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Old 09-03-2021, 13:15   #91
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Re: Hostile acts against cruisers underway in the Caribbean

wow, this carribean sound like war zone .

What is the incentive one visits the area apart from panama canal services ?

presume majority habitants are indians and africans ?

may need to upgrade my boat to go cape horn way.
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Old 09-03-2021, 14:18   #92
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Re: Hostile acts against cruisers underway in the Caribbean

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In short, these two steps have been 100% effective:

1. Block or delay entrance.
2. Make them aware you are armed and ready.

They must understand that kicking in the hatch will be their last act. Actual Caribbean cases are discussed and we met some of the cruisers involved in those.

The suggestions about security lights, strobes and alarm sirens are good but make sure the first two points are addressed first.
I like #1. Not a fan of #2.

My personal technique, which isn’t a big deal sharing online, since it can’t be circumvented, is to funnel intruders into a spot where you can see them but they can’t really see you.

Then you pick them off as they enter that area.

First, try not to let them gain access. If they do, no advertising of guns. No mention of guns, no brandishing of guns. Nothing.

Just the element of surprise.
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Old 09-03-2021, 16:22   #93
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Re: Hostile acts against cruisers underway in the Caribbean

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We already discussed the real issue: there is no valley of unicorns, bad people exist and even though they can mostly be avoided, there is a significant larger risk to encounter them while carefully cruising vs carefully living ashore. Those who will defend themselves are at a much lower risk than those who ask for mercy as evidenced by all the cases studied and it’s something that we need to deal with one way or another.

I absolutely disagree with your anti gun rhetoric because you can’t name a single country that doesn’t rely on guns for their safety. This should be the big clue that becoming proficient in their use and carrying them is the gold standard for security offshore as well as inshore where allowed. All you have to do inshore is comply with local laws and while Mexico is the toughest case to deal with, it is merely an inconvenience, not impossible.

Also, every country that I know allows their “good” citizens/residents to become sport shooters and gun owners; I’m pretty sure yours does as well.
I'm sorry you had friends who were attacked by pirates. I would submit that that significant emotional event may have forever altered your perception of the relative risk of being attacked by pirates as a cruiser. It's a vanishingly rare event, you probably have an orders of magnitude greater chance of dying by taking a leak over the side of your boat, getting hit on the head by a boom, having a heart attack or stroke, having a fire, running aground..... I unfortunately picked a lot of dead people out of the water in my Coast Guard career, there are lots of ways to die out there so no need to fixate on one of the much less likely.

I grew up in Alaska, owned guns all my life, and served (although as you rightly intimated perhaps my Coast Guard brethren weren't the best shots), so I'm no anti-gun zealot. With the absolute best of intentions, I would suggest that labeling any talk of alternatives to carrying guns as "anti gun rhetoric" is the kind of loaded language that turns what has been a remarkably civilized discussion up to now into thread that gets shut down and we all lose out on the discussion. There is a whole lot of room for grey when it comes to the appropriate use of guns. Smart well meaning people can and do disagree and what you or I see as self evident has plenty of evidence to the opposite. Just food for thought, again I'm pleasantly surprised at the useful level of discourse on this thread and hope we can keep it that way.
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Old 09-03-2021, 18:36   #94
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Re: Hostile acts against cruisers underway in the Caribbean

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Trigger happy cruisers? I don’t think they are legal gun owners, if they even exist. I haven’t met any in all the years cruising. Never heard nor read about even a single case where an innocent person was shot by a cruiser and very few cases where a pirate was shot.

We have locals coming by all the time, we never shoot them
I spent a couple years cruising in Central America and there was one example. From others in the anchorage (I came in a couple days later) the other cruisers heard gunfire in the late evening and saw a couple locals in the water (speculation is that might have been stealing a dinghy or maybe tried to board, but the guys were swimming and seems unlikely to have been armed). Someone said the cruiser shot one of the guys i the head while he was in the water. Corpse was floating the next day in the anchorage. The shooter picked up his anchor and left immediately and was not seen again by anyone communicating on the Net. I did not see this myself but the story was widely reported on the Southbound Net at the time. My impression was that this was a sobering event for the cruiser community. I never heard anyone defend the cruiser who shot the guy, but I think most folks were appalled.. Obviously, this would not make the newspapers or sailing rags--although I think Latitude 38 might have reported the story when it happened. it was quite a few years ago. This story and my own experiences in my years of cruising convinced me that carrying a firearm was more likely to result in problems than solutions.
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Old 09-03-2021, 19:14   #95
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Re: Hostile acts against cruisers underway in the Caribbean

