Yacht reported stolen from Waikawa

[grant 40]

"The missing yacht Sioux believed to have been stolen on or about 6/7th from Waikawa marina;-

 

A 38ft sloop Cheiftain class yacht that has a pale blue hull with white upper works. She is also fitted with blue sail covers and cockpit dodgers. The owner has said that a notable feature about the vessel is that her radar scanner is fitted quite high up the mast above the spreaders."

 

From what i recall I think the more distinguishing mark on a 38 ft chieftain would be that it has a centre cockpit (I stand to be corrected on that, but am reasonably certain)

 

If spotted the best contact would probably be the Wellington Maritime Police 04 472 0152

[wheels 543]

Blimey. I know the boat and the owner Paul really well. He's a very good friend. Yes she's centre cockpit. The paint is quite badly faded, so she is a light to mid powdery blue and the cockpit is white. She had a couple of shrouds replaced and some railing replaced just last year. So it's easy to spot a mixture of shiney against 20yr old rigging and rails. She aslo has a Stern hung rudder with Wheel stearing. I don't know if that is normal for a cheftain or not. He normally has it on a swing mooring. Which would be far easier to steal from than inside the Marina.

[Guest]

Lads we need a picture!

[wheels 543]

I have a friend that crossed from Pelorus to Mana, passing cape Jackson on Monday. They got away Monday Morning and were across by Lunch time. it was a really wild rild apparently. Anyway, I have sent her an Email to see he she saw any blue yachts anywhere. It's been pretty ruff out there. It was only 15kts, but the sea state was quite big. So either someone knows how to handle a boat of that size, or they are hunkered down in a cove somewhere.

[w44vi 17]

How hard would it be to sail to aust and sell it on to some unsuspecting person?

Most boats (all the boats that I have owned) have no hull identification, chuck on some second hand sails and change the engine number and there would be no way of confirming identity

[Guest]

How hard would it be to sail to aust and sell it on to some unsuspecting person?

Most boats (all the boats that I have owned) have no hull identification, chuck on some second hand sails and change the engine number and there would be no way of confirming identity

The hard bit would be explaining to customs/ immigration why you didn't give them 6 months notice of intention to enter the country and why apart from the boat, you have no visable means of supporting yourself on your "visit"

[wheels 543]

Unless you are Ozy, sneak over here (I mena ya can't put it past them, those sneaky little underarmers them), steal a boat and sail it home.

Hey, anyone seen Idlerboat lately??

[Rental 1]

Unless you are Ozy, sneak over here (I mena ya can't put it past them, those sneaky little underarmers them), steal a boat and sail it home.

Hey, anyone seen Idlerboat lately??

 

Sandwich stealers !!

[grant 40]

ok, that radar is quite distinctive being that high up

 

last time a stolen Waikawa boat was discovered in Wellytown it was half full of bits stolen from other waikawa boats.....

[wheels 543]

Everyone, please continue to keep an eye out for this. i have just got off the phone with Paul the owner and the boat is still missing. He chartered a small plane and flew over the sounds and all the way to Nelson and was intending to fly around D'urville and around Port Gore, but got too low on fuel. I have friends in Prt Ligar keeping an eye out. Paul drove around to Port Underwood yesterday, but no luck. He said the sea was really ruff when he drove up the coast from CHCH and anyone out there would have to really know what they were doing or they would be in real trouble.

On Monday evening Dave from out at the Whaling Station at the entrance to Torry Channel noticed what he thought was a Sloop going out the entrance. Visiblity was very poor, so he could not tell what colour the Boat was. But he took notice because the conditions were Horrendous and he thought it was pretty brave or reckless a boat going out inot the Strait in those conditions. So far no one has seen the boat in the Wellington area. So if it headed that direction, there are not too many directions it could go. Full on into a Southerly to head South, Full on into the strait and Karori Rip to get to Wellington, full on into some more nasty stuff to get around the Cape Paliser and Castle point and then put up with the wild East coast. No one has seen it in Mana, so it could have by passed and headed further North. So the one place it may have hunkered down would be Port Gore. And it's the one place Paul didn't get to search by air.

So it's all a mystery. The only other possible would be if the yacht got in trouble out in the strait and may have gone down.

[Guest]

Navy and Air Force have the details and are keeping an eye out for it too.

[Guest]

I have had, believe it or not, two yachts stolen from me.

