Captain Philips: Somali Pirates. Any sailors Here?

[k0ua]

I would be interested in some of our anti-gun members here have to say on this subject. Not from an argumentative standpoint, but to try to understand why anyone would not want to defend themselves in this situation.

 

[k0ua]

You would think six mini-Gatling guns with laser sighting and night vision would be sufficient to ward off just about anything.

Or flame throwers.

Or the ships own remote controlled small boat loaded C-4 or with whatever to eliminate the foe with extreme prejudice.

If they want to talk, use emergency channel.

No mercy.

Those measures would certainly work, but I also believe a rifle or two would go a long way.!

 

[dmccarty]

My wife and I have talked about buying a 40' or so combination motor /sail boat and keeping it in Tybee Island , GA....we will not even consider doing that unless we can figure a way to create a compartment to keep weapons...there is no way we would sail to the Bahamas or anywhere else unarmed ...even just out a few miles off the coast..I would want a weapon....There are no cops out there...no nothing....Just nuts to go out on the open blue water without arms....I would never do it.

The Bahamas now prevent weapons from being brought into the country. You used to be able to do this but I guess the cruising community was smuggling so many arms to the Bahamas and robbing stores that they need to change the law. <Insert Sarcastic Sign>

I read of one guy who had a really large boat, I think it was 60+ feet and they had equipment trouble that forced them into a Mexican port. Before they hit Mexican waters, they threw some targets into the water, shot up all of their ammo and then gave a couple of pistols and magazines to Poseidon. Just not worth the risk of being caught with a firearm in Mexico... I have come to terms with the idea of not having a firearm on the boat. There are other things one can do for defense. The firearm would be the best tool but I think one would be nuts to take a gun into another country. It would be one thing to spend time up Nawth as a guest of the Canadian government, I am sure our Canadian TBNers would pay a visit, but being a guest of a government South of the Border may not be so nice.

Later,
Dan

 

[brin]

The Bahamas now prevent weapons from being brought into the country. You used to be able to do this but I guess the cruising community was smuggling so many arms to the Bahamas and robbing stores that they need to change the law. <Insert Sarcastic Sign>

I read of one guy who had a really large boat, I think it was 60+ feet and they had equipment trouble that forced them into a Mexican port. Before they hit Mexican waters, they threw some targets into the water, shot up all of their ammo and then gave a couple of pistols and magazines to Poseidon. Just not worth the risk of being caught with a firearm in Mexico... I have come to terms with the idea of not having a firearm on the boat. There are other things one can do for defense. The firearm would be the best tool but I think one would be nuts to take a gun into another country. It would be one thing to spend time up Nawth as a guest of the Canadian government, I am sure our Canadian TBNers would pay a visit, but being a guest of a government South of the Border may not be so nice.

Later,
Dan

I read you loud and clear Dan, My wife and I, after researching this have decided we will stick with fresh water boating....I am just not willing to go to sea with no protection....other than some common chemicals or knives...remember ...never bring a knife to a gun fight...the pirates and crooks are sure not going to worry ...they will be heavily armed....We had a nice 36' cruiser for years and enjoyed it on our large lake here...we will stick with that kind of thing if we decide to get back into boating.

 

[Egon]

How about some flare guns.

Or a messenger canon?:thumbsup:

 

[dmccarty]

I read you loud and clear Dan, My wife and I, after researching this have decided we will stick with fresh water boating....I am just not willing to go to sea with no protection....other than some common chemicals or knives...remember ...never bring a knife to a gun fight...the pirates and crooks are sure not going to worry ...they will be heavily armed....We had a nice 36' cruiser for years and enjoyed it on our large lake here...we will stick with that kind of thing if we decide to get back into boating.

Yep, I understand but I have come to terms with this if we ever manage to afford the boat I want and have the time. That basically means retirement age which seems to be the age of the majority of people doing this type of cruising. You just have to be on the boat for months at a time which means you have to be young and rich or old and retired. :laughing::laughing::laughing:

The majority of the crimes I have read about do NOT involve firearms. There are defensive measures, simple things, that make it harder to board the boat, and even if boarded, the boat is MY territory which I know and the attackers do not. The confines of a boat will reduce any numerical advantage the attacker have if the boat space is used right. I have had quite a bit of training over the years that would come in handy in the confines of a small boat. Would pirates have such skills? Not so much. My latest training is splitting up to five cords of wood with an axe. For grins and giggles I split with my strong and weak arm controlling the axe. This is good fitness wise and helps minimize aches and pains. Flip side of this "training" is that I am pretty danged good with an axe. You have to be to split wood which teaches accuracy and strength. Every boat should have a fire axe to tear apart structure to get to the source of a fire. Fire on a boat is bad, Bad, BAD. I pity the fool with badness in his heart who came on my boat and went below decks. In the dark... Not knowing the lay of the land... Just say'n.