[QUOTE=mvweebles;3355839]I delivered a 60 foot trawler yacht from Colon to Ft Lauderdale in March 2003. At the time there were either no unusual piracy issues off the Nicaraguan coast or I was unaware of them. On this passage, the conditions were predominantly NE winds and persistent Force 5/6 conditions and it was a struggle to make progress to the east. It was a bit of a grind even in a well found 60 footer. There was constant spray over the decks for 80% of the 3 day run to round Cuba. It would really suck on a sailboat. You may want to be mindful of whether you can actually lay the desired course to the east of San Andreas

I plan to do the run within the next year to bring my boat from Ensenada to Florida. This will be a more leisurely run (the above delivery was Newport Beach CA to Ft Lauderdale in 25 days with quick stop in Acapulco and another in Panama). I am gently coaxing my wife to warm to the idea and assembled the attached map of possible stops along the way to avoid more than a few nights at sea at any one run.

Although piracy off Nicaragua has been quieter in recent few years, the severity of the attacks were disturbing enough that I will avoid the area at all costs. As BelizeSailor noted, the pangas have gone great distances - almost to San Andreas, 100nms offshore.

Depending on weather, we may go east of Cuba with a stop in Port Antonio Jamaica instead of the Yucatan Channel. It adds about 400 nms. It would have been a better choice for my 2003 run.

Good luck. Please update us!

Peter Attachment 233725[/QUOTE

Peter, in the 30 years that I sailed South from New England, I always took the Windward passage and stopped in Port Antonio, Jamaica Some of the best times and people to be found in Jamaica. I used to anchor off the banana docks, then the marina was built and I stayed there for months My friends owned the Bonnie View at the top of the mountain back then, and I would bring horse tack down from the USA for their stable. I cut many of the horseback riding trails up there back in the 70's and 80's. I think it was 88' when I was out checking a
trail when a 4.0 earthquake hit. Now THAT was some horse ride I tell ya! Changed my shorts when I got back!

Anyway, Port Antonio will always hold great memories for me. Now a days I hear most of it was bought up by a rich guy who controls most of the beach and town areas/businesses. I preferred the good old days staying at Mother Beck's beach cottages and eating dinner in the movie theater!
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Old 09-03-2021, 19:25   #96
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Re: Hostile acts against cruisers underway in the Caribbean

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Don't be a tease, give us all of the worst five.
Torres Strait SUCKED for me.....but only once

Windward Passage is normally a washing machine on a good passage
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Old 09-03-2021, 19:36   #97
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Re: Hostile acts against cruisers underway in the Caribbean

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Trigger happy cruisers? I don’t think they are legal gun owners, if they even exist. I haven’t met any in all the years cruising. Never heard nor read about even a single case where an innocent person was shot by a cruiser and very few cases where a pirate was shot.

We have locals coming by all the time, we never shoot them
I spent a couple years in Central America and there were two instances that were noted in the cruising community where a cruiser shot a guy dead who may have been trying to get his dinghy. From others in the anchorage (I came in a couple days later) the other cruisers heard gun fire in the late evening and saw a couple locals in the water (speculation is that might have been stealing a dinghy). Corpse was floating the next day The gun guy picked up his anchor and left in the middle of the night and was not seen again. I did not see this myself.
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Old 09-03-2021, 19:59   #98
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Re: Hostile acts against cruisers underway in the Caribbean

Now if that cruiser had used a paintball gun instead on the possible dinghy thief, the whole town would have known who it was in the morning by the welts all over the guy! Escalation of Force in the magnitude necessary folks. A gun is most often the last resort as the use of one is life changing for those involved.
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Old 10-03-2021, 18:46   #99
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Re: Hostile acts against cruisers underway in the Caribbean

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I'm sorry you had friends who were attacked by pirates. I would submit that that significant emotional event may have forever altered your perception of the relative risk of being attacked by pirates as a cruiser. It's a vanishingly rare event, you probably have an orders of magnitude greater chance of dying by taking a leak over the side of your boat, getting hit on the head by a boom, having a heart attack or stroke, having a fire, running aground..... I unfortunately picked a lot of dead people out of the water in my Coast Guard career, there are lots of ways to die out there so no need to fixate on one of the much less likely.

