Chandlers life’s threaten

Mrs Sea Mist and others,

Please go away and start another thread elsewhere to discuss bigger issues of appeasement, the fight against terrorism etc...
In a word - no. You have put a post in a public forum. If the responses surprise you or make you feel uncomfortable, such is life. The majority on here would appear to not agree with you. I think what you are proposing will actually encourage further such acts of piracy - you're free to propose it though and I am equally free to post a contrary view.
 
what you are proposing will actually encourage further such acts of piracy - you're free to propose it though and I am equally free to post a contrary view.
For a start I didn't propose it, sailaboutvic did. He felt we should do something rather than just watch two helpless yachties get put to death because they were in the wrong place at the wrong time. I picked up the ball and ran with it a little way.

Secondly, many people have already pointed out that ransoming the Chandlers would not have the slightest effect one way or another on the future behaviour of the pirates as many much larger ransoms have already been paid, the last one as recently as two days ago. On the other hand, if harm comes to the Chandlers and the yachting community has been seen to do nothing I do not think this will reflect well on us.

Thirdly, to anyone who does want to pledge support there is a new thread solely for that purpose HERE . It might be helpful if those who have already pledged their support could reiterate it on the poll there.

- W
 
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That had occurred to me as well, but it may not be so easy to arrange from where they are. I expect the bank will want to see their latest utility bill.

Seriously, if they could do this then I am sure they would have done it.

The boat could go on apolloduck.com as and where is, though. That would be a start. I can't seem to connect to www.boatshedsomalia.com
 

To summarise - £800 pledged with about 40% of respondents favouring helping. 37,000 listed members - lets say only 20% active, and lets say that in the end only 20% of them were willing to chip in. That would equate to 1,400 members willing to pay £100 each if it meant saving the Chandlers from a wholly unnecessary and random death. More than enough to raise the 100k demanded.


If it's really just £100k then pledgers should be able to get their money back. or just one person could put off buying a new 40 footer for as long as it takes to get them back and get their house sold.
 
I'm not going to repeat all the arguments for/against, but I nail my colours with the "no deal" faction since I'm sure the longterm outcome will be worse than the short term. I don't think the Pirates will shoot the Chandlers and I hope I'm not proven wrong but if I am proven wrong, I wouldn't regret my stance.

I also wonder whether the £100k is a real amount or whether it's fiction (plus or minus). I think Orbisters comment (I think it was Orbister) is spot on, the Chandlers have a house and I'm sure their families and close friends also own properties or have other equity? The banks only need to take a charge over a proprety to secure their lending, they don't require a full blown mortgage and a loan could be achieved in a day. I'm guessing the Chandlers would be happy to reimburse their family/friends after their release from captivity so what I don't understand is how some well intentioned forumites believe a whipround and a simple handover of moolah will achieve a result? I'm quite certain the Chandlers families/friends would be doing just this if they knew it was simply a matter of raising £100k and depositing it under a coconut shell on a beach somewhere - the fact they're seemingly not doing this sends me a strong message there's much more to closing a deal with the Pirates than moolah.

I feel very anxious for the Chandlers but a YBW whipround isn't going to solve anything. I'm not trying to detract from good intentions, I think it's a wonderful gesture to be prepared to contribute to a fund to secure the Chandlers release and I would too if I felt handing over a ransom wouldn't a) send out the wrong message to the pirates and b) if I thought carrying it through would achieve a result.

Cheers, Brian.
 
For a start I didn't propose it...I picked up the ball and ran with it a little way...
OK, I'll buy into your pedantry - you're free to run with the ball, everyone else is free to tackle you.

I still think what you are doing is pie in the sky and even if it wasn't, it would ultimately be detrimental to the whole piracy situation - the cost of you feeling good about doing something now will adversely impact on others in a similar situation in the future.
 
They have a boat and a house. All that's needed is a bridging loan.
Well. I agree with Webcrat's humanitarian initiative and pledged my £100 on his poll site.
Orbister has a point and Webby has seen the difficulty in that so.....
I suggest that Webby gets a bridging loan on his house and pays the ransom; recouping the loan from our pledges.
PROBLEM SOLVED
How about it Webbcraft? You could have the £100,000 to the pirates by next Friday easily if you go to your bank on Monday morning.
ps If in the meantime someone like Richard Branson pre-empts you do we have to give him our £100 ?
Good luck Webby, GO FOR IT !
 
Well. I agree with Webcrat's humanitarian initiative and pledged my £100 on his poll site.
Orbister has a point and Webby has seen the difficulty in that so.....
I suggest that Webby gets a bridging loan on his house and pays the ransom; recouping the loan from our pledges.
PROBLEM SOLVED
How about it Webbcraft? You could have the £100,000 to the pirates by next Friday easily if you go to your bank on Monday morning.
ps If in the meantime someone like Richard Branson pre-empts you do we have to give him our £100 ?
Good luck Webby, GO FOR IT !

My house is not worth £100,000

You, I believe, are worth over a million. Good on you for pledging £100 though.

- W
 
My house is not worth £100,000

You, I believe, are worth over a million. Good on you for pledging £100 though.

