Dear Family and Friends,

  No photos with this email.  Randal and I are fine as are all of our friends.  But this is a very hard email to write.  We have decided to ship the boat to Turkey.  The fear of pirate attacks has grown so much in the past months, weeks, and days that we no longer can feel it is safe to make the passage.  It is truly, truly disappointing to us to make this decision.  Almost all of the cruisers we know have decided not to make the passage.  Some will ship their boat, some will return to South East Asia and wait for better times.  Some will return to South East Asia and then go south around the tip of Africa.  I left our decision to Randal.  Although I told him I wasn’t brave and couldn’t face being taken by Somali pirates, I had accepted that I could deal with it and made the decision to go.  I had to decide for myself and my decision was to trust Randal. I always have and he has gotten safely through bad weather and boat problems.  We had planned to go up the Indian coast north of 22 degrees and cross there, but in recent days that passage has become unsafe.  Today while I was out acting as tour guide for friends Linda and Michael from B’Sheret, Randal made the decision to ship DoraMac.  Our hearts had been set for a trip up the Red Sea, a Suez Canal transit and Israel in May.  When Randal told me he had committed us to shipping DoraMac, I cried from disappointment, from relief, but mostly I cried for Randal who so wanted to make this passage.  He deserves to make the passage as do all boats.  That our government is doing nothing to stop the pirates is beyond comprehension.  They are terrorists and criminals and they control the shipping lanes.  We must now return south to the Maldives where boats will await the pick-up between March 15th and March 25th for shipping on a cargo ship designed to carry boats as cargo.  We will not accompany DoraMac but meet her in Marmaris, Turkey in April.  The cost is high in dollars, but less than ransom money if the worst should happen.  We can afford the shipping charge but not the worry and fear to our families and friends if we should be taken and ransom money would cost everything we had ever saved.  It seems so absurd that we even have to think about this.

  On a lighter note, we will have more time in India.  We are joining our friends Linda and Michael on B’Sheret for a 10 day trip to New Delhi and a visit to the Taj Mahal.  We will still visit Israel and the Red Sea, but it will come later in the year.

Ru

DoraMac