detained

next stop was veraval, a fishing town close to the pakistani border. to us the dirtiest place on earth. Again a place where people were good to us and very friendly and helpful but one that we could not enjoy much because of the dirt and in this particular harbor because of the rats. turns out we were probably the only sailboats that had ever called at this port. as such we were the novelty and everyone lined up to see us. We felt like astronauts in a different planet.


after formalities were out of the way we thought we could go out of the port to explore and get our badly needed diesel and water. imagine our surprise when we were told that we could not go out and were in fact detained. we actually did not have visas for india because we never intended to cruise around this country. our visit to this country was a result of our new route to avoid pirates and when we decided on this route we could not get the needed visas, so we simply decided to sail north and only stop in emergencies only. of course our idea of emergency stops for diesel and water is not necessarily shared by the indian authorities who thought we were probably terrorists because we were entering their waters and harbors without proper documentation…. so after intense questioning and a brutal and very detailed search of the boat by over 30 men, we were simply detained on board for two days next to a horrendous wall full of people just looking at us and sadly spitting some red stuff over our boats… but at the end, they somehow realized we meant no harm and were really there only for water and diesel and released us and allowed us to continue our way. they of course escorted us out of the port to get our water and diesel. With that on board we were happy to continue on and leave india all together. sadly we left with a bad impression. The people are actually extremely nice and helpful. it is the system and especially the filth we could not stand….

the adventure started

we left the peaceful waters of the maldives early one morning with little wind and motor sailed nicely for almost 24 hours. after this the winds started to pick up and blow stronger from the north, something we ended up having for the entire rest of the trip until muscat. but what was unbelievable is that sometimes we actually had to sail west, and when we did, the winds came form the west as well… so we gave up. The direction seemed to be coming from wherever we wanted to go… so we patiently tacked our way up the indian coast. on the way we had a very scary encounter with a big ship at night and with no lights… our hearts were beating like crazy… how to know if this is not a mother ship of the pirates, or simply another vessel just as scared of them as we are simply trying to sail across safely??? well we never knew. and the same happened with every single fisherman that approached us. It is impossible to determine who they are and their intentions. so for the entire trip we were stressed and scared.

to top this situation off our water maker broke, so now we had no fresh water on board and we now needed to make more frequent stops in ports just to fill up our water tank. with this new need we decided to stop in malpe a fishing village in india.


we had a very nice welcome by all the people we saw and were able to get diesel and water and some food in order to continue north, but generally our first impression form this country, which by the way only deteriorated as we moved north was of disappointment of how filthy everything was. maybe we were simply unlucky and stopped at the dirties places of india or maybe india is in fact dirty all over. Whatever it is, we were shocked of the living conditions.

trying to be invisible

first a little history on pirates. apparently somali pirates started operating many years ago in order to protect their waters, coasts and their fishing industry. nowadays they continue to commit such crimes because the activity has become very lucrative. in recent years somali pirates have attacked hundreds of vessels in the arabian sea/indian ocean region, most of them are commercial ships.



around 2005 the attacks concentrated on the area of the gulf of aden and so the convoys were formed around these waters (around 700 nautical miles). unfortunately over the last few years the pirates have hijacked mother vessels as big as huge freighters and they now operate way off their coast making the entire arabian sea a real threat for attacks. therefore the danger area is now over 2000 miles. also, smaller vessels such as sailboats have become a target in recent years. this year alone we became aware of three attacks to small yachts. One resulted in all 4 on board killed. Other attack was unsuccessful because the yacht had hired and was sailing with their own escort and security, and the last resulted in all 7 on board hijacked. Devastating news for the entire sailing community. this year alone, and only for the last three months the internet posts alarming figures: the total somali pirate attacks and incidents is 107, this means there has been at least one attack every day!!! The pirates have taken 309 hostages and have killed 7 victims. We read they currently have 26 vessels hijacked and the number of hostages under their custody is over 540

we found ourselves in the maldives with this information and such a vast area of dangerous ocean ahead of us. We were too late in the season to change our route and go through south africa so we decided to sail north as we had planned through the red sea and mediterranean but we decided we just could not be spotted by pirates. So we thought the best strategy was to be invisible to them. We figured that if we were seen we might be a target and could never live with the thought of having risked our lives just because we decided to go sailing… . being invisible means sailing through a route we though was safer and away from the reported attacks, radio silence to avoid being heard and picked up by near by vessels, having low or no lights at all at night, and even no sails up during the day. This was very challenging though and it is easier said than done, but we did try to do as much as possible to be under radar for the most part of this journey.


