Thailand - Europe - is the Red Sea route opening up again?

Cheery said:
If you are suggesting that my view is simplistic then you are also suggesting that the world's navies have wasted their time.

Please, feel free to explain at your leisure.
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Civil war in Yemen, president just overthrown, front row seat from the cockpit. I would definitely have plan B, and I don't think this route would be my A-C at the moment. The professional ship-stealing Captain Phillips-type pirates may have waned, but that might mean there's lots of unemployed willing to have a go at easier prey? This means yotties i suppose ? Plus as I say unstable situation in Yemen, which is the er safe side, no?
 
tcm said:
Civil war in Yemen, president just overthrown, front row seat from the cockpit. I would definitely have plan B, and I don't think this route would be my A-C at the moment. The professional ship-stealing Captain Phillips-type pirates may have waned, but that might mean there's lots of unemployed willing to have a go at easier prey? This means yotties i suppose ? Plus as I say unstable situation in Yemen, which is the er safe side, no?
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Yes, all very interesting. I am used to the Middle-East having lived, sailed and worked there for a number of years. Actually one of there reasons we are considering the Red-sea route is a desire to re-visit the Gulf well Bahrain, Oman, Qatar and the UAE anyway. Once up there the red-sea becomes the way back to Europe.....
 
temptress said:
Yes, all very interesting. I am used to the Middle-East having lived, sailed and worked there for a number of years. Actually one of there reasons we are considering the Red-sea route is a desire to re-visit the Gulf well Bahrain, Oman, Qatar and the UAE anyway. Once up there the red-sea becomes the way back to Europe.....
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Yes indeed. Many people have realised that the Red Sea is the way back to Europe, which is probably why they dug the Suez Canal I suppose. Actually, even without going there, it's still the way back to Europe. And the way FROM Europe as well.

The somewhat less-than-bleeding-obvious issue is, as you raised earlier, the possibility of getting shot and/or otherwise attacked. Even during the height of the Somali pirates stuff (when the pirates even had a prospectus which circulatd in the City to raise the 20 million or so to fund a ship and chase boats) I met cruising boats who got through with no incidents altho a lot of trepidation, convoys etc. But I also met some other people who did get robbed at gunpoimnt, and a good place to check out the current situation is apparently in Salahah, just in Oman, where they have a handwritten book of reported incidents (presumably southbound only...) written out all nicely, unfortunately not on computer. So there's not a lot of "data" on this sort of thing, because not all of the attacked people report it, and likely none of the attackers at all.

Different nationalities (sometimes) get in the news in their relevant home countries, so what one guy realised is that you should mulltiply the number of incidents in the news by the number of different nationalities going through. As well as actual full-on attacks, there's other milder stuff which people don't report because they want to put it behind them, and this doesn't just apply to that area. So-called "fishing boats" lurk in many places.

Note : You can't set off on a RTW trip and ask if places are "safe", not really? it's an adventure and the riisk is a part of that - otherwise it would be a package trip. Some locations are statistically VERY safe - but still, just one person or boat might get attacked if they're in the wrong place at the wrong time, and it might be you. So the best you can do is to minimise the risks, by for example sailing via the generally safer areas, where fewer people have been attacked. That route is via RSA. I think you want us to say "yes, you'll be fine in the Red Sea!' and realistically, until they escort every single boat 24/7, that's not true.

As I said earlier, you'll know that it's getting safer when the orgainsed rallies start going that way again, as the Blue water rally used to do until 2010 or so. By 2012 it was just three or four boats, friends staying in touch in the Atlantic and pacific, and they didn't go near the Red Sea. And/or if there's a nice sailing industry, marinas etc with local boats all that stuff. You've been there - is it like that throughout? I don't think so, not yet?
 
tcm said:
So-called "fishing boats" lurk in many places.
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On the other hand, lots of fishermen have been mistaken for pirates too.

Last year, we had a shitload of reported attacks in the Bab El Mendeb straits - where Somalis had never ventured before.
All of them turned out to be fishermen. We sent a couple of ships out there to investigate these reports.
This is what they found:
- the Straits are quite shallow and starved of oxygen
- when ships pass there, there is a lot of oxygen in the water in their wake - hence fish
- So, it was not uncommon to see fishermen steer straight for the merchant vessels.

