Posted on 03/07/2011 7:42:19 AM PST by Travis McGee
Problem is you can’t really defeat today’s Gulf of Aden type pirates from a yacht...guess you couldn’t really defeat a pirate comandeered man o war in the 17th century either...but they mostly used faster less armed corsairs and whatnot
but what you can do is persuade them you are not worth the cost
in which case you need to be alert, try to avoid them but that is increasingly hard if they will venture 400 miles out in heavy powered longboats
it would help to have more than one shooter on board
and I would go with a caliber from .223 up...something manageable ...it is so hard to hit jack in rolling seas but they won’t be happy either I would guess in big swells
shotguns and pistols are for when it’s almost over and only heroics, steel nerve and God’s favor will save you from a boarding party
best to discourage them at 100s of yards out..sometimes they have multiple boats
don’t forget...the sea is like a defacto tracer round in flat water or mild sea...you can just walk your fire
i dunno...scary stuff...
oy yes...the gun should be hardy...and the glass too...and good binoculars for first spotting...you don’t want to kill some fisherman
but hey:
“they woulda been stupid fishermen and deserved to die approaching a yacht right...hope they didn’t have Bibles or were rich...even more stupid and death deserving “
i love FR’s sympathetic tone from such warriors..it kills me..from those who’ve never busted so much as a grape
1. Dont take a freakin pleasure cruise in the freaking Indian Ocean off the coast of Somalia. DUH!
I love tracers, but splashes work almost as well for adjusting fire. At least in daytime.
Very clever!
That’s what he is. His loyalties don’t lie with the USA, that’s for sure.
We have 5 AR's now, with the new calibers probably be getting more. Couple of them never come out of the vault, 223's for disaster time. The 6.8 SPC with acog is used all the time, even killed some caribou with that gun last fall. Picking up a n Armalite 338 fed at gun shop soon as our road opens nx month; will be the new truck gun.
What other larger calibers have you heard about for on the AR platform? I heard you can get a 300 wsm on an AR.
One of my neighbors was hacked to death on his boat in Guatalama 2 years back. 4-5 of those scum bags swam out to the boat anchored in the bay with machetes; killed Dan Dryden as he was trying to fight them off, protect his wife with his own machete. Dan always had guns here in Alaska and had been here 40 years before retiring to sail world. He didn't have one on his boat I heard from his daughter; illegal or something for foreigners. Heck, I wouldn't go anywheres that I didn't have access to all the guns & ammo I could ever dream of needing.
I spent a lot of time coasting Asia, from S. Korea South & West to United Arab Emirates. Different style pirates in each area. I always questioned the local pilots & agents about pirate activity.
In Singapore, the pilots told me that if we were boarded by pirates carrying machetes, they were from Malaysia. If we were boarded by pirates carrying automatic weapons, they were off duty Indonesian navy. I never gathered he was joking.
We had just docked in Columbo, Sri Lanka and were observing the container ship in front of us. We were admiring a longshoreman’s skill as he climbed up 5 levels of containers just using the tie down wires and containers for hand holds. The pilot said the longshoremen use those same skills as pirates just offshore.
Which explains a pirate boarding on my ship before I had joined her. The container ship had anchored overnight off shore awaiting a berth in Columbo. The watch third mate & deck cadet stumbled on some pirates looting one of the containers of fine merino wool. The mate got out flare guns & started flying some parachute flares at the pirate boat. They left. The pirates knew the exact location of that cargo on the ship. It was figured that the receiver of the cargo could get his cargo at very low pirate fee and then let the insurance take care of the main cost.
We never anchored there again awaiting berth but cruised off shore at a safe distance.
There have been instances where owners or agents have been in on the piracy, even when crew members were killed.
There are ship and cargo recovery companies made up of ex ship captains and retired SAS. They only work for the insurance companies.
All it takes is a national leader to apply the time-proven solution to piracy. And today, it would not require “boots on the ground.” We could do it with Predators patrolling the Somali coasts. We have them nearby in Djibouti at a joint French-US base. All it takes is Sarkozy and Obama to decide to do it.
