About the "story you heard" about pirates. Three things are true:

1. You heard it from brits. You don't speak any other language and yanks would say they were attacked by a Chinese submarine. Brits are the most notorious panickers. Three years ago, BBC reported that a Russian bomber "passed mere meters away from a Swedish passenger plane". Then it was "a few miles". And finally it turned out it was barely on the same continent.

2. People on that boat spoke VERY bad, if any, Spanish and didn't know who was talking and about what. Even IF someone was talking about them, it was on Channel 16, the international emergency channel, and it's likely the harbor master was relaying information to coast guard. But much more likely they just heard some words that sounded like the name of their boat, and it escalated from there. As I always say, with every repetition of the story, the distance to the hungry lion and the rifle's reliability drop exponentially.

3. As I said last time, there have never been reports of pirate attacks anywhere in Latin America. It's an urban legend promoted by the brits. You cruisers are just scaring each other with those stories. AND with malfunctioning AIS.