Pirate Alley

Jay yawned and retreated below deck, with Carol behind him. It was March 8, 2005; they were three days out of Salalah, Oman, in the Gulf of Aden, a waterway that divides Africa and the Middle East, with Yemen to the north and Somalia to the south. End to end, the gulf, which connects to the Red Sea and serves as a vital passage for transporting Persian Gulf oil, stretches about 550 miles. Because it is such an essential waterway for commercial shipping, many different boats are drawn to the area, and the couple knew not all of them were friendly. Bluewater sailors like Jay and Carol – who had left Newport, Rhode Island, on an around-the world adventure in 1999 – referred to the area as “Pirate Alley.”

Carol got on the VHF radio. She hailed Rod and Becky Nowlin, their sailing partners aboard the Mahdi, a 45-foot Waterline cutter out of Whidbey Island, Washington. Becky was at the helm; her husband, Rod, was below deck, sleeping. They were a quarter mile south of Jay and Carol’s 47-foot steel-hulled sloop, the Gandalf, out of Gloucester. “I see them, too,” Becky radioed back. “Let’s keep an eye on them.”

Whenever possible, the Mahdi and the Gandalf sailed in the main shipping lanes. “We’re mice among elephants,” Jay told Carol. “In the shipping lanes, there’ll always be a big brother, some ship too big to worry about pirates. They’ll have a satellite telephone, a better radio, a bigger voice than us.”

Over the next hour, the strange boats drew closer and closer, but Jay didn’t seem too concerned. The boats were about 25 feet long, and each was crewed by three men in traditional Arab garb. When they passed a few hundred yards off the sterns of the Gandalf and the Mahdi, without so much as a glance in their direction, Carol wondered if she had overreacted. But as she watched the boats speed toward the southern horizon at about 25 knots, she knew something wasn’t right. There was nothing in that direction except Somalia; the Horn of Africa was approximately 150 miles away. There was no way either boat would get that far without refueling.

When the boats reappeared a few hours later, Carol wasn’t surprised. “They’re back,” she radioed the Mahdi. Wary of the transmission being intercepted, she was careful to use just one of the 25 watts she had available. One of the fishing boats passed several hundred yards off their bow, but the other came within a few hundred feet of the Gandalfand the Mahdi and spent a long, uncomfortable moment checking them out. Carol knew that fishing boats sometimes approached private vessels with the hope of trading a fish for cigarettes or alcohol. But these were fishing boats without fishing nets, and nobody held up a sample from the catch of the day.

The nearest boat eventually turned around and sped off to join the other; no words or gestures had been offered by anyone. It was unusual, but the weather was beautiful, the winds favorable, and the Mahdi and the Gandalf drew a little closer and passed the afternoon sailing west at 8 knots. By the time Carol took the helm late in the afternoon, they’d covered nearly 60 miles.

But as soon as Jay fell asleep again, she spied something on the western horizon. Through her binoculars, she could make out two boats. They were fishing boats similar to the two they had seen that morning – except these looked bigger and moved faster. And they were coming head-on. She woke Jay again, and he told her to radio the Mahdi.

As the Mahdi and the Gandalf closed the distance between them, Carol saw Jay growing more concerned. “These are not the same boats we saw this morning,” he told her. “Those boats had outboard motors; these guys have inboards.”

Also, the new boats each had four men aboard and large wooden poles or ribs extending vertically from the gunwales. Carol couldn’t figure out what they were used for, but from the look on Jay’s face, he could.

THE 21ST CENTURY IS WELL under way, but in some parts of the world, piracy is more prevalent than ever. Last year, 276 acts of piracy and armed robbery against ships were reported to the International Maritime Bureau, a division of the Paris-based International Chamber of Commerce.

While the overall number of incidents was down from 2004, when 329 were reported, the Gulf of Aden saw an increase in attacks, from eight to 10.

But David Pearl, a civilian maritime analyst with the US Office of Naval Intelligence, isn’t sure any of the piracy numbers are accurate. “Worldwide reporting has decreased,” he says, “but piracy is always underreported at unknown levels.” He wonders if the overall drop might be attributed more to the insurance industry, where certain thresholds mean that some incidents won’t be reported. On the other hand, several factors might be causing the uptick in reported attacks in the Gulf of Aden. “Maritime armed crime is always a reflection of what’s going on on land,” Pearl explains. Combine poor socioeconomic conditions with high shipping densities in low-security areas, and he says you’ve got all the ingredients for “maritime predatory behavior.” That describes the Gulf of Aden perfectly.

