Wake Up! We’re being attacked by pirates! It was 11.00 pm. Being the boring person I am, I was asleep in my cabin, others were drinking cocktails on the after deck, sampling chocolate at the late night chocolate fountain and generally being and having lots of fun.

I later learned that the cocktail drinkers on the after deck had by chance seen a small, open boat at the stern of the ship with people trying to clamber onto the lower decks. The heroic passengers threw tables and loungers over the stern and knocked the pirates back in to their boat.

Shots were fired from machine guns as the pirates made their way to the front of the ship and using an anchor attempted to climb up on to the bridge. Luckily we had specially trained international counter terrorism soldiers on board, they had joined us just a few days earlier, in anticipation of an attack. They were armed and ready.

We were dispatched to our cabins, all communications and radar were turned off and we were put into complete darkness. The Captain established a zig zag course, probably heading further out to sea, to make large waves, difficult for an open boat to navigate.

We were of course in the Indian Ocean off Somalia.

Embarking in Durban and having spent a few very interesting days in Reunion, Mauritius and the beautiful Seychelles we were now ready for the long journey up the African coast, around the corner of Somalia, into the Gulf of Aden and then to the Red Sea.

Our route had been set about 400 nautical miles further out to sea than normal in case of an “unlikely attack by pirates”. So we all felt pretty safe and didn’t give the prospect any more thought.

But apparently the pirates use captured ships way out at sea as a base to launch their small open boats from. The horizon at sea is only about 22 kilometers away, so even from the height of our bridge, the captured ship doesn’t need to be very far away to be out of radar sight.

They wait until dark and then set off very fast following the coordinates of a well publicised cruise ship like ours, hoping the little blip on the ships radar will be seen as just a blip and nothing more. Well it worked.

The following day, we could see the bullet holes through windows and life rafts, we heard that someone had been grazed on the leg by a bullet. The powerful fire hoses were laid out on all decks, ready to blast any pirates out of their boat. A bit late really.

By 3.00 pm we could hear the comforting sound of a helicopter, the advance party from our international naval escort who would take us in to the Red Sea. The Spanish Navy was on duty that month on pirate watch, it is the only time in my life I have been very happy to see a heavily armed navy helicopter. They circled around us very low and close and then sped off to see what was over the horizon.

Their warship arrived soon after and didn’t leave our side from then on.

The only problem was that as a refueling ship she could only travel at about 13 knots, we needed to travel at 15 knots to keep freezers, lighting, chocolate fountains, etc operating so we travelled all the way up the Indian Ocean doing circles so we didn’t get ahead of our escort.