We were boarded and robbed in the center of Pontianak harbor Kalimantan, Indonesia, on 9th November 2013.

We were anchored at the Harbour master’s advice for a safe position, opposite his office on the other side of the river about 700 meters downstream. We had been there for about 6 hours.

We were exhausted after being at sea for 13 days and slept through the entire incident.

Sometime between 2 and 4 am the pirates came on board, by dinghy, and cut the chains from the outboards and gen sets and lifted them off the boat. They also stole fuel and drums.

The front hatch was unsecured for ventilation and the robbers gained access through here and took our diving gear (armed with a diving knife at this stage), stole computers and other electrical gear and sundries from the front and center cabin. They also took the chart plotter and autopilot control from the center cockpit. They did not come into the aft cabin and we were unharmed.

When we woke up in the morning I noticed that my outboard engines and Honda 3 kva genset were missing. These were chained and padlocked with 10 mm chain. My wife discovered we were invaded below and noticed the remaining gear missing mainly from the forward cabin and where they could reach from there.

We called Mayday on channel 16,12 and 10 constantly and were ignored despite plenty of VHF traffic. I happened to have the phone number of the chief pilot and called him, he alerted the authorities. The authorities treated the incident as a bit of a joke at first, but after we insisted that reports be typed out for insurance purposes they treated us well, but we do not expect a recovery of our goods.

To make matters worse we were fined as illegal because I was too busy with other authorities to extend my visa with immigration (this was our last stop in Indonesia before clearing out). The fine was rp I000000.

Then to add insult to injury we have purchased two new outboards yesterday to replace the theft, only to find that Customs and Excise have no provision to reimburse the tax for vessels in transit. They will however not apply import tax if you buy the replacement parts in another country and import them!

Bryan Butson

SY Second Winds

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