From Salalah to the Chinese War Lord

We left the Port of Salalah grateful to be away from the extorters that we had found there, and steered off into the night.

It was Marlene’s ‘Watch’ and Tony gave her a refresher on the complications of lights at night at sea. She already knew a lot from our voyage together many years ago when we sailed up the Atlantic, but even when you know all about relative bearings and different signals, it can still get confusing.

And so it did!

Later that evening Marlene was confronted with a complex set of lights with long green lights, orange lights and all sorts of echoes from the radar. There seemed to be a big ship ahead with a number of small craft around it which were all moving about, and then some of the lights flew vertically up into the air!

She called Tony who came up to try and make sense of what was going on.

It transpired that a large American Naval Ship was doing a practice night manoeuvre involving small high speedboats and helicopters. It seemed that Freedom was the focus of all the attention, and the helicopters were deployed all around while on the radio a commanding voice told all ships and vessels to stay away from this four mile exclusion zone.

Tony and Marlene were treated to a spectacular display of how a potential pirate would be identified, intercepted and then hopefully subdued.

After an hour the helicopters returned to the long green lights and ‘landed’, if that is the correct word for alighting onto a ship, and I suppose they all went off for a self congratulatory debrief while we sailed on into the night.

I slept through the whole spectacular display… exhaustion does that to you!

The next few days welded together as we sailed a close reach and we were just able to ‘lee-bow’ the effects of the strong southerly current. Then we had a day of calm before the wind settled in from the North-West as we entered the Trade Wind belt. Now was the time for some sailing to make up for all the frustrations of the Red Sea. At last we sailing in wind conditions that catamarans like, and Freedom did ‘like’.

We were about four hundred miles from the Somali Coast and further than that from the Island of Socotra when I saw ahead a vessel that looked like a Coast Guard Cutter. I turned away from it and it looked as though it had not seen us in the poor visibility, but almost when it had passed out of sight it spotted us and turned back towards us.

I immediately contacted the Pirate Co-Ordination Centre in Bahrain via the Satellite Phone

that we were being intercepted by a suspicious vessel. Soon after the UK branch of Piracy Surveillance contacted us and I was able to give them a fairly decent description of the vessel, but I had to curtail the call as the vessel was trying to contact us on VHF.

There was a lot of angry chatter in a language that I could not decipher, so I explained that if they wanted to talk to us then it would have to be in English.

The vessel had a large sign displayed down the side of it declaring that it was armed and that all vessels should keep their distance.

I could not decide at first if it was a coalition naval vessel from a poor nation, as it was decorated with rust, or if it was indeed a pirate vessel.

An angry Chinese voice shouted words that sounded like, “What are you doing here? This is Prohibited Area!”

“No it isn’t!” I replied. “This is Open Ocean!”

He screamed a tirade of which I only understood a part, along the lines of, “I have paid the Somali Nation for this Ocean and this fishing and I can shoot anyone who enter here. You must not be here. Where are you from?”

I answered, “You do not have the authority to ask that question.”

He shouted, “How many on board?”

I said, “You do not have the authority to ask that question!”

He screamed, “Where you going?”

I answered, “Seychelles!”

He didn’t seem to know where that was.

“I put warning shot across your bow!” He threatened.

I replied, “You do not have the right to fire warning shots. You do not have the right to shoot at us. We are free to pass this part of the Ocean. This is Open Ocean!”

All this while there were three Somalis with heavy machine guns positioning themselves into firing positions from the deck, as our relative positions changed. We were still motor-sailing resolutely south. He had a large Somali Bodyguard next to him, also armed with a heavy machine gun.

Now I could hear the satellite phone ringing, which must have been the pirate watch people from the UK wondering what was happening to us.

I don’t know what this little yellow megalomaniac was thinking but after a couple of more heated radio exchanges he shouted something and then “Out”. So we took the hint, shut up and headed away, while he continued his patrol of his curtain of long line fishing buoys which seemed to be strung out more or less East to West.

A curtain of death for the deep sea fish.

I can’t tell if my aggressive attitude was the right thing at the time, but I had the feeling that any sign of weakness would not be in our best interests. Why he didn’t shoot us up I don’t know, he certainly could have. Maybe he thought we were also armed. I am sure that he had other boats in his ‘fleet’ to pull up the long line buoys and to process the fish.

Chinese controlled Somali Gunship with possible large gun hidden below foredeck.

 

Later that evening I saw a radar echo returning along the track that he disappeared on, so we motored at high speed to avoid another encounter. He did have a radar antenna rotating, but didn’t seem to be using it. Marlene suggested that there was a monkey down by the keel whose job it was to turn the aerial array!

It seemed that he really thought he owned the Ocean, but how could he? He isn’t the Royal Navy of the Eighteen Hundreds!

I feel sure that if we had been a fishing boat he would have opened fire without hesitation. He seemed so aggressive that I should think that he will even challenge a warship if one should cross his path.

I hope that happens.

And I hope it is a Russian warship.

They know how to properly convince people like him just exactly who does hold the trump cards at sea.