Expedition ship Phoenicia sails into the pirate zoneSafe travels!
(Sail World)
The Phoenicia Expedition, Captained by Philip Beale, an English ex-Navy sailor, is attempting to recreate the first circumnavigation of Africa, accomplished by Phoenician mariners in 600BC, in a replica Phoenician/Mediterranean vessel, called, appropriately enough, Phoenicia. They have just completed a four day sail from Hodeidah on the Red Sea coast of Yemen to Aden on the southern coast.
The passage of 270 nautical miles ended with the ship anchored securely at the inner harbour, Aden, and has has brought Phoenicia to the start point for launching Phase 2 of the expedition to circumnavigate Africa with prevailing winds and currents at the end of August 2009.
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Here are some exerpts from Philip Beale's account of their journey:
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Apart from the usual sailing routines of watch keeping (lookouts, pumping bilges, helming,adjusting the sails and meal preparations ) quite a bit of time has been spent on anti-piracy measures.
So we have wrapped the ship’s rails with barbed wire, razor blades, fire hoses and have molotov cocktails at the ready to throw at the pirates. Well okay, we haven’t actually done that and we have resisted offers of AK47’s (on sale foe $10 each in Hodiedah) to protect us, believing that if the pirates really want to come on board there is not much we can do to stop them- such is the low free-board of the ship and our relatively slow speed.
Our basic plan is to stay close to the Yemeni shore, darken ship at night and keep a low profile, i.e. no radar and VHF. We have a sonic device on board which may help to delay any attack while we would then alert the authorities to the situation be satellite phone.
We are in frequent contact with the local coalition forces out here as well as our security advisers at Drum Cussac, in Poole, England. We expect to pass the through Bab el Mandeb, the approach to the Gulf of Aden, tonight which is probably better from an anti-piracy point of view.
We expect it to be a bit tense as we pass through the strait as there are numerous fishing boats in the area as well as reports of vessels involved in smuggling people from Eritrea into Yemen. We are looking forward to being in Aden for the weekend-pirates permitting.
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More on their sonic ray-gun defense shield and additional background are here.