Private Yacht Pirated

Weapons on board

Is it legal for people to have weapons on their yacht? Would it be doable if you avoided certain countries ports? If yacht owners and crews could be armed and start shooting the minute the b$%^&*ds were in range I bet they would go back to trying to scam online with that inheritance you are getting from a European relative you did not know, just got to send 5000 dollars to help them in their legal battle for you. Pirates would seem to be easy to recognize, since they apparently are the only people overloaded in a small boat hundreds of miles from shore. When crews just stop returning eventually no one will want the job. No one can be blamed for self defense but it would suck to get the boat seized and people jailed for illegally carrying weapons. Of course as I earlier posted if authorities came you could just drop them over the side. I think gun metal sucks for buoyancy so the evidence would be nil.

The Pirate Hunting Cruises turned out to be a hoax...

See Snopes:

http://www.snopes.com/inboxer/hoaxes/piratecruise.asp

Cruises

I love the pirate cruise idea but it is tough for military or anyone to tell innocent fishermen or other cruisers from pirates until within range of pirate guns.

Hi,

It has been doing the rounds in various formats for at least a couple of yrs, I just did a quick search on Google and that was the first one that loaded and opened properly.

I felt that the thread could handle it.

The yachting community world wide has been horrified and appalled by the shooting of four cruising sailors in the Indian Ocean this week, see Sail-World story. It has taken the dangers for cruising sailors crossing the Indian Ocean to a new level, and, according to TTT Rally leader, Rene Tiemessen, whose rally had been turned down for an escort, there are still around 100 yachts attempting the crossing. 'It's not over yet,' he commented by satellite to me after the tragedy.

In the meantime, the Blue Water Rally, with whom the four had been travelling since leaving Australia until they left the Rally on 15th February, have also expressed their condolences, saying that they were 'stunned and devastated' by the tragic turn of events.

They also gave justification for sailors choosing to sail across the Indian Ocean to the Red Sea instead of other options, with the statement: 'Although yachtsmen have been discouraged from sailing through this area for some time, it is a hard decision when the only other choices are to sail around the stormy, dangerous seas off South Africa, leave the yacht in the Far East, put it on an expensive cargo ship, or to sail back across the Pacific which presents more weather challenges and difficulties. When one has set one's heart on a circumnavigation, these choices are very difficult to make.'

Circumstances are still unclear as to exactly what happened in the tragedy that ended in the deaths of Phyllis Macay and Bob Riggle of Seattle and Jean and Scott Adam of Orange County.

Four US warships, the USS Enterprise, the guided-missile cruiser USS Leyte Gulf, the guided-missile destroyer USS Bulkeley and the USS Sterett, were tailing the 58-foot sloop Quest as the pirates raced for the Somali coast.

It appears that some kind of division might have occurred among the pirates, as two of their number were on board the USS Sterett, and had spent the night there. They were in radio contact with the pirates when they heard gunfire coming from the Quest, which was a mere 600 metres away, about 8.00am local time. According to naval personnel interviewed later it is unclear whether the cruisers were making an escape attempt or not.

As Navy SEALs sped to the yacht, a pirate fired a rocket-propelled grenade toward the Sterret that missed, while others crowded onto the deck of the yacht with their hands raised in surrender. The SEALs then boarded the Quest, finding two pirates already lying dead. They then killed one other pirate with a knife, fatally shot another and captured 13 more. They also found the cruisers shot fatally, unable to be saved despite emergency treatment.

Following the tragedy there have been multiple statements coming from Somali piracy representatives, sometimes at odds with the account from the US Navy.

Two pirates bragged that they ordered the executions. 'Our colleagues called us this morning, that they were being attacked by a US warship,' one of them, identified only as Mohamud, told Reuters. 'We ordered our comrades to kill the four Americans before they got killed.'

Killing hostages 'has now become part of our rules,' said another pirate who identified himself as Muse Abdi. He referred as a turning point to last week's sentencing of a pirate to 33 years in prison for the 2009 attack on the U.S. cargo vessel the Maersk Alabama. The sentencing had occurred just two days before the hijacking.

'From now on, anyone who tries to rescue the hostages in our hands will only collect dead bodies,' Abdi said. 'It will never, ever happen that hostages are rescued and we are hauled to prison.'

Yet another member of the Somali pirate group involved in the killing of the sailors said that they only killed the hostages because the US military started firing at them.

'We had no intention of killing the hostages until the Americans began shooting at us,' Liban Muse told the Los Angeles Times.

'Our preference is only to take ships and ransom money, not to kill. But governments are targeting and killing our people.'

