Pirates?
What kind of weapons do you need to bring
with you along with your compass?
Shotgun? Bazooka?
Sadly, most pirates today have enough heavy arms to overpower anything but a Coast Guard Cutter. In that region, they likely belonged to TROP and may have been operating out of Tripoli or another N.African port, otherwise they would have taken the boat and used it once for a drug smuggling operation.
It doesn't say what punctured the dink, but it would have to be something deliberate, since those things are pretty tough.