The other complication is the 100s of widely dispersed hostages from 20 or more nations. Go in to eradicate the pirates, and they’ll die. A big rescue mission might get half of them, but at least half will die.
They faced an identical situation with the Barbary Pirates: hostages. But if you want to wipe out the piracy, you have to wipe out the pirate ports. Piracy doesn’t exist with pirate havens for provisioning, refueling, ransoming hostages, etc.
No pirate ports, no pirates. But a lot of hostages will die, one time.
Only if they promise to join the march for Sharia.
Actually, decoy or Q-ship operations would work far better than our current naval surveillance. We are talking about 4 million square miles of ocean with a pirate threat around Somalia now. Searching for pirates on the ocean is a fool’s errand, like getting rid of ants one at a time with tweezers. You destroy the nest to destroy the pirates.
But as far as the pirates at sea, decoy vessels are much better at finding them than naval vessels. You put out the bait, and drag it past the pirates.
Then you destroy their vessel at sea, and what happens to the pirates is not your concern. Maybe they learn to swim 100s of miles to home. It’s not your problem.
But if you are hamstrung by PC, you read them their Miranda rights and give them a ticket to America. In ten years, these pirates will have US passports and they’ll be bringing their extended families here.
Kill the pirates at sea, on their vessels. Boom! Make a boat out of the splinters, good luck, be seeing you.
There is a lot more to that “plywood gun” trick, but I need to keep some secrets to myself.
Some folks have a life-goal to sail around the world, that is, to circumnavigate all 360* in a small sailing vessel.
So there is Africa, what are your choices? Fifty foot waves against a 5 knot current off of South Africa can kill you as well as pirates.
The key today when planning the Red Sea passage is convoying up and staying in contact with the naval vessels on station. The 4 Americans who were killed had struck out ahead of the convoy.
It’s like dealing with voyages in hurricane zones. June is a low risk, people go. July, maybe. August-October, you KNOW you are in mortal peril.
But a rare out of season hurricane could nail you in June or November. There is risk out there, for sure. Getting run over by a ship, for example. It can happen.
You want a safe, guaranteed outcome, don’t sail across oceans.
“Off the coast of Somalia” is now out to 2,000 miles roamed by pirates.
By that definition, Hawaii is now “off the coast of California.”
See the problem here? Pirates are operating in 4 million square miles of ocean.
I agree, but the person who signs the launch order will be blamed for the tortured deaths of 100s of hostages from 20 nations who will scream bloody murder.
Most of those thefts are government contractors BTW
I agree, make the critical moments happen at 400 yards, not at 40 when you are just screwed, depending on the size of the vessel.
When I was followed by the nasty looking small steel ship, my biggest concern was that they would just run me down from astern.
Yep, the AR platform with a 4X ACOG is just about ideal for nailing movers. I just have 556, because I don’t reload and ammo is $$$$. I do know DPMS makes a .243 Winchester AR, but I’ll bet the barrels don’t last long. It’s actually a 308 platform AR like an AR-10, since .243 is a necked-down .308. That would be an awesome rifle, if shortlived in the barrel.
Hostages, you say? Gee, this other expert they were quoting were just saying they were thieves, not pirates! Give them what they want and don’t resist! (of course, if you are unarmed, what are you going to do, hit them with a purse???)
What you say is true, but nobody wants to make that call.
The End of Barbary Terror, By Frederick C. Leiner, Oxford Press, 2006.
Commercial ships are also taking aboard armed crews of civilian contractors now.
But those guys can sure climb, you got that right. And ships as you know (most don’t) aren’t smooth steel up close. There are catwalks, access ports, welded rings for painters to hang from etc. A hundred places to hook a boarding ladder.
One thing I talked about that Eisenberg didn’t use is that pirates will ALWAYS fall into line and come up your stern. That is where you need to be focused.
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