Up through Pirate Alley Salalah to Aden, Yemen

Six days of sailing. Not much happening. Some cool nocturnal dolphins in waters loaded with phosporescence. One pirate scare, lot of chatting in code on the radio.

That was it really. First two days held little or no wind and we ran the engine continuosly. The crew on "Thira", Cedric and Mike, had agreed to come along for mutual support. We had agreed to maintain a minimum speed of four knots, which saw us running the engine for 48 hours straight. By the second day we were approached by some larger local boats with speedboats in tow. Three to every mothership. This is something we've never seen before, and being were we were we were naturallay a bit edgy. Normally we have pretty good intel about what to expect as of local peculiarities fishing-wise, and the only people we had heard about operating with motherships and speedboats in these waters were the pirates. Unfortunately not those from that "Vivid" production we all know.
When the alleged pirates even looked to be coming straight for us there was nothing for us to do than try and run at an angle that would optimize our sailing performance. Pretty hopeless really, but it might buy us some time. One of the boats came twice up to about 1000 metres behind us before it stopped dead in the water. Both times we expected to see them man the speedboats, but nothing happened.

The whole ordeal was over in about four hours, during which we were frequently in contact with Thira (who were a couple of miles away, also running from some other boats). All we could do was keeping them updated with our position, speed and heading. All in a pre-arranged code in case people should be listening. We even tryed calling the coastguard on the VHF. We had seen them just a few hours before it all broke loose, but no response, from anyone really.

In hindsight they were probably just fishermen acting in ways that we haven't seen before, and didn't expect, but they got our pulses racing for a little while. Fun exercise.

On the entertainment-front the dolphins have given us a few nightly performances. The water here is loaded with phosphorescence. Sometimes they will come from the back, heading straight for the boat. When they come four or five abreast they look like a hand of glowing fingers reaching out for us. As soon as they reach the boat they will take turns playing in our bow-wave. There you can stand in the bow, watching the body of the fish like a black shape in impressive detail against the glowing green backdrop of the turbulent water around it.