Of course the private yachts that sail through Pirate Alley are taking a known risk, but these days no vessel is completely safe. Last November, the Seabourn Spirit, a 440-foot cruise ship with more than 300 passengers and crew members aboard, was fired upon off the coast of Somalia. In 2005, even cargo ships and oil tankers were targeted by pirates.

JAY BARRY, 53, and Carol Martini, 55, had been together since 1990. They’d never sailed through Pirate Alley, but they knew its history and its reputation. Jay read the maritime bureau’s weekly piracy reports; boats were hit every year in the Gulf of Aden. Their goal was to get through the gulf as quickly and as inconspicuously as possible.

Why traverse Pirate Alley at all? “If you’re sailing around the world, there are only two ways to go, unless you’re going to carry the boat over the dirt,” Jay says. Sailors working west from the Indian Ocean must either go all the way around the southern tip of Africa, through the tempestuous waters off the Cape of Good Hope, or take their chances in the Gulf of Aden.

Their voyage began in Newport in November 1999, and since then, they had sailed through some of the most dangerous waters on earth. Sailing the southern Caribbean, off the coast of Venezuela, was nerve-wracking; getting through the Strait of Malacca, separating Indonesia and Malaysia, was treacherous. But, so far, they’d been unmolested.

If they could just make it through Pirate Alley and into the Red Sea, the next leg of the journey, into the Mediterranean and then the Aegean, would be safer and easier.

“Carol n Jay,” as their email handle reads, were in the sixth year of what began as a three-year cruise around the world. In 1999, when they were both in their 40s, Jay, a Porsche mechanic, decided to sell his successful North Shore business and take the Gandalf, which he’d spent two years restoring, on a high-seas adventure. He asked Carol to join him.

A Harvard-trained obstetrician/ gynecologist, Carol had been working at Brigham and Women’s Hospital since 1984. She loved her job, but Jay, as Carol liked to say, had painted such a picture, she knew that it was time to go. The hospital granted her extended leave; Carol was sure that she would return to medicine and the house they shared in Gloucester.

On their extended sailing adventure, there were countless times when her doctoring helped save the day. Wherever they went, word spread quickly among yachties, ex-pats, and even local villagers. A boat carrying a mechanic and a medical doctor becomes very popular, very quickly. Carol and Jay were welcomed wherever they dropped anchor.

They were in Langkawi, Malaysia, for Christmas in 2003 when they met Rod and Becky Nowlin. The two couples made plans to meet the following Christmas in Thailand and kept in touch through e-mail and short-wave radio. Rod was a retired US Navy electrician. Jay admired him and respected his seamanship; he liked the way the Nowlins kept their boat in pristine shape. The Mahdi was launched in 1994 but looked to Jay as if she’d just been christened – he could tell the Nowlins were good people to sail with.

The choice of sailing partners was part science, part intuition. Crossing hundreds of miles of open ocean was dangerous and unpredictable; it was important to choose partners with boats similar in size and speed, and just as important that the sailors aboard those boats were people you could depend on for anything, including your life.

BACK ON THE GULF OF ADEN, the two new fishing boats came within a few hundred yards of the Gandalf and the Mahdi and then separated, one headed for the Mahdi’s stern, the other toward the Gandalf’s bow. Jay looked around and saw no other ships in any direction. Neither he nor Carol said anything. They understood what was happening.

Two of the men on the boat closing in on the Gandalf climbed onto the portside gunwales; they each wrapped one arm around the large ribs. In their free hands, they held automatic weapons.

