On February 25, 2018, at 6.00h we prepared to leave Jacare, Brazil. Our destination was the city of Belem, Brazil, the last possible clearing place in Brazil.

When leaving the river in Jacare we noticed that our Volvo engine had only about half the power. We suspected that our propeller was dirty as we had anchored in the river for 2 weeks and a lot of growth could be seen. Because we had a good weather window, we decided to continue sailing anyway and make a quick stop in Fortaleza to clean the propeller with our scuba diving equipment.

On February 27, 2018, we reached Fortaleza and were directed by the Port Authority to Anchorage 2. There we anchored and went to sleep at 21.00 h.

An hour later, we heard strange noises and thought that our anchor was dragging. The noise increased continuously. We turned on the lights and looked out of the window in the aft cabin. There we saw the faces of men. We screamed: “go away go away”.

Within 2-3 minutes, the gangsters had broken open our internally-locked companionway door and, armed with 3 long knives, forced themselves into our boat. Immediately one of them grabbed my wife Liliane by the hair and threatened her with the knife. I got a strong punch on the left side of my head and almost fainted. Immediately we were handcuffed and tied.

The men tore off our necklaces and demanded our wedding rings and money. They did not speak a word of English or another foreign language and we did not speak Portuguese. I struggled to remove my wedding ring and they threatened to cut my finger off. I had to open the safe for them. They cleared out our watches, cash and other things. Opened all closets and drawers and left a lot of chaos.

At 23.00 h they left the boat. Previously, they had destroyed all communication devices, resulting in a short circuit of our onboard electronics. After about 10 minutes we were able to free ourselves from the shackles. In the hand held-VHF, we could use a few old batteries and be able to inform the port authority on channel 16 with some trouble and asked for police etc.

Another hour later, at 24.00 h, the police boat arrived with 3 policemen and a Navy officer. They used their cell phones to photograph the chaos, passports and ship papers, and took several photos of us! We gave them 2 long knives left by the gangsters. Then they left us. We were still in shock and then went to bed. We could hardly sleep.

The next morning we got up at 0900 h and sailed off. The Coast Guard followed us a little later with blue lights flashing and wanted us to turn back. We said no, we did not want going back. After a few discussion, they left us.

Three days later we reached French Guyana and anchored off the islands of du Salut. The SV Owl, with an English crew, then connected their satellite phone to our daughter in Switzerland, who was able to inform our son and the insurance company Murette. We sailed together with SV Owl to Grenada, where after 4 days we arrived in Port Louis Marina,  St. George. Here we felt safe and could slowly begin to process this terrible event. We wish our report to be put into Noonsite in order to warn all cruisers and discourage them from stopping in Fortaleza.

Paul and Liliane Aebersold

SV Luna Blu

Grenada, Port Louis Marina 12.3.2018