Archive for April, 2011

End of 21st Season of Global Cruising

Friday, April 29th, 2011

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We are presently anchored at Koh Rang Yai, an island off the east coast of Phuket. Tomorrow we will move to Boat Lagoon Marina, just a couple of miles from here. Our 21st season of global cruising is now coming to an end.


This is only the second time during all these years that we are returning to a familiar place for our 3 months haul-out. The only time it has happened before was in 2004 when we returned to Deltaville in Virginia.

At the beginning of this season our plan was to end it in Turkey in the Mediterranean, where we started our international cruising in 1991, but the escalation of Somali piracy crashed that plan.

However, we are quite happy to be back in Phuket and, best of all, we know by previous experience most of the players in the shipyard and about things to do and not to do in Phuket in general. It is easy to return to a familiar place, see a previous blog.

We will now undertake the two major boat projects that we didn’t do last year: lay a new teak deck and pull out both masts for service.

Time for a vacation back home in Finland.

Impotent Piracy-fighting

Friday, April 22nd, 2011

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The actions of the international community with respect to the terror caused by Somali pirates are getting increasingly embarrasing. This post should actually be titled The Pirates are Winning, but I have already used that one (January 15).

A few weeks ago the Finnish warship Pohjanmaa captured 18 Somali pirates who had been trying to hi-jack a Singapore-registered cargo ship. The Somalis had been using a captured trawler, which was sunk.


Source: Puolustusvoimat

Yesterday the pirates were released without trial, safely on the coast of Somalia. They can now start over and participate in new attacks against innocent seafarers.

The pirates had spent two weeks in captivity aboard the warship, being well fed and given medical checks but EU Navfor, responsible for operation Atalanta, mentioned humanitarian considerations as reason for the release.

The term catch and release is familiar from game fishing, but obviously the idea can be practiced also in other ways.

Apparently no country was willing to start procedures for having the pirates tried in a court of law. Singapore seams to have been willing to take care of the Somalis, but it is believed that the EU countries refused to hand the pirates over as they could have been sentenced to capital punishment.

About a year ago the Russians, who probably couldn’t care less about such pussy-footing, just let the pirates, who previously had hi-jacked a Russian tanker, drifting in a small boat, without food, water or supplies, 300 nautical miles offshore. The pirates failed to reach the shore and evidently all died.

The incident raised some indignation in the press, but, interestingly, Somalia’s ambassador to Moscow, Mohammed Handule, denied that the Russians had acted improperly in the affair. “The Russian military showed they can act effectively so that not one crew member of the captured tanker was hurt. This is the most important thing,” he said according to the web site Rawstory.

The Russian approach is interesting, because they would clearly have had legal right to try the pirates back home, as they indeed had attacked a Russian ship. Maybe they just decided to save the taxpayers’ money;)

A few hundread years ago the pirates would probably just have been hung up from the yard arm and the bodies then fed to the sharks. Even horse thieves were promptly hanged in the nearest tree in the Wild West, not too long ago.

So what is to prefer, letting the crooks go loose, try them in a court where they risk being given the death sentence or take the law in your own hands? Or maybe they could start using Guantanamo again, just for this cause!

It doesn’t have to be any of those options, however. As the problem appears to be unwillingness by all countries to accept the cost of the procedures, we only need our decisionmakers to establish a fund for the financing of an international court of law to handle the matter. Alternatively the funds could be used for paying compensation to nations who accept to arrange trials, case by case.

So it will cost money, but of course. However, I’ve read somewhere that the present piracy situation in Somalia is costing the commercal shipping alone 9 billion USD a year.

According to Martin Scheinin, United Nation’s Special Rapporteur on human rights and counter-terrorism, there are no provisions of international law that would prevent the pirates to be taken to Finland (and I assume any other of the EU or Nato countries either).

Releasing the Somali pirates is a signal that piracy is an activity that one can get away with, says Scheinin according to Finnish YLE News. The prescense of the warships has a preventive effect only as long as the actions of the naval forces are credible. Therefore it is vital that all participating countries are willing to bring in pirates to be sentenced.

I feel sorry for Mika Raunu, the master of the Pohjanmaa. After he and his crew did a great job capturing the bandits, they first had to baby-sit them and then make sure the hoodloms got ashore safe and with dry feet.

I’m sure there is a lot of celebration going on right now all over Somalia.

True Finns vs. Finland-Swedes

Wednesday, April 20th, 2011

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The above became head-line news all over the globe. I’m not too concerned about Portugals finances. But I’m amazed that a populist political party gets this response in Finland, even though they want to get rid of much of the nation’s identity.

Fellow cruisers have often wondered why I speak Swedish although I am from Finland. Suddenly, I had an urge to tell you more about it.

The story turned out a bit too long for this on-line blog, which should be for shorter bursts, so I put it on the off-line blog, read the full story

Photoshopping

Monday, April 18th, 2011

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During a week at anchor I have had time to refresh my Photoshop-skills. I decided to make a collage as an illustration of the subject of this year: piracy has interfered with our plans. It was a quick job, using a masking layer, and doesn’t look very professional, but I think it is appropriate for the situation.

BTW, do you think this guy looks more threathening than concerned?

Unexpected weather?

Tuesday, April 12th, 2011

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Two weeks ago Phuket and several other regions of Thailand were hit by severe storms, causing several fatalities and great loss of property. On shore landslides killed dozens of locals and tourists and on the coast boats broke their moorings and were washed up on the beaches or smashed against rocks.

When we arrived in Phuket on the second of April, after our two-week passage from the Maldives, we were told it was the first non rainy day in more than a week. There had been periods of 50 knots of wind and there had been almost 200 mm of rain in at least one 24-hour period. Good timing on our side for once, it appears.

The reason I’m writing this post is that I find it difficult to understand why these storms are allowed to cause so much grief and destruction. After all, they don’t just fall out of the sky unexpectedly. Actually, when I was preparing for our trip in the Maldives more than a week before the storm and 1,500 nautical miles (almost 3,000 km) away, I saw that this low pressure system was about to hit Thailand – that is if you believe what the GRIB files are predicting 7-8 days ahead.

On March 18, two days before our departure from Male, I downloaded GRIBs showing cyclonic-pattern winds at Phuket on the 168 hour (7 days) forecast. The forecasts on the two following days confirmed that there was something unusual going on. The image below shows what the GRIB file of March 20 forecasted for the Phuket area on March 27.

This forecast didn’t concern us aboard Scorpio at all, we would still be far away south of the Bay of Bengal. However, we naturally kept a close look at the progress of this predicted weather system all the way.

But how could so many in Thailand be taken by surprise?

Why Somali Piracy has to stop

Thursday, April 7th, 2011

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The successful hi-jackers are quickly turning into some kind of Robin Hood figures, who are giving lessons how to take from the rich and give to the poor.
Read more ..