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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