If you really want to get inside a boat and it was locked, you can just use a crowbar to open this up. Something to think about if you do hear someone wearing your boat, to not switch on the light. Here's the base station. I'm going to pick up one of these infrared sensors. Okay, Ash. Can you shoot me with a fire extinguisher now? I'm Ben. That's Ashley. Together, we did the unimaginable. We sold everything and then set off on a mission to sail around the world. Civilization. See you later. Welcome, Ash. Come on, Ash. Twenty-eight countries later, in over 25,000 nautical miles, we are only halfway around the world. I have no idea what's going to happen. Subscribe to follow the adventure as we finish this lap.
Alright, so we're here in the Philippines and we wanted to have a bit more of a serious conversation with you, which is security at sea. And specifically, security at Anchorage. We're not going to go into details of piracy while we're moving. We're going to talk about how we secure our boat when we're at anchor. We're going to cover everything that we have on our boat to defend ourselves, as well as security measures and alert systems that we've put into place over the last year. We've been watching this boat over here. I'll show you on the Zumikam. It's a bank. It's a big fishing bank. But he's been kind of like following us, but not really following us. You kind of don't know because, you know, he's probably going out fishing in the same direction. But these boats here in the Philippines look kind of crazy. They look like what you would think a modern-day pirate might use. But usually they're just really friendly fishermen. Yeah. We turned off the engines to film and he's going, he's just coming by. So he's just over on the ice. So it's good. It's all good.
I think the main point I want to make is that 99.9% of the time, everybody is wonderful. And we believe firmly, and we've had all the experiences in the world to prove that 99.9% of the time, every human being you meet is a wonderful human being. However, you don't want to leave yourself completely open to that 1% chance or that 0.01% chance or whatever it might be. If you take small precautions, it might stop a robbery. It might stop someone taking your dinghy, which is so important when you're out here. It might stop a more violent boarding, if that be the case. We've cruised some of the more remote areas in the last year, including Papua New Guinea and the Philippines. And as we've done so, we've kind of ramped up our security measures on this boat. A little bit. Yeah, I'd say yeah. They still could probably use some improvement. The funny thing is, here in the Philippines, there's only been one spot where we haven't felt particularly fantastically safe. Sometimes you pull into a place and you get a weird vibe and you've got to trust your gut.
So this is like the first acreage in the Philippines, where we've kind of been on the hill. It's got shown at sunset there is a little fisherman that decided to come by and do a really close pass by our boat. And he wasn't just going one direction. He went a circle and then went back, just checking us out, you know, seeing what we got on the rails, seeing if we have an alarm system, maybe. It brings up a good point though, which is what do you do when a fisherman comes up close to your boat in the middle of the night or in the evening? You're not going to pull a gun on them, but you could light them up with the handy spotlight, which is what I did and he took off. Piracy is a term that I think to me always meant like, smell of pirates coming on board, but it isn't totally just that. So piracy is any crime committed at sea. So that could mean petty theft. Someone's stealing your shorts off your boat. It could mean someone boarding your boat, similar to a home invasion style. It could be a break-and-enter while you're not on the boat. It could include physical harm, it could include hostage taking and ransom demands, and finally death. All through the Philippines, Papua New Guinea, and the areas we've been recently, although we felt like there are risks here, I think the incidence of things actually happening is way higher in the Caribbean. For example, in Grenada, when we were anchored there, there were several piracy attacks at boat on anchor. That is actually the north coast of Mindanao. That can be not the safest place and we're actually just going to pull into an anchor just ahead of us about an hour away. It's about five o'clock now and we're going to go over all the security measures we put into place as the night falls and as we're at anchor.
Uh oh. What?
It didn't want to start. Is that that port battery that I said we should buy a new one and you didn't? We need to change it and you didn't.
Alright, we're pulling into this gorgeous bay here. I think we picked a spot though and we're going to drop the hook and have a pleasant evening, I hope. I'm putting some balls on the anchor chain. We can't see the bottom. There's either rock or coral and it helps to not get the anchor chain too caught so you can get it back up. It is absolutely beautiful here. Check this place out. There's no one around. No one. This is like the corona of the Philippines except there's no one around. Should I jump? Yeah.