It will be a long time before the exact picture becomes clear, but tragically that will mean nothing to the four cruising sailors, for whom the cruising community can do nothing, now, but mourn.


by Nancy Knudsen

...more coverage here:
http://www.sail-world.com/cruising/index.cfm?nid=80619&rid=11

https://mail.google.com/mail/?hl=en&shva=1#inbox/12e568c020d5b6ed

In the vast waters around the Gulf of Aden, roughly 1 million square miles of sea, finding pirates and rescuing their victims is something even today’s sophisticated, nuclear-power Navy can’t always do.

After Tuesday’s killing of four Americans aboard their hijacked yacht off the coast of Oman, Navy officials remained silent about whether the American deaths will prompt a change in tactics. Meanwhile piracy experts say bulking up the U.S. military presence or even attacking pirate dens in Somalia isn’t necessarily the long-term answer. Any solution must change what turns people into high-seas criminals, they said.

Navy ships steaming out San Diego, including the Boxer amphibious group on Tuesday, are increasingly listing anti-piracy as one of their top deployment missions. But they are finding themselves operating in a part of the world where the brigands are not ideology-driven terrorists or warriors, but desperate youths being controlled by businessmen hungry for multimillion-dollar ransoms.

“Everybody’s going to say now we’ve got to go in there guns blazing,” said retired Rear Adm. Terry McKnight, who commanded the Navy’s anti-piracy task force when it was launched in early 2009.

“But, first of all, nobody wants to go after the pirates ashore in Somalia. And the other thing is, it’s a criminal event. You have to fall under the guidelines of international justice,” McKnight said.

“If we had a 1,000 ship Navy to go out there, we’d make a major dent in piracy … but the problem is the area is so vast you can’t be everywhere.”

Last year was the worst on record for mayhem on the seas. Pirates captured 1,181 mariners and killed eight, hijacking more than 50 ships, according to the International Chamber of Commerce’s International Maritime Bureau.

The situation is most bleak off Somalia, which accounted for 92 percent of all ship seizures in 2010.

International attention, including the Navy’s now 2-year-old Combined Task Force 151 and two European task forces, has decreased attacks in the Gulf of Aden. Navy officials said there are 34 warships, under 15 different national flags, now patrolling the gulf area.

But the pirates are pushing farther out.

Tuesday’s killings were an example of the new pattern: Somali pirates used a “mother ship,” a larger vessel they’d hijacked earlier, as a base to extend their skiff attacks northward into the Arabian Sea.

The 58-foot yacht, carrying a Marina del Rey couple and their two friends, was trailed by four Navy ships, including the San Diego-based destroyer Sterett.

Negotiation with the pirates was attempted but ultimately failed to save the Americans, who were killed by the pirates. A team of Navy SEALs raced to cover the 600 yards between the Sterett and the yacht after pirates fired a rocket-propelled grenade at the destroyer.

To Tom Wilkerson, U.S. Naval Institute chief executive, that loss of life means current anti-piracy strategy isn’t working.

Differing from McKnight, he is in the camp that says follow the pirates onto land.

“Finding pirates in the act in that area is a dice roll,” said Wilkerson, a retired two-star Marine general.

“If the U.S. and the international community are serious about reducing the piracy, they need to engage using the UN resolutions to put some kind of force ashore and remove the sanctuary.”

The Sterett is only the most recent in a string of San Diego warships drawn into pirate-fighting.

In September, a platoon of Camp Pendleton-based Marines aboard the Dubuque rescued the crew of the German cargo ship Magellan Star.

In a mission that required a White House green light, 24 force reconnaissance Marines captured 9 Somali pirates and saved the crew that was hiding in a fortified part of the ship.

Capt. Alex Martin, who led that team, said the Somalis almost instantly dropped their earlier bravado when the first Marine appeared over the bow.

"You felt like they were criminals who had been caught. It wasn't like dealing with elements of al Qaeda in Iraq, where this is what these guys do, they believe in this," said Martin, 28, a La Jolla High School graduate. "These were just criminals. And once they got caught, they were like, 'Oh, God, what now?'"

The San Diego-based destroyer Howard had its pirate encounter in September 2008, when it rushed across 350 miles of ocean to aide the Faina, a Ukrainian vessel carrying military weapons.

In the end, the ship’s owners declined to risk their cargo in a raid, instead paying the pirates a $3 million ransom six months later.

And, in one of the most high-profile actions of late, Navy SEAL snipers bobbing on the back of a destroyer shot pirates holding the captain of the American cargo ship Maersk Alabama at gunpoint in April, 2009.

