Four Americans sailing aboard a yacht on passage from India to Greece have been seized by pirates some 240 nautical miles off the coast of Oman in the Indian Ocean.
Jean and Scott Adam, owners of the the sailing yacht Quest, have been sailing around the world for more than seven years. In some news reports they have been described as Baptist Ministers.
They were only recently joined by two crew according to their Web site
All four captured crew members will join the over 815 sailors now being held hostage by pirate among them are the South African couple Bruno Pelizzari and Deborah Calitz who are are still being held in Somalia, four months after their sailing yacht Choizil, was hijacked.
Ransomes were paid to free the British couple Paul and Rachel Chandler after they were held for nearly 400 days after their yacht, Lynn Rival, was hijacked near the Seychelles in October 2009.
They fared better than did the French yacht-owner Florent Lemacon was killed when French commandos tried to liberate him and four other people from their hijacked yacht, Tanit, off Somalia in April 2009