Day 22: Leaving the pirate alley
Today we are leaving the military controlled area, also known as high risk area or pirate alley. As we invested quite some time and efforts considering back and forth whether or not sailing through this area, I wanted to take the opportunity to sum up our views:
In our opinion it wasn’t coincidence, that our passage from the Maldives to the Red Sea went smoothly and secure. The Anti-Pirate Coalition is doing an amazing job in this area. A few nations are jointly and systematically ensuring security in a narrow corridor through the Golf of Aden into the Red Sea. The corridor, IRTC, together with the extending shipping lanes has an approximate length of 650 nm and is strongly used. During our 5 day transit we have seen hundreds of ships within the corridor, mostly tankers and freighters, but also yachts and cruise ships. Every day a navy air craft flew over us at least once, seeking radio contact and asking for the conditions on board. War ships we only saw one in real life and none on the AIS, which for two reasons make sense: Firstly, transmission of AIS signals would be contra produktiv informing pirates about the location and absence of war ships. Secondly, war ships patrolling northerly or southerly outside of the corridor is more effective in comparison to going in between the heavy traffic in the lanes. There can be no doubt about the abundance of war ships, we heard them daily multiple times on channel 16 or 8 radioing with freighters. Also reception of high distance AIS targets might have been related to the presence of ships or air crafts and usage of repeaters. For years, there haven’t been successful pirate attacks (also not against freighters) within the corridor, whereas pirate attacks have been prevalent outside this area. For example, during 2017, there have been 11 reports of attempted or successful pirate attacks against freighters along the Somalian east cost, all of them outside the corridor. Most likely, piracy also within the IRTC would undergo a renaissance in case of the termination of the military mandate of the anti piracy coalition. However currently, the watchkeepers seem to control the corridor effectively due to systemic, continuous monitoring, 24/7 communication with transiting ships and their military presence.
Overall, piracy against sail boats is a topic discussed heavily and emotionally between cruisers. Of course, that’s no surprise, as pirate attacks are affecting the well being of crews and ships. However, a glance into the statistics tells that less than five cases of attempted or successful pirate attacks have been reported yearly in recent years. Defining theft not as piracy, but cases of unauthorised boarding and violent robbery. Finally, the risk assessment is lying in the hands of the captain of each vessel, who has to judge about the relevance of single, but terrible cases on his ship and crew. Under the same circumstances, we would be starting again on passage to the Red Sea. During the whole duration of three weeks in the high risk area, we felt safe.
Currently, we are sailing full speed northbound. The northerly winds have been switched on in the morning and are now blowing at 30 knots, again much more than forecasted. Moya is flying over the waves of the disturbed seas, without main sail, just going with genoa and jib. Weather in the Red Sea is challenging, indeed.