Most of the attacks are taking places at night.

A Mag Light is a wonderful dual use tool. A four D cell Mag Light provides a nice beam of light. Course, it has a really good heft, is nice and long, if you want longer and heftier, get a six cell light. A Mag Light is a nice impact weapon when needed. The other nice thing about a Mag Light at night is that the light is VERY bright, especially if someone's eyes have dilated and adjusted to being in the dark. Course, if one goes and gets one on of the LED replacement bulbs the Mag Light is MUCH brighter and the batteries last much longer than the old bulbs. Or you can get really, Really REALLY, bright light by replacing the head of the flashlight with a new head that has multiple LEDs. This produces a HUGE amount of light for a great distance. Very nice light to have on a dark night in the city, country or on a boat. Course, it would hurt like heck to have that beamed in your eyes and would blind someone for a few seconds at least. A few seconds can be a very long time in certain circumstances.

I just happened to read a boating blog about a couple who sailed in a convoy of small boats in the Red Sea during the height of the pirate campaign. From this photos and words you could see that even in a convoy the boats were NOT doing what needed to be done. They easily could have had a boat or two picked off but the pirates were either not very smart, were very cautious or after bigger fish. A merchant ship was attacked during his transit. They could hear the attack on the radio and they were close enough to see it happening. They were running with sails down to minimize visibility and as soon as the saw the attack they changed course. The convoy did not keep its ranks closed. They had too much distance between boats so the only thing they could do was have a large number of targets and the boats that had put up defensive barriers would most likely not be bother as the pirates went after less defended targets. Think Lions vs Zebras. The lions go after the weak. Don't be the weak boat. They did have one looked to be pirate scouts come into the fleet and hook up on some boats "begging" for smokes but no harm was done. Except for the lone sailor's Fruit of the Looms.

The places we want to go, if we ever manage to do it, would NOT be in places were piracy is a problem much less armed robberies. This is just one of those things in life were one has to minimize risk. The riskiest thing I do is drive to work and dodge the idiots. Even though there is more piracy today, it is in areas easily avoided and the odds of being a victim are very low, especially if you do not go to those areas. :laughing: If I could, I would carry a shotgun, rifle and a pistol on board. We want to go Nawth, meaning Alaska, Greenland, Scandinavian countries, Iceland and even Canada! :laughing: I have not desire to see cities per say but to go to remote areas. Very remotes areas. The biggest risk is uncharted rocks/reefs, floating logs, old fish nets, inaccurate charts and equipment failures. Many of these risks can be minimized with a steel hull, replacement parts, knowledge and patience. We would want to land and walk around in these remote areas and bear attacks are a risk. I really don't like the idea of using pepper spray as my only bear defense because I hear that bear poop has been found with bells and pepper spray. :laughing::laughing::laughing: The odds of us being attacked by a bear are about zero but I would prefer zero. I think if we were attacked, it would be the first bear attack on people who were cruising. On the other hand, I REALLY do not want to be a topic of web site conversations. :laughing::laughing::laughing:

I figure that if we can do this type of traveling, we are going. We will just have to minimize risks in other ways. The risk reduction might not be as optimum as I would like but I think the risk is low enough to go.

Later,
Dan

 

[dmccarty]

How about some flare guns.

Or a messenger canon?:thumbsup:

What I have recently read, which surprised me, was that flare guns are illegal in some countries. :shocked: There are inserts one can put into flare guns that will allow them to fire shotgun shells which I had never heard before. The problem, even with this option, is that many countries ban ammo so you are back to square one.

Some people HAVE put messenger cannons on their boats! :laughing::laughing::laughing: One guy in CA has a nice one that he mounts near his bow. It fires some sort of shut gun like blank. :thumbsup: He has one of the boats types we like painted in the color of our kayaks! He has some video and still shots of him firing off the cannon. Very cool. :laughing:

One guy responded to the conversation about a friend of his who fired one of these cannons, it blew up, put the friend in the hospital and then a nursing home. :shocked: Sounds like he used smoke less powder or too much powder and the cannon blew up, hit him in the head and he fell into the water. The guy would have drowned but people were able to pull him out of the water.

