailed in 2008, I had not seen for twenty-one years.  After a while I concluded that in twenty years the world becomes more crowded, somewhat more convenient, and less charming.  For sailors it may also become more dangerous.

    As I wrote in my log at the time:   It’s not the sea.  It’s people.