>Christmas greetings, Maurice! >When you have a minute, perhaps you'd like to share your thoughts >regarding pirates with members of the new Passagemaking List. You asked about pirates, and we certainly do have some opinions. Indeed, "what about pirates?", is probably the most often asked question we receive. To respond, we first need to agree on what we are talking about. We define pirates as armed bandits at sea who board a boat and steal it or its contents, sometimes resorting to physical violence. This subject comes up from time to time in the boatie press, and is sometimes reported upon and even sensationalised by the general and yachtie media. We can understand why some people are worried about pirates; some of the reported incidents are blood curdling. In contrast, our experience is that pirates are not a problem to yachties, or at least not one of significant proportion. Over the past few years, we have been through some of the waters where pirates are reputedly the fiercest; but we have never seen any. This includes the waters around Singapore, the Malacca Straits, The Solomon Islands, Papua New Guinea, and the sea between the Philippines, Indonesia, and Malaysia. We have only one yachtie acquaintance who was boarded by actual prates. In our opinion, your chances of winning the lotto are probably greater than our chances of being attacked by pirates. Don't misunderstand, there are certainly pirates out there, at least according to the international piracy prevention centre in Kuala Lumpur (Malaysia). But, they are not much interested in us. Most of their exploits concern boarding ships, stealing the payroll, or the cargo, or even the whole ship. Having said that, we are cautions. We usually ask the local head man if there are any "rascals" in his area. We anchor near police docks, and other similar government facilities. We ask local boaters about areas to be avoided, and usually get really good information from them about nice anchorages in the process. On the other hand, there are incidents of common thievery, just like there are everywhere on land; alas, some of these are perpetrated by other yachties, not just the locals. All the boats in the anchorage at Sandakan (Malaysia) while we were there lost outboards and other things that were inadequately fastened down. No "pirates" were involved, nobody was in danger; indeed, until the morning nobody even knew that they had been robbed. The police attributed it to impoverished Philippine immigrants that have entered the area illegally, searching for work. We believe that most of the losses were due to sloth...our friends did not bring their dinghies aboard or if they did they did not secure the attractive items normally stowed in their dinghies. We always bring our dinghy aboard and we have the outboard and the gas tank chained to the boat. We take the gas hose off and stow it. Most yachts do not have intrusion alarms...why not! Most people these days have alarms on their houses. We have alarms on AKAMA that have saved us from petty thievery twice. In both cases the alarm went off scaring away the intruders. We have a photo of the wet footprints of one intruder, showing where he entered and then jumped overboard when he was startled by the alarm. Alarms are cheap insurance and are most effective, just like they are on land. In the past three years we have lost to thievery only a fender and a fishing leader. We know a few yachties, and only a few, who are preoccupied with personal safety. They talk about their guns as if they were essential pieces of safety gear. In our experience, it is easy to get carried away with fear. Often local boats will approach us. And, we confess, we have been fearful at times about this at times. Inevitably, the "threat" was just idle curiosity, or the desire to trade with us. The worst incident we have experienced is a boat load of apparently unarmed men trying to extort an illegal "anchorage fee" from us; we simply refused to pay and left the area. We also know a few yachties who do their utmost to flash their wealth. One lady we know wears gold jewellery wherever she goes. We believe that this is an error. Compared to us, most locals are unbelievably poor (one might argue that their lifestyle is in some ways better though). This has to spawn some temptation. We try to blend in, wear simple clothes and no jewellery. Familiarity breeds contempt. So, we don't often stay in one anchorage long enough for potential thieves to scope us out and hatch a plan. We never invite locals aboard, despite repeated requests wherever we go. If we have to leave the boat we stow everything and lock it...so many cruisers just leave everything open. If we can we find another yachtie to keep an eye peeled. We think that piracy and other things that are deterrents to those who would otherwise be cruising need to be taken in context. It is a matter of realistic risk assessment. In one of our reports we wrote about this as follows. "Several of our correspondents have commented that what we are doing is dangerous or that we are courageous (a euphemism for crazy we suppose). The fact is, most of the time we don't believe that we are in any danger; and we've never felt we were in serious danger. We don't doubt that the risk associated with our lifestyle there is slightly greater than it would be if we were ensconced before the television set. This increased risk is the price we pay for the reward, being able to experience all these new places and cultures. But, we emphasize, the difference in risk is only slight. Perhaps the human reaction to danger is unduly magnified, some sort of leftover from the days when our ancestors lived in caves and had to instantly make the fight-or-flight decision, and a wrong decision brought death. But, while the risks for most of humanity these days are exceptionally low, the reaction remains primitive. The media reports mad cow and people stop eating beef, west Nile and people stop going out of doors, a terrorist attack on an airliner and people stop flying. In this spirit, we close this report with a quote from Sterling Hayden's autobiography, Wanderer. "[We are] enmeshed in the cancerous discipline of security. And in the worship of security we fling our lives beneath the wheels of routine, and before we know it our lives are gone." We welcome questions and will exchange emails with any one who writes. Our preferred address is nunas@gobot.com. We get a lot of emails and we are often in areas where there is no internet. So we are sometimes slow to reply, but we do try to reply to everyone...eventually. Anyone just seeking information about our voyages can find a bunch of reports and a few photos on our web site www.nunas.com. Best to all, Maurice & Louise-Ann Nunas M/Y AKAMA, Kadey-Krogen 48 Whaleback (currently near Auckland New Zealand) http://www.nunas.com http://members.rogers.com/waterworld/tnews_temp_113.html

Besides, most pirates can be found in repair yards! Keith __ Follow the latitudes so the temperature always exceeds your age. ----- Original Message ----- From: "Georgs Kolesnikovs" <georgs@trawlering.com> > > You asked about pirates, and we certainly do have some opinions. > Indeed, "what about pirates?", is probably the most often asked > question we receive.