Aside from high unemployment rates and home foreclosures, there is another emerging indicator of how badly hit is the United States by the recession and the global financial crisis. It is the growing number of boats being abandoned by their owners.

Like mortgaged homes, the derelict vessels are difficult to sell at a time when the American economy is down, prompting some owners to default on their boat mortgages or abandon the vessels. Some boat owners, reeling from other expenses, now find it heavy on the pocket to maintain their water toys.

A 56-year-old Aspen, Colo. resident became the first woman to swim across the Atlantic Ocean when she stepped onto the beach at Trinidad this week.

Jennifer Figge began her approximately 700-mile journey Jan. 12 from the Cape Verde Islands off Africa. She swam for eight hours a day, sometimes in waves as high as 30 feet, before returning to a support vessel at night that followed her on her swim.

A Danish warship guarding commercial ships against pirates in the Gulf of Aden on Thursday rescued seven suspected pirates from a stalled boat that had been drifting off Yemen's coast for eight days.

The crew of the navy ship Absalon seized several anti-tank rockets and AK-47 assault rifles onboard the skiff.before sinking it to eliminate obstruction in the busy shipping lane.

A U.S. cruise ship with 1,000 passengers and crew aboard had a five-minute brush with pirates in the Gulf of Aden but escaped hijacking without casualty by using its speed.

The Malaysia-based International Maritime Bureau (IMB), which monitors piracy around the world, reported Tuesday that the hijacking attempt happened on Sunday while the MS Nautica of Oceania Cruises Inc. was in the Gulf of Aden en route to Oman from Egypt.

The United States Coast Guard recovered a boat stolen from a Florida Keys dock in October off the Yucatan Peninsula with 15 Cuban migrants on board and two men suspected of stealing the vessel.

The two suspects and the 2008 Hydrosport police say the men stole from a Plantation Key home, were returned to Florida on Friday, Nov. 7, according to a press release from the Monroe County Sheriff's Office.