Having skirted southern Sicily, kleptoyacht ‘Eclipse’ continues eastwards into the Ionian Sea, having passed north of Malta. It looks like it is headed towards Crete and is now motoring slightly faster than before at 8 knots.
Kleptoyacht ‘Solaris’ has slowed down to 3 knots and is hanging around outside the territorial waters of Greece’s southernmost island of Gavdos, south of Crete. By astonishing coincidence, a small Russian-registered oil products tanker, the ‘Vyazma’, has come out of Cypriot Limassol and is loitering only 5nm away. They both may be genuinely “awaiting orders”, as they declare on their AIS systems. Or they could be waiting to rendezvous with ‘Eclipse’, which at current relative speeds would take more than three days.
If you wanted people to stop snooping on your kleptoyacht’s position and heading, what would you do? Dismantle your AIS system and bribe a passing fishing boat to take it with them? I doubt that this is what has happened but given Abramovich’s colourful financial history and the value of his kleptoyachts (probably together a lot more than £1bn), perhaps nothing should be ruled out.