Fwd: Pirate tactics

I'm posting here a very interesting email I've received from my friend Matt, who's at the moment on his way from Bali to Madagascar.


-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Pirate tactics
Date: Mon, 1 Oct 2012 14:25:08 +0100
From: Matt Steadman

I've spoken to lots of people about the pirates, including a few who were
stopped and robbed on their passage through the Red Sea. There are far more
attacks that those which make the headlines. Some yottie getting robbed a
bit on the high seas - and no nice pix - isn't headline news. The Chandlers
got kidnapped but that's rarer, it seems. More common is just a quick
working over, take any cash, computers and so on. This doesn't make the
headlines, or even if it does, it doesn't make the international headlines.
It's only when the people to whom i spoke came to report their attack that
they saw how many attacks there had been - several every week.

The previous feeling was that there was "safety in numbers" and hence
yotties would band together in flotillas to make a passage to the Red Sea. I
know one or two who have done this in the past few years. But things have
changed. More recently it seems groups are easier to target, and pirates
know that they don't much help each other if one gets attacked - it's every
boat for themselves - the others thank their lucky stars and keep going.

The round the world Blue Water Rally went bust because of the Somali-based
pirate issue. Their route was all around Thailand, india and then Med via
Suez... and the 2011-2012 departure only attracted one or two entrants. So
the Blue Water Rally is now just an unofficial bunch of pals, of which
Karacool is one, and which prolly won't go round the world.

A friend in the City reports that pirates have been seeking proper funding
with CV's and so on - £20m gets a proper set up with a tooled-up mothership
and ten or so attack boats to send over the horizon. This means that an
attack could happen almost anywhere in the Indian Ocean - the Chalmers were
kidnapped over 1000 miles south of the Horn of Africa, but that's a few
years ago.

So the 2012 World Arc is possibly the riskiest gig at the moment - a massed
group hence easy to find, a published route, published sailing dates, and
diverse boats which won't/can't sail as a group. It says on the
worldcruising web site that they leave Cocos Keeling today on Monday 1st
October, next stop Mauritius 2/3 weeks later.

All WARC boats have yellowbrick - are they turned off in the indian Ocean?
I hope so. Lots have AIS - is that universally turned off by rally
participants? And they have VHF and a daily SSB net too - is all of this
going to stay silent? Not easy to enforce radio silence. But they'll
likely all have nav lights on, and anyone who wants to know where they are
can simply guess - they're 50-100 miles WSW of Cocos towards Mauritius right
now, a fleet of 20 or so boats spread out every 5-10 miles or so.

So if one were out there it might be best NOT to be part of the WARC group
(or any group), to be on a different route, at a different time, without
broadcasting position on AIS (which gives a position to other boats with 20
or so miles) or Yellowbrick devices (which give a position on Google Earth
website) or on anything.

Is an attack on boats headnig south around the Cape of Good Hope likely?
It's another 1200miles SE from Seychelles area so in that regard alone it's
less likely. 14th-15th of October would be almost moonless, and plenty of
targets NE of Mauritius. Hum. But realistically? - nah - I think it's far
too far for them and not an easy enough return, based on attacks to date,
and current/trending data. I hope so anyway.