Later,
Dan

 

[dmccarty]

I have been reading quite a bit about cruising around the world on a number of different websites. One of these websites, http://www.noonsite.com/General/Piracy, has extensive coverage of piracy events going back years. Last night, I read the incidents they knew about in 2013. There were only a bit over 30 and most were property crimes, i.e., dingy and/or engine stolen, boat robbed while owners away, etc. Somewhere around 10-12 incidents are the ones that are of the most concern, boarding when the crew is on board the boat. Most of these attacks did NOT use a firearm. Mostly it was no weapons or edged weapons. I think all of these attacks were in known problem areas and the list is certainly not comprehensive.

The same site has a study from http://freecruisingguides.com/guides/CSI%20Update4_2014.01.pdf which lists crimes around the Caribbean.



There were 36 reported crimes in 2013 compared to a high of 114 in 2010. Certainly, not all crimes are reported, especially property crimes, but I think violent crimes will be picked up by groups tracking these incidents. There are danged few violent crimes and it looks like one can minimize risk even further by avoiding certain areas and taking some simple precautions. TBN related, but some sailors are using electric fences on their boats and I have found one guy who said he thinks that the electric fence prevents a couple of boardings. Course, it could have been a bird landing on the lit up rigging since he did not see anyone on or near the boat, just the rigging making noise.

People are getting surprised when boarded so having an alarm system is helpful. Some thefts occurred when the crew was sleeping and they did not realize they had been hit until they had noticed missing items in the morning.

I got side tracked reading the website last night because I was not really after piracy information at that moment. The website has information on places all around the world and I was reading about entry requirements at some very isolated islands in the Pacific. Here is the Surprise, Surprise, Surprise. Most of the problem areas, even in remote areas, are places with a large population. If you are in a place where the population is small, basically family and clan, the chances of even property crime is all but zero. The problems are in areas with bad/lack of government and/or with large populations of males who can blend anonymously into the population. Kinda hard to steal a laptop and hide it from the village...

The section of the website about Somalian piracy was interesting, yet sad. They had plane photos of bunch of pirate boats pulled up on a beach with a few tents around and that was all. There are supposed to be such concentrations all along the coast. Land a Marine platoon with a gallon of diesel, a match, and have a beach party with a bonfire. There can't be that many concentrations of boats and once the boats are gone it is kinda hard to go to sea. . Some of the attacks are also from Yemen and it is guessed that some of the pirates are people smuggling from Somalia to Yemen. When they are returning from smuggling, they might attack a boat if the opportunity presents itself.

I think I mentioned it before but I found more information about the boat that repelled a pirate attack with a shotgun. The Captain was a retired Marine and he took out two pirates who boarded his boat and then fired at the pirate boat and appears to have taken down a third pirate.

I found an article written by a guy in the UK that was interesting regarding firearms. The article said that UK citizens ARE allowed a shotgun on board a boat but it must be secured. Foreign boats can also bring in a shotgun which must be reported at check in. The weapon can stay on the boat if it can be locked up. Looking at documentation requirements and check in fees is interesting. Some places I would never visit because of the check in requirements but most places seem reasonable. The US is not so reasonable for non US boats. In some cases, like WA state, a $300ish fee must be paid OR a licensed pilot has to be on the boat. UNLESS, the non US boat is Canadian. The Waa Hoos in WA wanted to provide income to the Pilots or generate some tax revenue from the non US boats but they knew it would have been very stupid to charge the Canadians living next door. Checking back into the US is kinda a pain for US citizens as well.

While at sea, a boat must follow the law of it's documented country which is goodness I guess. :laughing: So a US citizen can take whatever weapon they want on the boat. The catch is that they must REGISTER that weapon when leaving the US so it can be legally brought back into the US. I figure if we ever do manage to buy the boat we are dreaming off to take the trips we want to take, if we took a weapon it would a cheap, shotgun from WallyWorld. Our first trips would be to the Bahamas and Canada and both places seem to be very safe. Well, those Canadians have some people wearing some really strange hats and using thick, scary glasses. I would not bother with a weapon. Other places would require a different calculation.

Later,
Dan