Pirate attacks leave round-the-world sailors with tough choices…

gCaptain - 

Days before the Quest set off on its doomed trek across the Indian Ocean, Bill Rouse, a Texan attempting to sail around the world, made Quest owner Scott Adam an offer.

Pirate attacks had become so intense, that he and a group of yacht owners decided to transport their vessels across the Indian Ocean by cargo ship. Rouse and the others would fly to Turkey to reclaim their yachts. The cost was steep, $35,000 a piece. There was space for the Quest.

Adam declined. The Quest was planning to sail as part of a convoy for safety. Plus, circumnavigating the globe under his own steam “was a life-long quest,” Rouse said Adam told him.

“He smiled,” Rouse recalled, “because of the obvious pun.”

Less than two weeks later, Adam, his wife, Jean and their two crew members Phyllis Macay and Bob Riggle, were dead at the hands of Somali pirates.

Pictured: S/Y Calypso, a 40-foot Bob Perry designed sloop owned by John and Margo Almeida circumnavigated via the Arabian Sea and Gulf of Aden between 1998 and 2008.

The dangers of piracy are well known to most experienced sailors, who monitor reports of attacks closely and often travel in groups through high-risk areas. But the killings have stunned the tiny, tight-knit international community of “blue water” sailors–adventurers and serious mariners who sail the globe for years at a time.

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