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Besame’s Close Call

A marine insurance industry professional in Southern California sent us an incident report from the 100-ft Northstar motoryacht Besame. The report, filed on March 5, details an attempted boarding by suspected pirates in international waters off Mexico.

It appears Besame had left Zihua in the morning, bound for Tenacatita, and by evening were about 20 miles offshore doing a little fishing. Around 7 p.m., they were hailed on VHF 16 by a "Mexican Navy Ship" and asked a seemingly normal series of questions: How many persons onboard? Where is the vessel registered? and so on. The crew of Besame were then informed that the Navy wanted to board the boat for a "routine inspection."

The owner and captain were suspicious when the Navy ship wouldn’t identify itself — "That is secret," they were told — but stopped the boat and waited for the boarding party. In the meantime, they also called the Coast Guard via satphone for advice. They had yet to talk with an official when the boarding party came into view. They were understandably alarmed to see that the six masked people in the launch were armed with automatic weapons trained on the crew of Besame.

Besame‘s owner and captain called for them "to remove your masks and show proper identification if you want to board Besame. Otherwise we assume, given the attire and lack of identification, that you are terrorists!" The men refused so Besame took off full speed ahead.

By then, Besame‘s crew had reached the Coast Guard, who instructed them to continue on to Tenacatita and not allow anyone to board the boat. While the "Navy ship" followed them for several miles, they did not attempt another boarding.

This is the first incident of this sort that we’ve ever heard of in Mexico. We believe it’s an abberation and is likely related to the fact that Besame is a very large boat. We’ve yet to hear of any really bad incidents in Mexico, where cruisers will tell you how safe they feel.

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