Without warning, one of the boats began firng at the Mahdi. A second later, the other opened fire on the Gandalf. The first shot shattered the teak handle of a broom Jay had just bought in Thailand. He had only paid a couple of dollars for it but liked how the long handle allowed him to clean mud from the anchor chain. Another bullet hit the mast, and a third ricocheted off the deck. Soon, bullets were flying everywhere. It sounded like fireworks going off all around them. Jay yelled for Carol to get below deck and call for help. When the second shot went clear through the Gandalf’s 9-inch-thick spruce mast, Jay thought about what it would have done to him or Carol if it had hit them instead. Wouldn’t pirates fire a warning shot or issue an ultimatum before it turned deadly? Many boats even had dummy safes, with just enough cash and valuables to satisfy potential pirates. But this wasn’t unfolding in a way that made that kind of planning useful. These guys were shooting to kill. As the boat neared the Gandalf’s bow, Carol realized that the ribs the men were holding on to were used to board other vessels. The boats were retrofitted for piracy.

After another bullet burst through their inflatable rubber dinghy, Jay looked toward the Mahdi. Rod had pulled out his shotgun and was firing back into the other boat. Jay was relieved; he knew there was a 12-gauge and plenty of buckshot aboard the Mahdi.

The pirates stopped shooting, and their driver took cover behind the steering console. Rod fired three more blasts, and the pirates’ engine started to smoke. Rod turned toward the Gandalf, about 100 feet away, just in time to see Jay ram the other boat. The steel-hulled Gandalf almost cut it in half; the pirates’ boat nearly capsized. But there was no time to celebrate. While Jay had been concentrating on the boat off his bow, the other boat – the one Rod had been firing at – pulled up to his stern. As two men stepped on to their bow and prepared to board the Gandalf, Rod opened fire from the Mahdi and shot them both. They tumbled to the deck of their boat in a heap. As the driver veered off, Rod shot him, too.

The Mahdi and the Gandalf took off, heading west at their top speed, nearly 9 knots. When they were a half-mile from the pirates’ boats, Jay told Carol to grab their disposable camera. They kept it handy for interesting marine life or for when they needed photographic evidence of a bump or scrape from another vessel. It came in handy now, too. Jay snapped a photo of the disabled boats as they faded into the distance. Through the binoculars, he could see that they were drifting, but neither appeared in danger of sinking.

They were 30 miles out at sea; no land was visible in any direction. But neither Jay nor Rod gave a thought to rescuing the men who meant to kill, kidnap, or rob them. The Mahdi had been shot at least three times, the Gandalf, 14. This was Pirate Alley. Jay and Rod had no compassion for their assailants, who’d shown them none. Observing the law of the sea, the Gandalf and the Mahdi sailed away.

Around midnight, they pulled into Aden, Yemen, and reported the incident, which had taken place at 5 p.m. local time. They filed reports with the Yemenite navy, the Yemenite coast guard, and the local Aden port authority, giving the exact coordinates of where it happened. Within days, they also notifi ed the US Navy’s 5th Fleet headquarters in Bahrain, the US Embassy in Bahrain, and the US State Department in Washington.

IN JANUARY, 10 MONTHS and 7,000 miles from Pirate Alley, “Carol n Jay” returned to the United States for the first time since 1999. They sat in a waterfront restaurant in Newburyport and recalled the attack. A glass of white wine in one hand, a Sharpie in the other, Carol leaned over a map spread out in front of them and traced their voyage around the world.

Jay flipped through a photo album, tallying up the Gandalf’s battle scars. “A great big dent in the deck. A bullet hole through the spinnaker track. Another clear through the mast. Five bullet holes in the dodger,” he said, referring to the canvas shield that protects the cockpit.

Jay shook his head when he saw photos of their deflted inflatable boat: “Fixing the dinghy. Trying to fix the dinghy. Trying to patch it, which didn’t work.” He compared their Avon inflatable to the family car; sailing around the world was wonderful, but they needed their dinghy to get ashore.

“Worst of all,” Jay winced, “this is my new teak broom handle. A bullet went right through it.” He pointed at another photograph. “I was not happy.”

Later this month, they’ll fly to Turkey, where the Gandalf is moored in the coastal town of Finike. They hope to catch up with the Nowlins, who are staying nearby in Marmaris. Jay and Carol plan to spend the rest of the year sailing the Mediterranean; their eight-year journey will come to an end next summer.

Neither couple has plans to ever again sail through Pirate Alley.

Jay sipped his beer and pointed to a photo of the canvas hood around the cockpit. “Poor dodger got destroyed.” It was, after all, built for protection from spray, not bullets.

James V. Horrigan is a writer based in Boston. E-mail him at jamesvhorrigan@comcast.net.