Three couples had formed-the cruise director with the chief mechanic, a chambermaid with a steward, and the sports coordinator with the third mechanic. Seven of them were women, and sporting as European women can be. With the exception of a 69-year-old ship’s doctor who had gone to sea after a rough divorce, they were young to middle-aged. This meant that nouvelle cuisine was important to them, and, generally speaking, so was sex. Of the rest of the crew all except one Ukrainian were as French as the French, but by birth. In the kitchen, the chef was an African from Cameroon, but because he had learned to cook in Lyon from Paul Bocuse, a famous father of nouvelle cuisine, he was considered to be as French as the French themselves. Six were Filipinos, and formed a group apart. They occupied cramped but adequate quarters on the lowest deck, toward the bow. There were 30 crew members aboard-the ship’s full complement, less one professional pianist. Despite their precautions they did not believe that the Ponant would be attacked. The crew took advantage of the pause to relax and perform minor chores. The ship was being repositioned to the Mediterranean for the summer season-a trip requiring a monotonous passage beyond sight of land for a full week at sea. On this run now, however, no passengers were aboard. Most are American or French, traveling in groups sufficiently large to charter the entire ship. Its customers tend to be silver-haired and genteel. It spends Northern Hemisphere summers in the Mediterranean on old-stone excursions to dead-city sites, and Southern Hemisphere summers in the Indian Ocean, visiting Madagascar and the pristine islands of the Seychelles. It has four decks (including an upper one for lounging in the sun), two restaurants serving sophisticated French cuisine, individually air-conditioned cabins, a bar, a library, and a marina platform close to the water at the stern, for the launching of Zodiacs and water toys. It is a modern, 290-foot, three-masted sailing vessel, with Riviera-style raked lines, that sells luxurious holidays to a maximum of 64 passengers at a time. The Ponant was not built for such places. The Gulf of Aden is a hotbed of piracy, a crucial waterway where over the past several years Somali gangs operating far from shore have been hijacking ships, and allied navies have tried to respond. Last spring, as crew members of the small French-flagged cruise ship Le Ponant prepared to sail through the Gulf of Aden, off the coast of Somalia, they taped blackout cardboard over the windows, readied fire hoses to repel boarders, and mounted a special pirate watch to port and starboard.
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