Couple of useful sites:

- ICC live piracy map: https://icc-ccs.org/piracy-reporting-centre/live-piracy-map If it were me, I would worry more about Malaysia and Thailand than Somalia
- Maritime Security Center – Horn of Africa: http://www.mschoa.org/on-shore/home (the advice for yachts is somewhat dated - Oct 2013 http://www.mschoa.org/on-shore/yachting-guidance)
- The Nato Shipping Centre: http://www.shipping.nato.int/operations/OS/Pages/NSC-Weekly-Update.aspx You can sign up for the weekly piracy update - again not much to report since 2013. You may find the dhow and skiff recognition guide useful: http://www.shipping.nato.int/Documents/Identification guide for Dhows Skiffs and Whalers.pdf

Apart from the EU/CMF and NATO task forces in the area, several countries (notably Japan, India, Korea, China and occasionally Russia) run convoys in the area. Convoy speed is usually 12kts. But, if you were to time your departure from say Salalah and start when you know there are westbound convoys running on 3 consecutive days, you would have a 'grey funnel line' escort pretty much all of the way.
When you're about to depart, feel free to PM me for convoy dates.

Mainly due to the gun and people smuggling going on between Yemen and Somalia the area is somewhat 'unsafe'. But you (yachts) are not the primary interest of smugglers. And there is also a large concentration of warships in the area at the moment.

When we can, we do help out yachts. Last week, we diverted a ship to assist a French yacht that had run out of fuel (strong headwinds and adverse current). But assisting yachts is not our primary mission.
 
I've been trying to escape from the Med for two years now. I hope to succeed this year. I swear to god the actual sailing season in the Med (Greece) for long distance is shorter than it is in Sweden. Not to mention the ridiculous short daily runs averaging about thirty miles.

If I ever get as far as Thailand I would not want to get back to this glue pot. I would go via RSA.
 
BurnitBlue said:
I've been trying to escape from the Med for two years now. I hope to succeed this year. I swear to god the actual sailing season in the Med (Greece) for long distance is shorter than it is in Sweden. Not to mention the ridiculous short daily runs averaging about thirty miles.

If I ever get as far as Thailand I would not want to get back to this glue pot. I would go via RSA.
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I understand your frustration with the MED. We had the same feelings when we were there. You can sail all year long. We sailed all year - we just kept an close watch on the weather and sometimes we got stuck somewhere for week or so. You do not have to sail short hops or stop over the winter months.
 
I do agree with you about choice of sailing strategy in the MED. It is up to the individual boat crew how they optimise the advantages of the MED. I just wanted to state that the Pirate Threat was playing to my advantage that it would effectively make a difficult decision an easy option to sail via RSA (which sailing wise is a more difficult route) rather than take a short cut (and risk getting shot) just to get back to a situation I tried so hard to escape from.
 
BurnitBlue said:
I've been trying to escape from the Med for two years now. I hope to succeed this year. I swear to god the actual sailing season in the Med (Greece) for long distance is shorter than it is in Sweden. Not to mention the ridiculous short daily runs averaging about thirty miles.

If I ever get as far as Thailand I would not want to get back to this glue pot. I would go via RSA.
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Everyone to there own , we sail from Late March to late Nov last year it was early Dec , the Med is much bigger then just Greece , people Sen to rush to get into the Med then rush to get to Greece then spend the next God know how many years sailing there , as far as short hops there plent of long hops to be done . I sorry to say most liveabourd are queing up the end of Sept to get into the Marina and don't leave till the last day of their contact , there noting wrong with that if that's what you want , but then thy compliant that the season short .
Shame really they miss some very good sailing weather with empty anchorages
 
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As you say, "everyone to their own". I joined this thread to give my opinion about the Red Sea route back to the Med.

I think a separate thread about the "Joy of Sailing in the Med" would be interesting. I usually get totally ignored on Liveaboard so no point in me starting a thread.
 
BurnitBlue said:
As you say, "everyone to their own". I joined this thread to give my opinion about the Red Sea route back to the Med.

I think a separate thread about the "Joy of Sailing in the Med" would be interesting. I usually get totally ignored on Liveaboard so no point in me starting a thread.
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You got has much right as anyone else to start a thread , go for it .
 
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