Casting Off (31 page)

Ironically, I slept the best I had in days that night, both from 10pm to 2am and from 4am to 9am, although I woke myself up sobbing in my sleep. The next morning there was no news other than
that the US had asked permission from the Somali government to land their planes in Somalia. We were more than 500 miles from Salalah, I worked out when I checked the chart, and doing 7 knots or 8
knots, so we should arrive about four days later.

‘
Quest
are dead,’ was the first thing that Moe said when I got up for watch the following day. I expected to be sad or shocked but mainly all I felt was a weird detachment.
I hadn’t known these people; it was just like hearing something terrible on the news. That was all we knew and we carried on pretty much as normal, gritting our teeth and concentrating on the
task of getting ourselves to Salalah. It took a while for the details to come through about what had happened. Lucy forwarded articles from the BBC. They were pretty jumbled but it seemed the
American forces had approached the pirates and given them an ultimatum. Discussions had broken down and the Americans heard the sound of gunfire coming from the pirate boat. When they reached it,
the four crew of
Quest
were dead. Some of the pirates were also dead and several Somalis had been arrested by the Americans. Although it was frightening to read, it was also surreal. I
still had a bit of an ‘it won’t happen to me’ mentality.

We arrived at Salalah port in the early morning three days later and I have never been so happy to see land. We motored past huge cranes waiting to load and offload container ships and into a
narrow harbour packed with sailing boats. Almost as soon as the anchor was down and the rear lines tied to shore, the bad memories started to recede. It was just like any other arrival in a new
country: sort the paperwork, find some money, go to the shop and locate the nearest bar to celebrate the end of a successful passage. We were all land giddy and raced off to explore the harbour. It
was another military and industrial complex but far bigger than Galle. At one end were the docks, at the other, space for military vessels. In between, in a man-made pool of sorts, were 30 or so
foreign sailing yachts and catamarans. And everything was beige: the roads, the steep rocky hillside, the buildings, the cars. All were covered in a fine layer of sand. There were no plants. We
followed the dusty road past a jumble of dented cargo containers to the shop, where we laughed at the funny foreign drinks – anyone for Pocari Sweat? No? Then how about a can of Thumbs Up?
– guzzled down ice creams and generally dispersed the remaining stress of the trip by acting like a bunch of kids. If I’d known that more bad news was just around the corner, I
certainly wouldn’t have felt so carefree. But at that point I was ignorant and just happy to concentrate on being home and dry – and safe.

T
o celebrate being on land we met Tony and Helen from the Irish yacht
Crazy Bear
, a boat we were going to go in convoy with to Aden, for
dinner in the Oasis expats’ club, a short, dusty and beige walk from the harbour complex. The Oasis, run by a couple of South Africans, was to become our home from home for the next week. It
had air-conditioning, it had carpet, it had tables and chairs, a giant TV, a beer garden (well, this being an arid Arab country, it was a beer yard), a pool table and – oh joy of joys!
– alcohol. Lots of alcohol. Beer, wine, spirits, cocktails. It was like a little slice of back home.

Tony and Helen were a happy-faced, middle-aged couple from Ireland who Tyrone had met in the Pacific islands. It was good to have a normal, relaxed conversation, to drink a glass of wine and not
to have to think about putting on a brave face. Yes, we still had to go out there and run the gauntlet again but for now we could stop worrying about it. Tony and Helen introduced us to Tom, a
79-year-old American whose yacht,
Albatross
, was also going to join our convoy.

Most of the other yachts in the harbour were part of the Blue Water Rally, the same collection of round-the-world cruisers that
Quest
had belonged to. All were friendly to us,
especially the Kiwi family parked next door, but the sadness and worry was plain to see in their faces. We heard through the grapevine that a memorial service for the murdered
Quest
crew
was being held the next day at the Hilton hotel and the three of us decided to go along.

