Archive for the ‘Dangers’ Category

Tsunami Warning – And Then What?

Saturday, April 14th, 2012

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– Are you aware of the recent tsunami warning?

We had just tied our lines to the quay in the recently constructed harbour at Foamullah island in the Maldives. Two young locals on a moped stopped and told us that there had been a giant under water earth quake, 8.7 on the Richter scale, in Indonesia, near the location of the disastrous Boxing Day tsunami 2004. The government had issued a Tsunami Warning.

Malla and I looked at each other in disbelief. Pirates, political riots, tsunamis. What is next?

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Political Unrest and Routing Decisions

Wednesday, February 15th, 2012

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A year ago our plan to sail across the Arabian Sea to the Mediterranean was aborted because of the pirates. Now, just as we prepare to leave Thailand to sail to South Africa via the Maldives, there is political unrest in the atoll country. The democratically elected president has been forced to resign and protesters are burning police stations.


(We can see you, but you wont see us)

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Moomin character?

Tuesday, October 25th, 2011

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A few months ago I wrote about sailor’s toes (May 1, 2011).

The photo below is not of a blushing Moomin character!

Wrong Thing Happened in the Right Place

Tuesday, October 11th, 2011

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♪ For your eyes only ♪♪♪

Sometimes you suddenly become aware that you have subconciously been humming on a song that, as it turns out, proves to relate to something currently going on. The song from the old James Bond movie, For Your Eyes Only, had been playing in my head all night, but I didn’t realise the connection until day break.

The evening before, I had been hospitalized because of a severe eye injury. I had been checking the lead-acid batteries aboard Scorpio when one of the batteries decided to spew sulphuric acid into my left eye.


(Not a photo of me, but it looked similar]

When the acid hit my eye I knew I immediately had to irrigate with copious amounts of water. The boat was stored ashore in a boat yard and fortunately I had a water hose connected to a tap close by. After ten minutes of irrigation I stopped to asses the situation. The eye was blood-red, but I could still see, although vision was not as clear as normal, which I didn’t think was surprising. I decided to wait for a while; maybe it wouldn’t be necessary to get to the hospital at all.

An hour later I couldn’t see much with my left eye anymore. It was as if the world had gone complely foggy.

They took good care of me at Bangkok Hospital. First they irrigated the eye for an hour using a slow running hose connected to a drip bag of Saline solution. Every hour of the night I was given Visilube eye drops and every 4 hours both Tobra dex antibiotic cream and Genteal eye gel. In the morning the eye still looked horrible, but the vision was back – although not yet to full extent.

In a recent report I noted that we curiously appear to run into accidents more often ashore than afloat. However, I consider myself fortunate, that the accident happened close to an excellent hospital. The odds for this to take place, considering our life style, out on the ocean, say on a trip from the Maldives to Thailand, like the one we did earlier this year, are much higher than here on terra firma. On a long trip in the tropics, particularly the one mentioned, when we had to use the engine a lot, I need to inspect the acid level of the batteries every now and then. If the eye had been burned by acid in the Indian Ocean a weeks journey from any hospital, the outcome would probably not have been a happy one.

The wrong thing now clearly happened in the right place. However, we have faced two mishaps in a short time and in Finnish we have a proverb, ei kahta ilman kolmatta, meaning ”no two without the third”. Not to be confused with ”all good things come in three”.

I’m looking over my shoulder and crossing my fingers.

A note about our batteries: Our Trojan-batteries have the “pop-up” type filler caps. I have always liked them because they are easier to open than the screw-on ones, and they dont get lost as they are hinged to the battery body. However, I now know they are dangerous as they act as a catapult to any acid attached to them.

Strange Rescue at Sea

Tuesday, September 27th, 2011

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Recently there was a strange story in The Phuket News.

NAVY HELPS YACHT TO SAFETY

According to the article, the Royal Thai Navy has rescued a sailing vessel with a crew of two foreigners, an Italian and a South African, on the way from Langkawi to Phuket. The crew had called for help from turbulent seas in the middle of the night. They reported that their vessel was struggling in heavy waves.

The navy searched for the boat for two hours, and about six hours later the sailing vessel was towed safely to a port in Satul Province.

This article raises several questions, but I will address only a few. There is no mentioning of break-downs of the yacht or it’s equipment and no report of sickness aboard either. As far as I am aware, there was no horrible storm blowing at the time. The area in question (outside Satun province) is not an open ocean, on the contrary, the yacht was on a coastal passage, where there are several large islands along the way. Depending on the direction of the wind, it should have been possible to find relative shelter either behind the mainland or one of the islands. The waters are generally shallow all over and anchoring is possible almost anywhere.

Obviously it was pitch dark when the call was made, so maybe the problem had to do with navigation …

Disaster Is Just Around the Corner

Monday, September 26th, 2011

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Our first post of the 2011-12 sailing season is not a happy one.

This lifestyle of ours makes us perhaps more exposed to dangers than people living in houses that stay in a permanent place – earthquake areas excluded (although we certainly have experienced them also). Surprisingly though, we appear to have encountered more difficulties ashore than afloat.

This story includes several photos, please read more here

Sailor’s toes

Sunday, May 1st, 2011

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This disgusting image indicates that space aboard a yacht is limited. Toes numbers 2, 9 and 10 have behaved particularly badly and are now completely deformed; the distal phalanxes (the bones at the tips of the toes) have been fractured and the joints damaged too often. The lower tendons of number 4 have been severed. Some fresh bruises can be seen at numbers 3 and 9. Every time a toe takes a new hit it hurts more than the last time!

In the unlikely event that you would like to see a larger photo, please click on it. How about toe-prints instead of finger-prints for identification?

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.

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?

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.
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