I grew up in Alaska, owned guns all my life, and served (although as you rightly intimated perhaps my Coast Guard brethren weren't the best shots), so I'm no anti-gun zealot. With the absolute best of intentions, I would suggest that labeling any talk of alternatives to carrying guns as "anti gun rhetoric" is the kind of loaded language that turns what has been a remarkably civilized discussion up to now into thread that gets shut down and we all lose out on the discussion. There is a whole lot of room for grey when it comes to the appropriate use of guns. Smart well meaning people can and do disagree and what you or I see as self evident has plenty of evidence to the opposite. Just food for thought, again I'm pleasantly surprised at the useful level of discourse on this thread and hope we can keep it that way.
I’m afraid you have been misinformed, it is prevalent, not rare at all. You can simply lookup the events on the safety and security net. We know of 6 cruisers killed, one stabbed and left for dead but barely survived personally. Then there are at least a dozen friends who were attacked and had everything taken but survived. One was boarded by pirates twice within 1 hour, the 2nd party very pi$$ed off that everything was gone already.

In this period from 2003-today many more were attacked but we don’t know them personally.
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Old 10-03-2021, 20:36   #100
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Re: Hostile acts against cruisers underway in the Caribbean

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OK. Here is a true story: I was 80 miles out in the middle of the Gulf of Tehuanepec crossing (in flat calm!) under power. In the distance horizon behind us, we saw a panga running at high speed (do these guys ever go at any other speed?) toward us. I will admit I was frightened and went an got my flare gun and loaded it. They came speeding by us yelling something I could not understand (I speak some Spanish, but the noise was drowning him out) the guys circled back. I told my friend that they might be just scoping us out and that the next pass might be with weapons. Had I had a gun, I probably would have locked and loaded at this point. The panga came around again and slowed this time and the guys started yelling "Comida, comida". Oh, FOOD, the guys would like some food--OK they are fishing guys a long way from home in an area where you have to pick your weather very carefully even in a fast boat. I went down below and gathered some cookies and a bag of chips and tossed it to them. They took off in another circle and made another slow pass --this time they tossed a gorgeous fresh mahi mahi in our boat before jetting off into the horizon. I think you need to stay away from places of known danger (the reef off Honduras is one I avoid) but folks who think that carrying a weapon is a good idea have watched too many movies. You can imagine all the things that could have gone wrong here for everyone involved and there are stories that it has happened at the hands of trigger happy cruisers. Put yourself in this story and think about it.
Pete,
I have heard many stories like this. When you are in your home country you are generally very good at detecting the vibe around you. It is your culture. When you are in foreign cultures your built in threat radar is just not that good and part of maintaining safety is to understand this fact.
I know boats chased down while under way in Indonesia by open boats full of people wearing balaclavas covering their faces. They totally felt threatened and got weapons ready. Fishermen in Indonesia wear the face covers to keep the sun off their face and head. They wanted water.

Choosing your cruising and passage routes with reasonable saftey in mind is far more important than how well armed you are. It is pretty dubious for people to state how dangerous they believe where they choose to sail in is, knowing that they choose year after year to stay there. Odd calculus,
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Old 11-03-2021, 06:08   #101
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Re: Hostile acts against cruisers underway in the Caribbean

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I’m afraid you have been misinformed, it is prevalent, not rare at all. You can simply lookup the events on the safety and security net. We know of 6 cruisers killed, one stabbed and left for dead but barely survived personally. Then there are at least a dozen friends who were attacked and had everything taken but survived. One was boarded by pirates twice within 1 hour, the 2nd party very pi$$ed off that everything was gone already.

In this period from 2003-today many more were attacked but we don’t know them personally.
First off, more than 6 cruisers will be killed this year while taking a leak over the side of their boat. But for some reason we're not having passionate discussions about the evils of urinating and the extreme measures we should do to protect against death while doing so

So 6 a year is rare. But it sounds like if you're talking about the period 2003 to today, 6 people, that's an average of one person every 3 years? That's exceedingly rare as a cause of death at sea in my book, again considering how many dead people I picked up out of the water as just one of hundreds of SAR pilots just in the U.S., people who died from every reason but piracy. If I'm misinformed though and we're seeing even 6 cruisers a year (not including Somalia/Gulf of Aden because that's just asking for it) dying of piracy I'd love to see the specific list of the six in 2020, 2019, and 2018 just for a start. I did a scan on safety and security net, I'm just not seeing those kind of numbers.