with the decision made, we started plotting all the attacks and we literally saw the map screen being filled up with dots (black for january attacks and red for february. Note this chart does not even include the march attacks which we plotted on the GPS and not on the computer) with no real safe gap for us to sail through… the only possible route was to sail north parallel to the indian coast up to pakistan and from there border the coasts of oman and yemen until arriving in the red sea (the route we did is in green).



this sounds a whole lot easier than what it actually was…. Sailing north meant going against the prevailing winds at terribly slow progress while forcing the engine, spending too much on diesel and sailing even more time and miles but never in the right direction. In addition india was never in our sailing plans. the entire new route changed from an originally planned 1000 miles to almost 3000. all our tentative dates were significantly pushed back, but not so much that we missed a reasonable weather window for the red sea and later for the atlantic crossing.. so this meant more days at sea with harsh wind conditions and fewer ports to rest.


to top this not so great prospect route our convoy of originally 30 boats disintegrated to only a few until we actually sailed with only one other boat all through the coast of india…. this was a very challenging experience. We are simply not used to sailing with other boats.

during our entire crossing through pirate waters we heard a total of five distress calls on the VHF radio; we sailed an estimate of 3300 nautical miles; we were visited by one helicopter off the coast of pakistan, one jetfighter off the coast of iran and one coastguard plane off the coast of india.

we never saw a military vessel from the coalition forces at sea. we did see a few of them in the port in oman. but even if we had seen one while sailing, we were warned in advance that they cannot do much to potect or defend us. they are there to help big ships and tell us that if we do sail these waters we are on our own. perhaps that is why the indian coastguard told us they admired our courage to sail these "pirate infested waters on our little boat"(actual words used by one officer).

despite the warnings these coallition forces did provide useful information to us throughout the journey of the positions of the pirate attacks which we plotted daily. on this same frequency we reported back to them our GPS positions. i am still not sure why, but it somehow gave a false sense of security to know that some authority knew were we where...

the most pure and kind people on earth

maldives is a wonderful place but also a bit expensive to sail around. We did not have much time and only stayed in one island. few other sailors do sail around to other islands with a one-month cruising permit that can be bought for around 700 USD. In addition we were informed that for each anchorage there is also a fee of 5 USD per night plus an additional 15 USD per person on board. there are also many restricted places for sailboats, making sailing here a little complicated; but I imagine this is good in order to preserve the beauty and nature of the place. so after analyzing our finances and specially seeing the little time we had, we only stayed in this north island called ulligamo. this place is unique. it has a court house (more like a room), a school, three small convenience stores, an immigration office and a total of 487 inhabitants. the water is clear and the beaches are very pretty, however we did not spend the majority of our time snorkeling or exploring the sea here. we instead spent our time with the most charming asset of the place: the people that live here. we have never met such pure and simple persons (and we say this in the most positive way possible). it seemed to us none of them were tainted by civilization. they were happy to share with us stories and simply laugh and not expect anything in return. we really had a great time with them. sadly it was the men only, for some reason we did not share much with the women; in fact, we did not see them much outside. something about their religion that we still do not understand much.


besides the locals, we also spent a lot of time with the other sailors. this was the meeting point for a convoy we joined to sail together with 30 other sailboats for the rest of the indian ocean. so here we planned how to move forward through pirate infested waters…. it was the beginning of the convoy experience and also the end of the joyful sailing we had known until so far……

moving on...

it took us a while to leave sri lanka. first we liked this country and its people so much (not to mention the food which I particularly enjoyed) that we found it hard to lift anchors and leave. second, there was really bad weather and very strong winds funneling between india and sri lanka so we had to wait for several days for this low pressure to clear. once it did, or so we thought, we left galle harbor towards the maldives. turns out the bad weather was still with us and the seas were very big, so we had a rough passage for the first couple of days. after that, the skies cleared up and we were able to enjoy the remaining days until we arrived in paradise.