Okay, so it's time to put out the alarms and we've come up with a pretty basic solution. Now there's more fancy ones and there's more expensive ones you can get built-in alarms as well. But essentially what this is is a series of infrared sensors is a driver alert system. It's a wireless system where the infrared sensors are powered by batteries as well as the base station. So you don't need to wire anything in. Let me show you. So here's the base station. I'm going to pick up one of these infrared sensors. That's zone number two. Zone number one. I will leave this out in the cockpit so that all my neighbors can hear it if we're off the boat and I'll put it under my pillow at night so I wake up if anyone's coming close to it. So there's a few caveats to infrared sensors. One is when the sun comes up in the morning these will be triggered. You should probably be getting out of bed if it's not late in the day. And two, if you're in a really rolly anchorage, this has happened I think twice to us. These will also be triggered. You can move these sensors anywhere around the boat where it makes sense. I have two up front and three out back. So I have zone ones. Zone ones are out back. And the beauty about these things is that I always take them off during the day or one where I was sailing because everything on a boat rots and corrodes. So they come with these little mounts which are just zap strapped on to various parts of the boat. It's just a plastic little piece. So then you just slide that on. And then that's it. And in the morning, you take it back off. You go for a sail. Don't worry about corroding bits. And then yeah, get to go.
The most common piracy we've been seeing in these parts of the world is petty theft. Generally what happens is the locals do not want to engage in a confrontation usually. They just want to get something. And you have this abundance of wealth on the boat compared to what they have, which is very little. Typically they come on board when you're off exploring and doing things on shore. It does happen out here and they're definitely our hotspots.
I was just about to open this window to show you how it closes but it's already locked. But most boats have these latches. They're called luma latches. They feel safe but they're not really. Because if you think about it, this is just plastic. These are just plastic handles. They lock with this little thing here. If you really want to get inside a boat and it was locked, you could just use a crowbar to open this up or smash it from the top. So it's more of a deterrent than anything else. People put bars on the inside and that's very good because then you can leave it open at night. I've read a story recently on Women Who Sail, which is a group of you are a woman sailing. I was reading a story on there about a woman who and her husband who had been boarded off the coast of Honduras I think. And they had metal grates on all their windows and they were in a mono hull. And they were able to also do a metal grate for their companion way, which is on a catamaran you can see it's like nearly impossible to put a huge grate over this. On a mono hull you have the advantage that it's usually a smaller entrance. And you can totally set have bars made for that. And they had really pretty ones made so it didn't look super duper ugly. Now they were boarded and locked themselves inside because they knew they were secure inside their boat. Now the men were choked and I just think destroyed a ton of stuff on their boat, but they were safe inside. I'm guessing that there weren't a lot of guns involved in this because I'm sure you can still shoot through things. But I mean typically they just want to get stuff off your boat. So the dinghy was gone and the sails were gone, but you're safe inside.
我正打算打开这扇窗户,向你展示它如何关闭,但是它已经被锁上了。但大多数船只都有这些扣具,它们被称为光马扣。它们给人以安全感,但实际上并不安全。因为如果你想想,这只是塑料制成的。这些只是塑料把手。它们是用这个小东西锁定的。如果你真的想进入一艘锁上了的船,你可以用撬棍打开它或从上面坑毁它。所以它更多的是起到威慑作用。人们在内部安装了栏杆,这样晚上就可以把门打开。我最近在一个名叫"Women Who Sail"的组织上读到了一个关于在洪都拉斯外海遭遇袭击的一对夫妇的故事。他们的所有窗户上都有金属栅栏,他们的船是单体船。他们还为他们的伴侣舱安装了一个金属栅栏,在猫amaran上,你可以看到它几乎不可能安装一个巨大的栅栏。在单体船上,你有一个好处,那就是通常有一个较小的入口。你完全可以为此安装金属栅栏。他们安装了非常漂亮的栅栏,所以看起来不是非常丑陋。他们被袭击了,但他们把自己锁在了内部,因为他们知道他们在船内是安全的。现在这些被袭击的男人被扼住了,我想肯定损坏了他们的船上很多东西,但他们在船内是安全的。我猜想这其中没有太多使用枪支,因为我敢肯定你仍然可以射穿物体。但是我觉得他们通常只是想拿走你船上的东西。所以他们的小船和帆都被偷走了,但你在船内是安全的。
The real fear out here for Ben and I is bodily harm. So the most important thing at anchor when you're cruising is to pull up your dinghy at night. The dinghy is such a big target. It's such a high value item. It's worth thousands of dollars, including the motor. And the easiest thing to do is just pull it up. So in some places like especially the Caribbean, which seems safe, it's some of the places where we saw the most crime. It was crazy. There was crazy stories there. There was another island over where a German was boarded at night and he pulled out a gun and was shot dead. The Caribbean has been in our experience one of the most dangerous areas. We've cruised, Philippines possibly want to say this. So you know we've been way more diligent in the Philippines than in Papua New Guinea. Then we were in the Caribbean. We probably should have been way more diligent in the Caribbean than in Papua New Guinea in the Philippines.
