Hello Again
Well as you can see we have made it safely through “Pirate Alley”. The yacht from Dubai arrived a little later than expected but that is cruising. When it came to departure there were only the two of us. That was Sunday 20th February. There was another boat in Salalah which was to come with us but decided to wait for friends to arrive who were still making the passage across the Indian Ocean. Also a couple of other boats had bypassed Salalah in a convoy they had joined in the Maldives and went straight on to AL Mukalla in Yemen. We heard about the American boat that was taken by the pirates as it was crossing the Indian Ocean, so we had several meetings with Wendy -the captain from the boat from Dubai ‘Selinaris’, and her crew, to plan our tactics on the next leg which was to Al Mukalla. There is a shipping corridor approximately 60nm off Salalah and runs down the coast of Yemen which is patrolled by the coalition warships, and here the ships form convoys to make safe passage to Bab el Mandeb – the entrance to the Red Sea. Being a yacht with a cruising speed between 5-6ks we are too slow to join the shipping convoy as a minimum of 12kts or more has to be maintained. However yachts are welcome to parallel the shipping corridor if they so choose. We decided to take the coastal route between 10 -20nm off the coast which is more direct, as we thought it would be more of a liability to be closer to the warships in the event of being captured by the pirates – which by the time we reached Al Mukalla we heard the sad news that the American yacht crew had been killed. Also the Yemen Coast Guard seem to have their pirate problem from the past pretty much under control. We employed the tactic of “stealth” as Alec puts it. During the daylight hours if we had the wind we sailed, or motored sailed and kept our speed up. At night we had no sails and no navigation lights. We became Seagull 1 and Seagull 2 as our call signs to each other, and never used Channel 16 for radio work. Every day we changed our ship to ship channel and we had predetermined waypoints which were numbered. Over the radio we never mentioned our departure point or destination. The first couple of nights which took us into Al Mukalla some 300nm down the coast were not too bad as we had a fading moon, but after that it was very dark. Even though we were only a very short distance apart we lost sight of each other at times and would put the radar on to check the others position. Seagull 1 which was ‘Selinaris’ decided to follow us and sat off our Port stern a few hundred yards away. We kept in tight formation. These are the sort of tactics most of the convoys have been taking as they cross the Indian Ocean and come down The Gulf of Aden. During the first night we heard one of the larger ships put out a mayday call reporting two small skiffs off his Port bow which thank goodness turned out to be a false alarm. His position was 60nm off Aden so it was well clear of us. We monitored Channel 16 all the time, and from time to time a Coalition Warship would put out a general call to all shipping in the area saying ‘please report any piracy or anything suspicious on Ch.16.’
Last night – Thursday 17th March - we motored into Suakin, the last slave-trading post in the world, and our check in Port for the Sudan. It lies just south of Port Sudan. The old town looks more like a movie set from a WW2 movie which has had the heart bombed out of it. In fact what has really happened is since Port Sudan was established as the main trading Port, much of Suakin has been abandoned and the buildings which were made of coral are now crumbling and deserted. They are now considered a tourist attraction and one is asked to pay to see them. We are anchored just off them so I have been able to take photos from the boat. 
