Captain Panayiotis Tzanetakos comes from a seafaring family, for 9 years he has been in sea trade and he spends at least 7 months out of the year at sea. As a family tradition, his father and brothers are merchant seamen. As already known, Greece has the biggest sea merchant fleet in the world. He has a young family and his wife is expecting a baby. He is a captain of a 75 000 ton ship “Ellivita,” which sails under the Greek flag and his business is profitable. Nothing is supposed to stay on the way of his happiness, except for his fear of not surviving a eventual pirate attack.

“No seaman has ever seen anything like this. It's a war zone out there and, put simply, the situation is out of control. They've got weapons, RPGs (rocket-propelled grenades). It's not like before when they'd come on board and rob you. These days they hijack ships, take the entire crew hostage and demand huge ransoms,” shares the captain for the “Guardian.” He admits that his stomach shrinks out of fear when he travels through the Gulf of Aden.

“This month we've had to go through the Gulf twice. The first time we were carrying grain from Ukraine to Iran and the second - fertilisers we picked up in Saudi Arabia and are taking to New Orleans. The first time we were totally unprotected and I felt so alone, so responsible for my crew and cargo. The second time we were able to join a convoy that was being escorted by a Russian frigate but when another merchant ship about 30 miles south of us was suddenly attacked, the warship had to leave,” also says the sailor.

According to him, everyone in this business is afraid of the pirates. Ships are all in contact with each other but pirates are very insidious. They tie the speedboats to trawlers and skiffs and pretend to be fishing in and usually such craft aren't visible more than three miles away. “'If they attack you, the game is up quickly. In five to 10 minutes the pirates surround you in speedboats; then using ladders they board the vessel and from that moment there's nothing you can do. They have weapons and they've taken the crew hostage,” says Panayiotis Tzanetakos.

He says that his crew consists of 8 Greeks and 12 Filipinos. “I'd rather take my ship into the North Atlantic in winter, when the seas can be at their most difficult to navigate, than transit the Gulf of Aden. Pirates are more dangerous than nature at its worst,” admits the Greek captain. “Very soon we will be witnessing scarier things. Pirates will be killing sailors, not even kidnapping them for ransoms,” concludes Mr. Tzanetakos.