- W

I'll ignore the fact that you know nothing about me, apart from what I post on this forum, because I want to progress this attempt to free the hostages.
So
You raise what you can (70% LTV should be easy) on your house and I promise to pay the balance.
Deposit your cash with the owners of this website, they notify me and I transfer the balance.
Yachting Monthly then has our combined dosh and the couple are free.
Problems?
ps you guessed well short on what I'm worth.
 
Firstly I would like to say that I hope this whole situation has a satisfactory outcome for the Chandlers.
However, and please correct me if I'm misinformed here, I understood that they were warned against going to this area.
If this is the situation then perhaps it should be down to their family to raise the funds.
I do believe that it is counter productive to accede to ransom demands, although I realise that is relatively easy to say when I'm not directly affected, but if some wealthy forumite loans or donates the funds and there is a successful conclusion to the matter I will pledge to donate GBP50 to the RNLI and GBP50 to SSAFA.
I would far sooner that any funds received by Pirates/Terrorists as a result of this kidnapping were at least partly offset by a contribution from me to the armed forces fighting them, and the RNLI who look after all seafarers.
 
I'm not going to pledge any money to anyone, I'm afraid.
However I take issue with those saying 'they shouldn't have gone there'
Basically the whole route to/from the Suez canal is at risk, if it was easy to avoid the area, ships would not be getting attacked.
The list of places that the Govenrment advises you to avoid is extensive, and many many people disregard this advice.
In fact the government would not advise you to go sailing at all.

Personally I feel that nations that permit pirates to operate need to be sorted out.
If they cannot manage on their own, international help should be given.
The right to free movement in international waters is important.

By the way I would not be surprised if negotiations were taking place out of media sight.
 
Re Webcraft.

Webcraft, just got back to my computer, £100 pledged and I am happy that that money be put toward anyone who can come up with the big bucks .
I pledge on the grounds that- Something has to be done.

By being proactive raises pressure on HMG to do perhaps a little more than they appear to be doing.

..Might get a useful slant from the media,

Gets the Chandlers out and now EVERYONE knows: That's it. Foreign Office advice to be taken very very seriously..Anyone else who gets themselves into a similar situation after this high profile case is a b-oody fool.And on their own and should expect to not come back alive. Of course quite where that leaves the Suez canal as a passage will be interesting.

And in best FO practise, I would like the £100k to be dressed up as a new, better fishing boat that will allow the crew to sign up as joint owners and pursue their old livelihood, albeit with better technology to compensate for the depleted fish stocks.. And of course the vessel would be fitted with AIS.. The terrorists can get their monies elsewhere, thank you ..

All imo of course and I have no military or diplomatic training and respect what has been written here by those who do.

At the end of the day it could so easily be one of us.
 
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I dont think they will come to any harm. The pirates were getting nowhere so thought they would try it on in a video & use public opinion (as on here) to force Government to concede to handing over large bundles of ackers, just as the Spanish did.
It aint going to work with our Government and nor should it.
The message will soon go out ..............don't capture Brits...............there not worth anything.

As to the pirates. Didnt look to me as if they knew one end of an AK47 to the other.
 
As to the pirates. Didnt look to me as if they knew one end of an AK47 to the other.
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not too difficult to work out by experiment!
 
It wasn't the RN it was the RFA wasn't it - merchant ship manned by civilians carrying fuel and stores for the Navy, some Naval personnel aboard but not neccessarily fighting men, probably not better armed than the pirates.

As has been pointed on numerous other posts on numerous other threads, the RFA oilers are manned by 80 merchant seamen and 22 navy personnel. Many of the crew are trained to fire the ship's weapon systems and some will even be RNVR.

The ship is double skinned so an RPG round, which is little more than a grenade, will cause negligible damage. But, if you read this pdf http://www.baesystems.com/BAEProd/groups/public/documents/ss_asset/bae_subs_aodatasheet.pdf these ships are remarkably well armed, consisting of two 30mm Cannon and four 7.62mm MGs
Two Phalanx Mk 15 systems, all of which the crew will be trained to use. Remember, in the Falklands war, even the civvy NAAFI managers were trained machine gunners.
 
Just what you need to recover two hostages from a small boat, eh!!!

Put it this way, you're better off with that than without it. I don't think a carving knife from the galley is going to work.

You're fixated on recovering the two hostages - I see the aim as preventing piracy. I'm not advocating blowing up the Chandler's but, if I was the local commander, I would accept a risk to their lives if I could disable the skiff they were in, probably by small arms fire at the engines.

If the Phalanx is the later variant, which has surface-to-surface capabilities and a suitable aiming mechanism, a burst into the water near the skiff would be as effective as lobbing a stun grenade into a room. It is impossible to describe or display on video what 4,500 rounds a minute of 20mm ordinance sounds like.

If you were the pirate and you were convinced that this was being used by a yee-haw gun-toting madman you'd also be pretty convinced handing back any hostages and saying sorry, we promise not to do it again would be a good idea, especially if they've disabled your boat first.

Instead the pirates know no-one will dare fire at them in case someone gets hurt or they get their iPods taken away - so they feel free to just carry on kidnapping people at will, picking targets from leisure and commercial and ever further offshore..

That's why the military need to be a threat.
 
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