Five relieved crew

Sail Bahrain skipper Ollie Smith spoke to thedailysail about their week in Iranian captivity

Sail Bahrain’s four relieved British sailors - skipper Ollie Smith, Ollie Youth, Luke Porter, Sam Usher and one Bahrain-based journalist, David Bloomer, arrived in Dubai yesterday after having been detained by Iranian authorities for close to a week.

That they should be headline news around the world, held captive at a time of political sensitivity between Iran and the rest of the world over the former’s nuclear enrichment program, came as a shock to the crew, who had been on a routine delivery trip from Bahrain to Dubai for the start of the Dubai-Muscat race when they encountered the Iranians last Tuesday.

Ollie Smith, skipper of Sail Bahrain told thedailysail last night: "We heard that it had broken a couple of days ago first of all, because they said that an American agency had reported we were being treated badly and they got a little bit upset about it all. We didn’t realise how big it was until Mudcrab [Nick Crabtree, Team Director of Sail Bahrain] stepped on the boat."

While the direct route from Bahrain to Dubai is some 70 miles from the Iranian mainland, closer to the rhumb line are a number of islands that are disputed territory between Iran and the UAE. These are in Iranian hands and are of strategic military importance being close to several oil fields and also the shipping lanes to the west of the Strait of Hormuz. Sail Bahrain was detained because their heavily Bahrain-branded boat had strayed too close to the military outpost on Sirri Island, the mostly westerly of the Abu Musa island group.

Aside from the Iranian agenda, Sail Bahrain’s situation was not helped on two fronts - the propeller on their Volvo Ocean 60’s saildrive had fallen off and it was unclear on the charts that there was an Iranian militarised zone to be kept clear of. At a time they they would have liked to have been motoring, instead they were trying to gybe downwind in very light conditions.

"We were trying to stay clear of the oil fields to the south and west and ended up in the wrong area," explained Smith. "It also wasn’t on any of the charts we had that we were actually in Iranian waters and we didn’t know there was a military base there. So we were already sailing away from the island again and on our way when a gunboat turned up. We obviously didn’t realise they were going to quite so upset we were there."

Initially on Tuesday the Iranian authorities had stopped them, had looked at their paperwork and sent them on their way. But soon after they had a change of heart and instructed Smith and his crew to return to Sirri island.



"We weren’t very far away at that point, so we went back," says Smith. "They then kept us there all afternoon and then the general came out and everyone came out and questioned us. We answered everything. We’d given them all our laptops and phones and everything. And they gave it all back, our passports back and told us we could go on our way."

They attempted to sail away again because as Smith understandably puts it "we just wanted to get the hell out of there". Sadly the wind had not increased, they still had no propeller and their progress was slow. One of the Iranian boats came out to them and Smith says that at the time he hoped they were coming to help tow them away from the island. However “they said ‘we’ve got a problem. We need to you to stay...’ it started as five minutes and ended up being an hour or two. Then they took us over towards the island again and said ‘anchor here’. And they then came back on and said ‘we don’t want you to leave overnight. It’s not safe’. But then they took all our papers and phones and computers and stuff away again." The Iranians had told them there were oil operations going on nearby overnight.

So Tuesday night was spent on board Sail Bahrain at anchor, the crew expecting to get their marching orders on the Wednesday morning.

"In the morning they came on board and said ‘you need to come into the port. We’re going to take you for a shower and a rest’ and took us into the port. We eventually got the boat moored up - we grounded once or twice because they were driving us with their gunboats." Their stay ended up being considerably longer.

Apart from the inevitable tension - problems communicating due to the language, the sailors not knowing what was going on, their captors only knowing slightly more, Smith says they were treated fine and relations improved during their stay. They were brought in a chess board and a dart board to keep them occupied. They had the opportunity to speak their families.

"Obviously it wasn’t great for us, but it was a lot tougher for everyone back home," says Smith. "The main problem is that they had the same - they didn’t know what was going on, but we didn’t really know what was going on either while we were there. The guys there didn’t know much more than us and they were saying ‘we think this is happening, we think that is happening’."

The room where they were being held was kept locked, but as relations improved its door was opened at mealtimes and they were allowed to check on the boat.

"One night we were laying there still awake and they came and banged on the door at 2am and said ‘you’ve got to come. Your boat is bashing around’," recounts Smith. "We went down there and the wind had come right round and picked up so it was blowing into the harbour there. So she was pounding up and down on the bottom, not majorly ,but enough to worry us and she was rocking around a bit and we were worried about the rig touching the wall. So we set up to wind her off. There was just me and Luke, and then they went and got the other two to come and help us. We eventually got her moved over to the other wall where it was a bit better.

"The next day we asked to take her back out to anchor. So we went back out and anchored the boat. It started off with one of us staying on board on watch with one of their guys. Then when it came to night they said they didn’t want anyone on board, so we left their guys to watch the boat and all came back in. Then we ended up moving it back into the port again where it was for the last couple of days until they said we could depart."

The only alarming point was when they were blindfolded, the Iranians not wanting them the English crew to see their military base. Smith says that when they took the boat in all the crew were blindfolded except him, so he could steer the boat. "They only blindfolded us when we were moving around the base, so we didn’t see anything. We were all quite keen to wear the blindfolds if we were in their base because we didn’t want to see anything we weren’t supposed to see, so we could be released."

The good news finally came early yesterday morning at around 0400, when the Iranians told them they were free to go, a potential diplomatic crisis thankfully averted, as the episode could have gone on for much much longer.

After days of desperate worry and the intervention of the British foreign office, there is general relief for the crew and also their family and friends.

On a lighter note, the question is - as a more relaxed Smith pondered yesterday - has Pindar/Alphagraphics (Andrew Pindar's sailing team set up Sail Bahrain) now outdone Alex Thomson and Hugo Boss in the publicity stakes this year?