Okay, winchy winch. For some reason it's always my job to pull up the dinghy. I don't know how that's turned into a blue job, but it is. Okay, so whether you carry guns or use some sort of other kind of self-defense mechanism, you need to think about what's going on in terms of the lighting. So right now we're sitting in our cockpit. It's completely dark out behind us. So what does that mean for the attacker seeing us? Well, they're going to have great night vision. They can see everything and you can't see them. So whether you are using a gun or a fire extinguisher or a nace or a stun gun or anything else, you're going to be at a disadvantage because your boat is lit up at night on the inside and they're not. Something to think about if you do hear someone boarding your boat is to not switch on the light and to instead grab a spotlight because a spotlight you can shine out at them and light them up and that kills their night vision and then makes maybe you a harder target. But grab that spotlight and go light them up. Socks, doesn't it?
Probably the number one rule that you need to take an account is you need to be able to lock your boat from the inside including hatches, doors, anything that anyone can get into. So every night when we go to bed, we lock the cockpit, companionway doors, and all the windows. I have to admit we do sleep with our window open. We don't have a sea on this boat. Basically at anchor, this window is the only, this window right here, our bedroom window is the only window that's open and Ben's sort of gone through a thing in his head where he's trained himself that as soon as he hears a noise, he retches that shot and locks it. And I've actually a few things beside my bed which we'll go look at next. Can you put the bed down first? Is that good? No, it's terrible. Show it is. Every morning I get up and make the bed and almost every day Ben comes down at some point and either lifts it to get in the engine or takes a nap and unmakes the bed.
All right, that's pretty good. All right, hello. Welcome to our bedroom. No, nothing's gonna happen here. I hope not. Well, I hope so. I hope so but not on camera. Anyways, I wanted to talk about just some of the tools that we have at our bedside because these are things that we might use. Hopefully we'll never use but some are funny. Some are not so funny.
This is F.A.G.N. War Club. It makes me feel safe. I don't know why but um, that baseball bat would do. They basically use these to break someone's neck or hit them in the head to kill them. It just hangs out beside my bed. I have visions of protecting my castle with this. I don't know why.
Um, second off, we have the alarm. This is the base station to the infrared alarms that I already showed. Uh, I will put this actually under my pillow like this if we're in their super sketchy anchorage. And like I said, this will live up in the cockpit if we're off the boat to kind of dissuade anyone from coming aboard.
We also have. Where is he? Where is he? Oh my god. Did you bring a Kiwi from New Zealand Ash? You know that's illegal? That's my Kiwi. We haven't told anyone yet but actually exported a Kiwi from New Zealand. It's pretty bad. Anyway, it's this little guy here. He just kind of hangs out in their bedroom. What, put him over here? He lives in the basket. It's not a very good life in there is it? No. We were still trying to figure out what to feed him.
I think milk back to serious business. Um, if you do actually get boarded, the idea is to close up the boat because you're safest in the boat and then to summon help. How are you gonna summon help? This stuff's gonna happen quick, quick, quick. So we have an air horn right here. We will blow this out our side window. We also have several flares in our little safety basket here, which we could also fire out our little side window which is tiny. No one can get into. And then finally we have some, I don't know, this is like dog attack deterrent.
What actually happened in New Zealand, we had this big can of bear mace and they took it away from us because they said it was illegal. Come on guys, seriously, our crews are really gonna be like doing illegal things with their bear mace. That's beside their bed.
