Successful Transit Through Pirate Alley
20 March 2010 | Aden, Yemen
Anne
We did it! Teams Magnum and Kleiner Bar have arrived safely in Aden, Yemen, after a 4 day passage from Oman on Friday March 19th at 11am local time. And what a good team we were! Our transit brought us through the Gulf of Aden, a span of water that separates Africa from the Middle East, aptly named "pirate alley", where the age old practice of piracy has evolved and escalated in the most modern of ways. I can certainly say that relief is featuring most prominently in our minds; a release both physically and mentally from the stress of the journey and its preparations; sleep deprivation also exists. If we were any way superstitious, we may have taken more notice of the omen unwittingly revealed by Kara, when on the 2nd night out after opening her kinder egg treat after dinner, an eerily odd surprise emerged from the plastic egg: an old fashioned fat pirate with a map of hidden treasure. Alas, the kinder enterprise has not been keeping up with the modern day advances in piracy. Here is a rough description transcribed from our log book of those 4 days.
Day 1: For the 1st few miles out of Oman we had to dodge lots of fishing buoys, which is a minor deterrence for us by now. Then it was out into the clear water of the Arabian Sea along a dramatically beautiful coastline. A helicopter flew overhead twice during the day. During the night we could clearly see the end of Oman, abruptly the bright lights turned to darkness on the Yemen side of the coast, a clear disparity between 2 neighbors that is even obvious from the sea. No moon either, just us, Kleiner Bar and our friend the radar. We turned only low navigation lights on to keep a low visibility against those unwanted unknowns who may be lurking.
Day 2: Each morning we telephoned the allied forces to register our whereabouts. During the night we sometimes saw things on the radar but nothing in reality. These are the moments of realization of where we are and what could show up in the darkness of the night. Every little dot on the radar sends little signals of warning to us. Werner on Kleiner Bar is monitoring all the VHF traffic between the warships and coalition forces. Our VHF radio doesn't seem to pick these conversations up for some strange reason (another job to check out). A suspicious ship was reported and the forces responded. We communicated with Kleiner Bar by clicking the VHF 3 times and then moving to a pre arranged HF frequency. That worked well.
Day 3: Today an attempt to take over an oil tanker with 7 skiffs involved took place 200 miles south west of us. And this occurred during a time when a convoy of 7 big ships was underway with the navy nearby. We don't know the outcome. Shortly after, we sighted about 10 skiffs chasing towards our direction. We changed course by 60 degrees. But still the activity continued. By looking through the binoculars we noticed fish jumping into the air and so it turned out be just an exodus toward the shoal of real fish, and not us little fish. But the nerves play their little games as well. We rendezvous-ed with KB again and dipped into the clear delicious water and swapped kids. All of a sudden a fast fishing boat came pretty close and without slowing down waved back at us, probably smiling but of course he was too far to really confirm that.
Day 4: Seas no longer flat- Magnum tossed us from side to side all night. And so the hours pass. Last night at 01:45, Uwe saw a big ship 12 miles straight behind us on the radar moving slowly up our butts. When it was 4 miles away he called "big ship big ship etc" but no response due to the radio silence chosen by most boats. (AIS is also useless out here since none of the ships are transmitting). But at least they had some lights on. After turning on our stern and mast lights, the big one moved ever so slightly to our portside, not according to the radar but the light of their green starboard navigation lamp came into view. They passed at 0345 and peace returned to the night shift, if you can say that. On shore we observed a strange little red light with an illumination of the sky around it which turned out to be a big fire 12 miles away. I pulled the jib out but with all the rolling it would backwind and crack and flap noisily around. The night was too dark to fiddle outside to create a different sail plan and I was also too tired. Good sleeping in-between? Not really. At 0700 Uwe finally set all sails and we got to fly downwind with up to 8.2 knots with 144 miles to go. Fishing boats continue to zoom by, but none stop, the rougher sea conditions help to keep them from pulling at our nerves. Kara and teacher has a day off school due to roly seas so she watched Charlie Chaplin's "It's a Dogs Life "instead.
Day 5: Arrival-11.30am Wa-oh, what a dramatic sight from the sea, as the coastline of Aden swells into view. A lighthouse and some buildings sit at the edge of a sloping volcanic mountain top, like an ancient Greek city and the land continues both humped and jagged, with the sun reflecting the paler shades of long since dried lava.
And so, the conclusion? We know some of you think we are not quite together in the head to consider passing through here but we'll try to put the expedition into a little perspective. Few people would ever consider not leaving their house knowing 100 people or more will be killed in San Francisco each year. In our neighborhood alone you could be shot for as little as driving through the wrong place at the wrong time. Many people get into their cars each day without hesitation even knowing the statistics of fatal accidents occurring daily on the highways. All relative, somehow, maybe? We did have a strategy, based on research closer to the source of experience and information divulged from friends on boats that had already sailed ahead of us. The targets of the Somali pirates have been and continue to be the merchant ships or boats traveling alone. All of these ships follow the shipping lane, some 100 miles out toward the Somali side of the Gulf of Aden. We, on the other hand hugged the coast of Yemen keeping between 10-15 miles offshore. This considerably reduces the risks of being attacked by Somali pirates since they seem to hang on the other side of the shipping lane. We do accept that the passage contained an element of risk, but doesn't everything?
But also don't forget we are not some suicidilists who blindly decide to run into death. A lot of people get their knowledge from the media and hardly know where the troubled piracy spots exactly are and how everything changes so fast. The Internet is also not necessarily the gods answer to your questions about most subjects, (except for maybe the next sale at Macy's) and should not always be taken as verbatim of truth. Now, more than ever, we realize as we travel around the world the shortfall of the mass media and in particular the Internet as a source of reliable information.
It's strange to be in-between very poor countries; Somalia on our port side, a country that has not had a formed government since 1991 and just starting as we speak to kill each other in the streets of Mogadishu. And there is Yemen on our starboard side, a country that is slowly beginning to see better times but are still is very poor, and then there is Oman, doing very well and only because the good Allah saw fit to bestow oil reserves in one place but not another. Now its rest for a few days, and at first glimpse Aden indeed feels very medieval, everyone is friendly and smiling.