One of our AIS-receiving station operators in South Africa shares his true story of captivity and talks about his experience with MarineTraffic //

I noticed, to my surprise, that there are clearly-defined shipping lanes, and the lane heading up and down the east coast of Africa converged with the shipping lane from the Malacca Straits just offshore from my house. I realised my location is perfect to monitor shipping movements.

I’m also possibly one of the few station owners who had misfortune in their sailing experience. Back in 1990, my yacht ran aground during the hours of darkness. My family and I were captured and held hostage for 49 days by a then terrorist group, called Renamo, in Mozambique.

Apart from all the trauma of becoming embroiled in a very active civil war, the trauma of knowing we had disappeared and no one knew where we were, was profoundly disturbing. That happened in pre-GPS and fledgling-sat nav days.

Services such as AIS ensure this would not happen today, and therefore I applied to become a station owner to add to the security of all ships, but especially yachts, as they round the southern tip of Africa. //

I had to write a book to cover all the takeaways from our time of captivity but let me highlight just two:

Few emotions are more disabling than hopelessness. We had our two children, aged 5 and 8, with us, so we resolved early on that we had to do all we could to protect them from the reality of the war. We did this by assuming a nonchalant air that these weird happenings and people were all just a rather strange and exciting deviation in our holiday plans, and nothing to worry about.

This was not easy to sustain as deep feelings of guilt, hopelessness and despair often overcame us. We spent seven weeks living in a bush camp with the Renamo boy soldiers (aged 10 to ~20) before we were rescued. //

The second takeaway is related. It was frightening to witness how fragile social order can become. At that time, Mozambique was the poorest nation on Earth and a country in ruins due to unwise political policies, destabilization from neighbours resulting in the civil war, and the country becoming a theatre for the fighting of a proxy war between the east and the west. //

Our release required a cease-fire to come into place between Frelimo and Renamo. It did. I’ve since returned to Mozambique five times with a mission group from my local church. We attempted to help local communities with economic development and medical aid. These visits were emotionally exhausting for me, but I was amazed to discover how quickly the local people had placed the war behind them.

So the second takeaway is, people are extraordinarily resilient, and it’s vital for our mental and physical health to do all we can to place harmful events behind us and avoid giving or feeling blame. //

And, as a footnote, because you are probably wondering; our children grew up as happy kids and teenagers. Both are now young adults, both married and both with jobs that contribute directly to society. If asked, they would tell you they only have good memories of the time spent as hostages.