Milan Egrmajer, 58, a longtime Ottawa resident was killed Dec. 3 by bandits who boarded his boat, the s/v Adena, after he'd taken shelter from a storm in the isolated Laguna El Diamante, near the town of Tela in northern Honduras. He was shot four times in the chest and abdomen and left for dead in the cabin. His 24-year-old daughter, Myda, was on board, but escaped physical attack and fired a flare gun that prompted the bandits to flee. The daughter has since returned to the family home on Manitoulin island in northern Ontario. Family members describe her as too shaken by the ordeal to speak about it, even to them.

Others have been shaken, too. The tragedy has rippled through the tight-knit world of Caribbean cruising. Egrmajer was a well-known and popular member of the small sailing community that calls the Honduran port of Rio Dolce their wintering home. After departing St. Catharines, Ont., in late 2008 and sailing down the east coast of the United States, he spent the last two winters in Rio Dolce, venturing out to explore the Caribbean. He was heading for Panama with his daughter when he was killed.

"Milan was well known and loved among the cruisers on Rio Dulce," one correspondent informs the readers of the Rio Dulce Chisme-Vindicator. "I cannot comprehend the senselessness of his death."

"That big happy smile was his trademark," said another. "But I'd never seen him happier than the days when Myda was here on the Rio with him ... bustling about getting s/v Adena ready for their much anticipated cruise to Panama."

Among the mourners is Chris Herrnberger, a longtime friend of Egrmajer and a fellow sailing enthusiast who has set up a website, http://svadena. wordpress.com,to honour his friend and provide others with a vehicle for offering their condolences to his family. "Milan was a much more seasoned sailor than I am," Herrnberger told the Citizen. "I always looked at him as my mentor."

Egrmajer's death is hard to accept if only because he was such a skilled and cautious sailor, says Herrnberger. Milan, he says, wouldn't have invited his daughter to join him if he didn't think it was safe. "His philosophy was to stay out of areas where there had been reported attacks. He was well informed. Besides, he was very meticulous (as a sailor), and one of the protocols he insisted on for his boat was that there be absolutely no weapons on board, not even machetes. In the event of a boarding, there was to be no resistance."

A week before the attack on the Adena, a French couple, owners of the catamaran s/v Marione, were attacked near the area where Egrmajer would be killed a week later. "Jean-Louis and Cathy said they were boarded in the middle of the night Wednesday Nov. 24 by six men armed with guns and machetes," the Chisme-Vindicator reported. "'They stole our dinghy and motor, computers, camera, telephone, money etc. We were not harmed. We tried to talk to the attackers trying to calm them down (we speak some Spanish)'."

Egrmajer was likely aware of the attack on the French couple, says Herrnberger, and probably sailed into the area only to avoid getting caught in a storm at sea. "There must have been severe weather for him to feel he had no option but to go in there for shelter." In other words, he was in the wrong place at the wrong time.

That may have been Herrnberger's fate, too, if Myda hadn't been aboard. Herrnberger was one of three friends that Egrmajer had asked to consider crewing the Adena on its Panama voyage if his daughter hadn't decided to join him. Might things have turned out differently if Herrnberger or one of the others had been there instead of Myda? "That's one of those questions you bust your head over," Herrnberger says. "It's one of those circumstances in life that you look at and say, 'There but for the grace of God, go I.' Would things have been different if one of us had been on board? I don't know."

What he does know is he's lost a good friend, and prefers to remember him in a positive light. "I have a tremendous sense of loss. Milan was someone who understood what sailing is all about. Sailors are basically dreamers. The difference between Milan and a lot of others is that he had the courage to live his dream. He was doing exactly what he wanted to do. As he put it in one of his e-mails to me, 'I say to many that if I die tomorrow, I am most happy with the life I have enjoyed so far, I don't need more.' That's how I want to remember my friend."

Maybe so, but there is also widespread anger at what some see as negligence of Honduran authorities. The attacks on Egrmajer and the French couple have prompted some to question whether the Honduran government and its security forces are able to deal with the bandits. If not, some suggest, maybe it's time for the expatriate community to weigh anchor and sail away. "(I) have talked to many business owners here who are puzzled at the lack of cruising boats," one correspondent wrote in the online paper. "Maybe if we all left they would figure it out."

"The Honduran government must step up and take control of this situation, (otherwise) other governments will step in for them," said another.

Others, however, are scathingly sarcastic about the Honduran authorities. "Now you all come down and enjoy the benefits and beauty of such a great place," says one person. "Please do not note that others have been murdered trying to do the same thing while impotent, corrupt, overly tolerant local governments do not provide security or prosecution in case of a violent crime committed against you or your loved ones."

Sarcasm aside, it does seem that piracy in the Caribbean is on the rise, and, contrary to Hollywood's Pirates of the Caribbean, there is nothing romantic about it.

In early April, a German couple, Hans Jorgen Ropke and his wife, Angelica Ropke-Wiels, were attacked by pirates who boarded their boat, Spirit of Cologne II, about a mile off the north coast of Venezuela along the Paria de Peninsula. The husband was shot and killed. The attackers left, and the woman continued sailing for four days, but she was unable raise the alarm because the bandits had taken all the communications equipment. She eventually abandoned the boat, leaving her husband's body on board, in favour of the life raft. She drifted for nearly two weeks before being rescued on April 16 by a merchant ship off the coast of Curacao.

The north coast of Venezuela appears to be one of the most dangerous cruising areas in the Caribbean. In mid-October, a couple aboard the sailboat Boldly Go was boarded by four armed men about 30 kilometres out of Lost Testigoes, near the port of Palomar. The bandits stripped the boat of anything valuable.

But elsewhere, too, are reports of burglaries, armed robberies and killings at sea. In early July, the skipper of the yacht Altares was killed and two others, a man and woman, seriously wounded when five pirates boarded their boat at about 3 a.m. while it was anchored at sea off the coast of Panama, near the Port of Pedregal. The man was shot in the chest, while the woman was severely beat about the face.

On Oct. 13, six armed and masked men boarded the Two Amigos while it was anchored off Quepos, Costa Rica. They tied up the two male crew members for two hours while they stripped the boat of its radar, electronics, radio and cash, as well as personal belongings. According to a sailors' website, "local police were unable to help much" because the bandits fled to an area that police "regard as a no-area."

Complaints about the incompetence of local authorities, or their unwillingness to pursue the pirates, are common among the sailing fraternity. But then some suggest the negligence of the authorities reveals the gradual breakdown of law and order in the region. As Herrnberger puts it: "In my opinion, the attack (on Egrmajer) reflects the state of affairs in Honduras."

Or, as other commentators observe in the Rio Dulce Chisme-Vindicator: "The handwriting is on the wall.

"As the world economies continue with the disparities of the haves and the have-nots, while the world media shows the haves and all their wealth for the have-nots to view on TV, movies and in personal reality, the have-nots will seek to take from the haves by force.

"Paradise lost."

**Robert Sibley is a senior writer for the Citizen.