 

One was my own boat, Bobby Shafto, taken from the Republic of Singapore Yacht Club

at Jurong and which turned up, seriously fucked, about 4 months later at Surabaya in East Java.

 

And the other was a boat (which I, as a broker, had listed for sale) which was taken from the Tradewinds anchorage in Suva, and which the buyer (who shot through before paying the bill) piled up on a reef in Tarawa a few weeks later.

 

Generally speaking, I believe these acts to be the illconsidered acts of desperate people and which will always end in tears. They are people with no long term strategies or, indeed, hopes.

 

With luck they will drown themselves and the boat will (hopefully) be restored to it's rightful owner,

or (less hopefully, because it plays havoc with our insurance rates) become a tidy total loss.

[wheels 543]

I didn't ask Paul, but I have a feeling he would struggle to have insurance. He's no young fella anymore.

Paul is one of the "real" sailors. He spent 7 years sailing the world and has been a fantastic help with advise for us. He was the one that told us that if I really wanted to see NZ, it could take 5 years easily and that after he sailed the world, he realsied NZ was the best country to sail and see.

That boat is more than just a boat to him.

[Fusion 0]

I agree with David (desperate acts). A friends Tracker was stolen from Westhaven a few years ago. the thief had lost all his money at the Casino and had enough for a dozen eggs. He got about 50 miles past Barrier and got the snot kick out of him and lost the engine and all power. After all the booze on the boat had run out he turned back. Sailed back to Auckland and tied her up to the Blueboat ferry wharf. He left all the sail up and wander up to the sally army and gave him self up. His intention was to sail to Fiji and start another life? The boat had a lot of internal damage. It was a home built interior and when we viewed the damage it looked like he had bounced around down below a lot.

[Guest]

Any News Wheels?

[wheels 543]

It has completely vanished. Paul took another flight and covered every where. Nothing has been seen.

I can confirm it is not insured. It was his everything. He is pretty upset about it as you can imagine. Police don't reckon anyone would head off over seas, but there has been no report from any NZ port, so maybe the theif/s got in trouble and it went down.

I can't quite understand why that one would be targeted though. Maybe it was completely random. But if I was randomly going to steal a boat, there are others out there I would have gone for first due to looking flasher. Or maybe the thief really knew what to look for in a boat for that kind of sailing if he really did intend skipping the country. Which means the person could be experienced.

[w44vi 17]

conspiracy theory time, I reckon its drug runners! they want a good boat that doesn't stand out

 

I feel sorry for the owner, you put a huge amount of blood, sweat and tears a boat then sum a** hole takes it... sound like IRD

[Guest]

The blue topsides do stand out, but maybe they thought painting that white will make a big change to make it blend in with the AWB's.

The guys stealing trailer fizzies take 3-4 at a time and swap all the engines and other bits around so the owners even have trouble recognizing their own boats.

[wheels 543]

It's a very Sad situation. The boat was Pauls life. He is well retired but worked as a Taxi Driver just to raise some money to spend time on his Boat.

 

I forgot to add, the mooring rope was retrieved by a Diver and the line had been cut cleanly through by a knife. So the mooring bouy must still be on the fordeck.

 

There are possible scenario's, but they all still raise similar questions. Starting with,

Why out of hundreds of boats in the mooring field and certainly many that looked far fancier, was this boat chosen. Maybe it was just purely a coincidence.

The weather was extreme at the time. This meant it would have been the only boat to move anywhere, yet no one saw it.

The choices of where to go in that weather, once outside the sounds, would have been very limited.

No one has seen a boat of this discription enter a port in NZ.

Changing the colour of a boat this size would not be easy in the weather we have had. One would expect you would have to bring her out of the water. So where on earth would you do that without being noticed.

And even painted white, at this time of year and weather, you would still be noticed coming into a Marina somewhere.

She could have got someone across the Strait and perhaps scuttled. But that is not so easy either. And no ferries had seen a boat out there. And if it was just a ride across the strait, you probably wouldn't be bothered with scuttling the boat anyway. Once again, you are talking about someone that has a clue about boating. Most people that do that kind of thing are likely to have two random brain cells occasionaly bumping into each other.

[Murky 1]

I forgot to add, the mooring rope was retrieved by a Diver and the line had been cut cleanly through by a knife. So the mooring bouy must still be on the fordeck.

Bizarre. I'd have thought it would be just as quick and easy - and probably attract less attention - to let it go on the normal way than to sit there cutting it.

 

It is either a total genius or a total idiot, nothing in between.