It was that incident, and the later 33-year sentence handed to one of the pirates by a New York court, that may have intensified the peril on the seas.

The Associated Press on Wednesday quoted Somali marauders who vowed that they will kill hostages before being captured during military raids and facing trial.

It’s not the way this business used to work, piracy experts say.

Somali pirates were known for taking hostages and holding them, alive, for ransoms that have ballooned in recent years. A common demand in 2005 was $150,000 to $200,000. Now the stakes have risen to as high as $9 million per ship, said Martin Murphy, author of the new book “Somalia, the New Barbary? Piracy and Islam in the Horn of Africa.”

If the international community promoted some other way for ordinary people to make money, that pirate bounty might not look so attractive, Murphy said, as much of it flows to the ringleaders, not the people taking the risks.

For cargo shippers, the high-stakes gamble appears to make sense for now, said Peter Chalk, RAND Corp. analyst. Using the Suez Canal and the Gulf of Aden cuts travel time from the Mediterranean Sea to the Indian Ocean by three weeks, saving the shipping industry an estimated $2 billion a year or more.

Efforts to make ransom payments illegal have gone nowhere, Chalk said. If the United States wanted to change that, or rewrite current rules of engagement for Navy ships fighting pirates, the task would be difficult because these maritime polices are international in nature, he said.

Pleasure boaters used to be somewhat safe from Somali pirates, as they weren’t seen as rich ransom targets. That may explain why the Marina del Rey couple entered the area off Oman.

“I think here they weren’t expecting trouble because they were so far away from major concentration of attacks,” Chalk said.

As Wilkerson, the retired Marine general, said about U.S. policy toward pirates, that strategy may need to be reworked in the future.

http://tinyurl.com/Piracy-022411

An other act of piracy

It is another tragic act of piracy.
I am sorry for these innocents peoples

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/piracy

Deplorable. Prayers for the captured.

Still, I have to give up worrying about it. The problem is easily solved if only our leaders had the 'nads for it:

Kill the pirates whenever they turn up.

Kill their families, loved ones, pets, etc.

Level any town that gives them aid and comfort.

Problem solved in short order.

With the technology for drone style aircraft & robo-track vehichles that are armed with cameras and guns, I believe the thing to do is get a nice sailboat off Ebay or somewhere, load it up with C-4 and the technology needed to operate the boat as well as monitor the vessel.

When the pirates overtake the vessel, press the little red button and " boom".
No hostages, no pirates and know one knows what the heck happened.

" Did the priates blow up the boat ??? Did the victims blow up the boat, wow, I dunno but that bunch is fish food !!"

How many drones would it take before the pirates catch on.


In addition, it stinks on ice that children are now involved. That will make the pirates very happy that they have a free pass now.
And it will make every decision harder for the good guys.

I am glad I do not have to be the one who is making decisions in this case.

that'll stop them for sure......

I hate to point this out to you but in that part of the world these War Lords are the government.
Thus they set national rules for their own soverign nations.
The yachtsmen thus are simply violating the law and are being fined.
Unless a foreign power choses to invade and start a shooting war.

I dont like this either but it would seem best to stay out of their waters as they want.
Maybe when the entire world has totally stayed away for years the fishing will return and they will be happy?

LOL

Just quickly:

NO, they are not the government. They may run things in their limited area of influence but they are definitely NOT the government.

They set no rules, they are not even considered the government by most of the Somalians.

The yachts and commercial vessels seized are in international waters and have every right to be there. Also if you look at a map you will find the Suez Canal at the northern end of the Red Sea. The alternative for ships going west from asia and india to europe, the med and united states is to go around the southern tip of africa adding thousands of miles and some really treacherous water to the voyage.

I suspect by now the pirates would consider fishing to be too much like work.

The solution is now, and always has been, to make the cost of piracy too much for them and those who support them to bear.

I like that idea, kind of a modern "Q-ship." No need to blow up a ship and add to the pollution though, just contract a private company to sail around the area to collect water samples or something for the military and provide them with the resources to do whatever they feel necessary to protect themselves. I think they will handle interference satisfactorily. I really doubt they will have any problem manning those ships either, I hear the fishing is good in that region.

They can rendevous with a naval vessel from time to time to restock with "sample bottles" and such. Before heading for shore they can offload their scientific equipment to their relief, or just toss it overboard when they get close ... sort of like Somali fishermen and their mother ships do.

And, please, no whining from anyone about international law or rights, the crew of that research ship has the right to defend itself but if the internationally recognized government of Somalia wants to raise the issue in the UN they are perfectly free to do so. Why should they complain though, that story seems to work for them.