So finally, we have one more thing which I think is actually a really valuable thing for all cruisers, which is a fire extinguisher is an amazing tool to use against attackers. You will blind them, you will choke them, has considerable range and considerable effectiveness in the short term. And then once they're choked and blinded, you can go in for the kill with the war club or the empty fire extinguisher. I promise you, we'll try this tomorrow. And the last thing I have in here is the spotlight. The spotlight has probably come in the most handy the most number of times. You never know if it's a fisherman, I think 99% of the time it is a fisherman, but that one time it's not a fisherman. Can you see me? No. See? See how effective this is?
Okay, so one final thing, almost all boats have areas in their ceilings and in their walls where there's big empty spots. Our boat is no exception and it's really easy to convert a wall, for example, a very, you know, mundane looking wall, put a hinge on one end, a little bit of velcro on the other. You can open it up and store your iPads.
Wow, it's bright today. So the sun's just coming up and this little guy right here woke me up this morning with a alarm because when the sun hits it, it starts to freak out. So another thing you can do is to leave some old stuff out, maybe not right out, like where they can see it from outside because then they'll just bust in for no reason. But maybe leave a credit card that's old or a small amount of cash, somewhere that's easy to find so they don't tear your whole entire boat apart and maybe they won't find your secret compartment where you have the rest of it stashed away.
We don't cruise with guns, but there are a lot of people out here that do, but there's a few things you need to know if you're going to do that. One, if you declare them in certain countries, they will confiscate your guns when you arrive in the country and you will have to pick them up at the same place they were confiscated when you go to leave. So that can be a small problem if it's a big country and you're entering at one island, say the Marquesas, and you're leaving at another island, say Bora Bora. They're very, very, very far apart. So if your guns are in way the heck back there, you just might just leave them there. Maybe you don't want those guns anymore.
The other thing that might happen is in some countries they could just seal them in a safe. So you got to make sure you have a nice gun safe on board your boat and then customers may come on board and just put a seal over that safe so that your guns are safely tucked away in there.
We have heard of the odd cruiser who maybe just doesn't declare guns, they're guns that they have on board. Well you better have a good hiding spot because we have been searched in a couple countries pretty well. But if you do that and they find the guns and you haven't declared them, I think there can be quite a bit of hell to pay. And I'm not saying that's right or wrong or wrong or right or whatever, it's up to you how you choose to cruise and how you choose to enter your countries. But do keep in mind that guns, if you do declare them, they may not be able to help you at anchor anyway if they're either locking your safe with a seal on it or taken away by the customs officials when you arrive, not the island that you arrive in.
Can you shoot me with a fire extinguisher now? Please. This is the big one on the boat. Keep in mind this one is expired so I'm not really happy. I think it's almost empty. Can you believe how crazy that was? It comes right at you. It totally blinds you and it stinks. Man, it can't be good.
So we're leaving the sand courage and it's funny because we're making a security video in the sand courage and Ben got a funny feeling here and we are leaving. It's a bit late. He doesn't feel comfortable spending the night here. There's not a lot of there's no one around really. And about six guys were just in a bank and staring at our boat for the last two hours. We should have probably left sooner, but he just got creeped out. One guy was like shaking his penis at me and I don't know, so we're off.
So do you think it's because we're doing the security video that you're getting totally freaked out by that? Maybe. There's no one else around. There's these dudes that pulled up. I'm sure they're just dudes but... Why didn't you go talk to them? One dude like actually was sitting in the cockpit. I was sitting inside and actually was concentrating on our computer and didn't look up, but the dude like got out and shook his dick at her and like I don't know.
There's no one else around. It's late in the day, but we're moving to anchor just because I have a serious gut feeling. I like butterflies in my stomach. I do not want my wife to get raped. I'm sorry. I don't care how beautiful it is. And I'm a bit choked because we've been working on a video for like two days and it was just done. It's just finished and there's like this super cool cave system and like and now I don't get to see it because he has a feeling but I have to respect it and we're moving but I'm kind of a little bit... I think it sucks just so you know. I mean I think it kind of sucks like a lot. It sucks a lot. It sucks a lot.