Fear of pirates off Somalia prompts another cruise line to cancel voyages

Add The Yachts of Seabourn to the list of cruise lines steering clear of the pirate-plagued waters around Somalia.

The globetrotting luxury line says it has canceled a series of voyages through the Indian Ocean scheduled for late 2010 and early 2011 due to worries about the increasingly brazen attacks on ships in the region.

The 208-passenger Seabourn Legend, which had been scheduled to offer the trips, instead will head to the Caribbean for the winter of 2010-2011, sailing out of Fort Lauderdale and St. Thomas.The move comes just six months after a widely-reported pirate attack on an MSC Cruises ship in the Indian Ocean prompted that line to swear off future voyages through the region. Britain's Fred Olsen Cruise Lines also recently announced it will no longer sail through the area.Piracy off the Somali coast facing the Indian Ocean has intensified over the past year with more attacks against a wider range of targets and over a wider area extending hundreds of miles off shore. The daring attack on the 1,062-passenger MSC Melody in April, in which pirates with automatic weapons fired upon and attempted to board the ship, occurred well off the Somali coast...more..http://www.usatoday.com/travel/cruises/item.aspx?ak=68500513.blog&type=blog