We're out of the Indian Ocean high risk pirate area. Main deck walks resume tomorrow.
Shortly before leaving, a friend asked, “How much ransom do you want to pay?” The question was half meant as a joke, although it nagged at me through the Red Sea, Gulf of Aden, Arabian Sea and Indian Ocean. Thankfully I didn't have to find out.
Below is a link to the NATO Shipping Centre; it makes for sobering reading.
I knew the risk. My previous round-the-world booking was abruptly cancelled after the vessel was attacked off Somalia. See my July, 2009, posting:
trainsandboatsandplanesandtheoddbus.blogspot.com/2009/07/change-of-plans_19.html
Boularibank had been attacked once before. As I researched other possibilities, another shipping line first asked passengers to sign liability waivers for pirate areas. Then, earlier this year, the line simply stopped carrying them between the Mediterranean and Singapore.
CMA CGM did not ask me to sign a pirate waiver. As defence, it seems largely to depend on 'best management practices' (do business schools have piracy courses?), high speed and high freeboard for its larger, faster vessels.
Four hundred years ago, Thomas Fuller declared:
"He that will not sail till all dangers are over, must never put to sea." (Quoted in The Traveller's Oracle or Maxims for Locomotion William Kitchiner 1827)