I didn’t have any black long-sleeved clothes with me so I dressed conservatively in a white shirt and sun-bleached linen trousers, reasoning that they were the most sombre things I owned.
As we took the dinghy the few metres to shore, Tom, the American, was clambering up the wall pretty nimbly for someone fast approaching his ninth decade.

‘At least one of you is wearing the right colour for a funeral,’ he called out. I looked at Moe, who was in black. ‘They wear white for mourning in Arab countries,’ Tom said. His comment helped me relax a little – I was already feeling a bit weird about going to the memorial service, as we
hadn’t known any of the four dead people and it seemed a bit like we were rubber-necking.

One of the function rooms at the hotel had been given over to the memorial and rows of plush, padded chairs faced a giant screen and a lectern. Tyrone, Moe and I sat near the back, trying to be
as inconspicuous as possible.

It turned out to be a full-blown funeral, with music, eulogies and prayers from an American priest who had travelled down from the capital Muscat.
Quest
had been a relatively recent
addition to the Blue Water Rally and the two crew, Bob and Phyllis, were on board for only a few weeks. Before
Quest
, they had crewed for many different boats on the rally. One by one,
people stepped up to share their memories of the pair. Through their stories we learned that Bob had taken part in the previous two-year rally on his own boat and Phyllis had crewed for him. She
had loved it so much that she decided to crew again this time round and Bob had left his boat in France to join her.

Photos of them on beaches at sunset, enjoying a sun-downer in a boat’s cockpit and larking around on tropical islands flashed up on the screen. Phyllis looked so full of life and always
had a big, beaming smile. Bob, often in a pink T-shirt and with his long silver hair tied back, came across as quieter but utterly devoted to her. They were no different from Moe and me, really,
just people who loved the sea and the cruising life, who were travelling around the world by hitching rides with boat owners kind enough to take them on board. Looking at those photos, so similar
to my own memories of my trip, a huge lump bubbled up in my throat and stopped me from joining in with the hymn. My perspective on the pirates changed then: if it had happened to Phyllis and Bob
(and Scott and Jean Adam, the owners of
Quest
), it could happen to me, too.

An announcement was made at the end of the service that a representative of Marlo, one of the acronyms who had promised – but failed – to advise us of pirate activity, would like to
speak to the skippers. Tyrone went along and Moe and I headed for the hotel’s pool to talk things over.

Moe had already decided that she wanted to leave
Gillaroo
. But I was torn. If I left as well, Tyrone would be stuck. There was no way he could sail singlehandedly in a five-day convoy
to Aden. Guilt, plus a little bit of a gung-ho feeling that I didn’t want to let myself be cowed by these Somali pirate idiots, was making me want to continue. Yet fear loomed large.

Moe and I were going over it for the millionth time when Gemma, a young rally crew member, came over.

‘They’ve asked me to come to talk to you,’ she said, indicating a group of older skippers and wives sitting in the shade. ‘They want me to tell you not to go on.
It’s too dangerous.’

She told us how, on the approach to Salalah, her parents’ yacht and a few others had been approached by small boats they believed were carrying pirates. The yachts grouped together in a
tight formation, she said, and that seemed to have put off the attackers.

‘So we know it is a real threat,’ she explained.

I plucked at a few blades of the tough grass growing under my sun lounger. If I made eye contact I might cry.

‘What are you going to do?’ I asked Gemma. Every single boat in their rally was now going to be transported by ship to Turkey, she said, and the crews would fly out there to meet
them. I knew full well that Tyrone didn’t have the kind of money required to join them.

A few minutes after Gemma had left another woman, Sarah, came over.

‘Please, please, don’t carry on, we’re begging you,’ she said. ‘You’re young girls and I don’t even want to think about what would happen if you were
hijacked. Where’s your skipper? Has he been to tell you what the man from Marlo said?’

We hadn’t seen Tyrone yet. We hadn’t even known the meeting was over.