Again, though, my point was that labeling anyone we disagree with as "anti-gun rhetoric" is needlessly inflammatory and makes the conversation less useful and more likely to head off in a destructive direction. Realizing that even those we disagree with on this point are generally smart, well meaning people who simply don't see things the same way as we do and might have interesting points, on the other hand, leads to potential intellectual growth or at least interesting conversation.
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Old 11-03-2021, 06:58   #102
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Re: Hostile acts against cruisers underway in the Caribbean

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First off, more than 6 cruisers will be killed this year while taking a leak over the side of their boat. But for some reason we're not having passionate discussions about the evils of urinating and the extreme measures we should do to protect against death while doing so

So 6 a year is rare. But it sounds like if you're talking about the period 2003 to today, 6 people, that's an average of one person every 3 years? That's exceedingly rare as a cause of death at sea in my book, again considering how many dead people I picked up out of the water as just one of hundreds of SAR pilots just in the U.S., people who died from every reason but piracy. If I'm misinformed though and we're seeing even 6 cruisers a year (not including Somalia/Gulf of Aden because that's just asking for it) dying of piracy I'd love to see the specific list of the six in 2020, 2019, and 2018 just for a start. I did a scan on safety and security net, I'm just not seeing those kind of numbers.

Again, though, my point was that labeling anyone we disagree with as "anti-gun rhetoric" is needlessly inflammatory and makes the conversation less useful and more likely to head off in a destructive direction. Realizing that even those we disagree with on this point are generally smart, well meaning people who simply don't see things the same way as we do and might have interesting points, on the other hand, leads to potential intellectual growth or at least interesting conversation.
So how many of your friends have been killed, murdered, raped from 2003 to now? If you think 6 is normal, a small number even, then something is wrong and the discussion silly. Apart from war zones I think it really is a shockingly huge number.

You seem to act like this is all that happened?! Did you not read that this was just the cases among our friends?
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Old 11-03-2021, 10:31   #103
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Re: Hostile acts against cruisers underway in the Caribbean

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So how many of your friends have been killed, murdered, raped from 2003 to now? If you think 6 is normal, a small number even, then something is wrong and the discussion silly. Apart from war zones I think it really is a shockingly huge number.

You seem to act like this is all that happened?! Did you not read that this was just the cases among our friends?
I get that this personally impacted you and again am not trying to minimize that in any way. You've had the horrible misfortune to personally know several victims of this very rare event. I've had several friends die of a rare cancer that ranks right down there on the list of things that could kill an American my age with the chances of being killed by pirates as a cruiser in the Caribbean. I won't lie to you, I'm irrationally concerned about this specific form of cancer. To the point I researched it and changed my diet and supplement to avoid it. If someone told me that this cancer was indeed rare, pointed out that I was extrapolating based on my personal experience, and that perhaps I would be better served to lose a couple pounds which would address at least 20 more common causes of death, it wouldn't make me lose my irrational concern. But I do realize how irrational it is. So I wouldn't tell them they were engaging in "anti cancer prevention rhetoric" and I certainly hope I wouldn't ask them how many of their friends had died of that cancer since 2003 and if they thought the number of my friends who had died of it was normal (it isn't normal, it's just bad luck). Instead I might even take the persons advice, because after all, it wouldn't hurt me to lose a couple pounds.

So absent any data on how many people actually were killed by pirates in the Caribbean in 2020, 2019, 2018, heck any specific year with specific numbers, the rational course is to treat it like the exceedingly rare event it is. And advise people concerned about their safety to focus on things like wearing life jackets, which will save them from about 20 more common causes of death of cruisers in the Caribbean. Or to use the toilet on their boat or a bucket instead of peeing over the side. And if someone comes back with an alternate safe way to pee over the side I'm not going to accuse them of "anti marine sanitation device rhetoric", even though they probably won't convince me to stop using my toilet on my boat. I'll listen to them because they may have an interesting alternate perspective. That's all.
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Old 15-03-2021, 04:33   #104
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Re: Hostile acts against cruisers underway in the Caribbean

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Old 16-03-2021, 04:57   #105
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Re: Hostile acts against cruisers underway in the Caribbean

Forgot to add to my post about Bear Spray. (policeman died from it at the Capital) There is an insert in to the Orion flare gun that accepts
357 cal.bullet (and other cals). Only one shot at a time. Remember ammunition is also illegal if not declared. Hide both well.
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