Stranded and plundered by (Italian) pirates in the Aeolian Islands. A bad summer story
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We tell you a story of real piracy and looting. But we are not in the Indian Ocean or other waters ‘patrolled’ by pirates. We are in the crystal waters of the Aeolian Islands.
STRANDED AND PLUNDERED BY PIRATES
Englishman John Taylor’s Jeanneau Sun Odyssey 54 DS (16.75 m) “Fable” had run aground on the beach at Ficogrande, Stromboli, after the anchor failed to hold at anchor. Bad anchorage? More than anything else is probably the lack of knowledge about the place: almost everyone underestimates the fact that the seabed around the island consists of volcanic sand, which is full of air and therefore has limited specific gravity, combined with a very low friction cone. “The anchors don’t hold there,” sailor Sergio Conte, who posted the above photo on social media, told us.
In any case, to the 53-year-old owner of the boat, it went horribly wrong. But the worst was yet to come.
Over the next few days he was constantly guarding his boat, day and night, waiting for the paperwork to be completed to remove it. But all it took was a moment of drifting away because a couple of “pirates” (what can we call them? Jackals?) came on board and stole ropes, compasses, electronic instruments.
Two desperate people? Not quite: the pirates were two sailors, roadsteading with their boat a few hundred meters away. They saw Fable stranded and thought it best to “plunder” it by arriving with the tender. Most absurdly, the couple, from Naples, consisted of father, 50, and son, 14. The two have been charged.
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