Another yacht had been hijacked, Sarah told us. A Danish boat,
Ing
, had been on its way from the Maldives to Salalah. There was a crew of seven on board – two parents, two
grandparents and three children. We had heard rumours but this was official confirmation. There was a news blackout to keep things calm and prevent a repeat of what had happened to
Quest
,
Sarah said.
Ing
had been moored in our spot in Galle and had left Sri Lanka the day before we arrived. My feelings on the situation shifted again: it not only could happen to me, it
actually
might
happen to me.

It was all too much and any bravado I had left dropped away. I fumbled frantically in my bag for my phone. Under the bright Omani sun it was difficult to read the contacts as I scrolled
through.

I hit dial and heard the call connect but all I managed to say was ‘Dad’ before I started crying hysterically.

‘Emma?’ he said, panic rising in his voice. ‘What’s wrong? What’s happened?’

I had to swallow a couple of times before I could answer. ‘Another yacht’s been taken by pirates. There were kids on board. They took kids, Dad. I’m scared. I want to come
home. I just want to come home.’

I had texted him when we got to Salalah, as I always did, to tell him we’d made landfall but, with the combination of my sobs, a phone call out of the blue and a bad line between Oman and
the UK, it was little wonder my poor father was confused.

‘WHAT??!! YOU’VE BEEN KIDNAPPED BY PIRATES??!!’

I sniffed. ‘No, no, I’m fine.’ I was too embarrassed to tell him I was sunbathing by the pool at the Hilton hotel. ‘It’s another yacht that’s been taken. But
it’s really frightening and I’ve had enough.’

‘ARE YOU OK?’ he kept shouting into the phone, until we both calmed down. Even though he’s been nowhere more exotic than Madeira, he offered to fly to Oman to come and get
me.

‘I’ll get a visa, I’ll get a flight, just stay put and I’ll get it sorted,’ he said. I started to feel sheepish.

‘No, no, don’t worry,’ I said. ‘I’m sure I’ll be fine once I get my flight booked. I’ll do it today. It’s just that all anyone can talk about
here, and all we have talked about for the past two days, is pirates. I went to a funeral today and it all got on top of me. I’m OK, really. We’re on land and we’re safe. I just,
I don’t want to – I can’t – carry on to Aden.’

I felt immensely better once I’d made the decision to leave but I learned later, when I was home in the UK with my family, that my phone call had sent the lot of them into meltdown.
They’ve never been sailing round the world and they had no idea what it was like. I was in the Middle East, a place that at the time was in the news every day during the spring Arab
uprisings, with bombs and sexual assaults, riots and governments being overthrown. Dad tried to look up flights for me but his internet crashed; he rang my brother in a panic asking if he could use
my sister-in-law’s parents’ wifi nearby. My sister was in floods of tears in Southampton, imagining the worst, and my brother started frantically ringing round embassies, asking what
could be done. (‘We advise her to leave the country, sir,’ he was told. ‘She’s already doing that.’ ‘Well, then, that’s about it, sir.’). I had no
idea what a kerfuffle I was causing as I sat by the swimming pool for another couple of hours, topping up my tan.

I still had to tell Tyrone. It was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done, worse even than breaking up with a boyfriend. Broken hearts heal; catamarans and skippers pumped full of
bullets and RPGs possibly do not. I stressed all the way back to the harbour in a taxi about what I was going to say, trying to come up with an eloquent speech that wouldn’t make it seem like
I was cold-heartedly abandoning ship. Moe was remarkably calm and seemed content with her decision. A horrible stone of nausea and trepidation bounced around in my stomach. When I saw Tyrone, any
planned speeches went out of the window.

‘I want to go home!’ I wailed like a five-year-old, started crying again and flung my arms round his neck.

‘It’s OK, it’s OK,’ he reassured me, patting me on the back as I gulped out, ‘I’m sorry,’ and ‘I can’t,’ over and over again.