Stronger and smoother

“I made out I was on the phone and sent Harry out to take some photos,” Kendall says. He told his crew to give the fishermen a wave to acknowledge them briefly but not to engage. “Make out as though they’re not there,” he said. The visit was not entirely unexpected. Before the Leopard had left Kota Kinabalu in Malaysia a few days before, the marina manager had warned Kendall that he might attract unwanted attention.

“He knew quite a lot about it and said the authorities are hot on it,” Kendall says.

During the delivery, Kendall had been receiving weather forecasts by email from his son Joel in Christchurch, New Zealand. With the small fishing boats all around his boat, Kendall called Joel on satphone to let him know they might be boarded.

“I said, ‘We’re OK at the moment but if it gets worse, I’ll send you a quick message.’”

He typed one word into his phone as a text, ready to send: TROUBLE.

WHO YOU GONNA CALL?

“It was a horrible phone call to get,” Joel says, “and he [Kendall] said not to tell anyone else so my head was spinning, trying to work out what I was going to do.

“I was only about twenty minutes away from home so I booted it back home and got online to try to figure out where he was and who to contact, who might be able to help. The most obvious place to call was the Coastguard around where they were, but trying to get around the language barrier was going to be a problem.

“I made a couple of enquiries and phoned the NZ Coastguard and Rescue Co-ordination Centre in Wellington as well and they were the ones who got us in contact with the right person.”

Joel managed to get in touch with the international piracy board who put him on a trail that led eventually to the Philippine Navy. He also spoke with an office that deals with piracy in the Malaysian office,

“Malaysia’s the hotspot where it [piracy] all happens,” Joel says.

EYE TO EYE

Meanwhile Tapsell and Kendall came on deck as though they had jobs to do. Kendall carried a hammer, supposedly as a tool, but knowing it could be a weapon if necessary. He considered firing flares into their boats: “But that’s only going to piss them off.”

About an hour after the fishermen had approached the boat, Kendall and Harry separately returned belowdecks. When they next appeared in the cockpit they were wearing completely different sets of clothes, including sun glasses and hats, so that the fishermen would count at least five people onboard instead of three.

Kendall was wearing a black shirt and black jeans – a message to the fisherman dressed in black.

“I had my hat on back to front and sunnies, just to look a bit rough and ready myself. If I’d had a black bandana and a black hat, I would have worn those, too,” he says.

“And then I gave them a wave, sort of just carried on, and relieved Sam on watch.”

All the time, the small fishing boats were moving further from their mothership and possibly out of their fuel range.

“And then after about a minute of me being there, looking a bit older and as though I was in charge, I could hear a bit of yack going on as they were only about two metres away from the boat and they just peeled off and went away.”