At Sea - Mar 18, 2013

We are back in Pirate Waters off the coast of Somalia, actually cruising closer to Yemen for you following us at home. The ship is running under blackout conditions from 45 minutes before sunset and 45 minutes after sunrise. Blackout meaning all our heavy stateroom window curtains are to be closed and all outer deck lights are out with the exception of the mandatory navigation lights - making us look more like a regular shipping vessel and less like a lit up floating Christmas tree. At night we are also traveling at an accelerated speed of about 21 knots (usually we travel at about 15 to 17 knots), the pirates are not able or have never taken over a ship at this speed. This is why they take over other ships traveling at under 10 knots. HAL takes this very seriously and so they should, although the number of pirated ships is down there is still a threat so we are once again manned with the 12 fire hoses around our promenade deck as well as four high powered sound emitting machines and two guards at the watch (24 hours) with inferred cameras. We are fortunate in the size of our ship, I have included some photos of the German populated ship docked in out last which not only had the water cannons on board but due to the lower freeboard, they also had razor wire along the bow and side decks. Some pictures of our pirate deterrent set up. Before my upload to the blog this morning I did get up and took a few pictures of us entering the Red Sea - the markers on the shore indicate the entry point - soo cool to be here!