Imagine watching as thieves steal
your boat. Then picture yourself hopping in your truck and driving after the thieves
while calling 911. That’s exactly what happened in Orange County Florida recently
as some kids made off with a boat right from the owners driveway. If you make it
easy enough, you too can get your boat stolen. We’ll show you how.
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Sometimes it’s as if boaters spray painted “FREE BOAT” on their hull sides! |
First Things First
If we follow our guy’s example, then we’ll see that it helps if you live in an area
where kids are using drugs. Shouldn’t be too much of a problem since we ALL live
in an area where drugs are used. Right after these guys were caught, the cops asked
if they “used recently”. Sure enough, one of them admitted to using crack. Now,
once we’ve got the area down, we need to provide something that can be sold for
drug money. Enter… your boat, or more to the point, your boat on a trailer.
Next, Make It Easy
Now all you have to do is leave your boat on the trailer and the rest will take
care of itself. At this point, anyone with a truck can come along and get the job
done. What you don’t want to do is make it difficult. Our guy didn’t even chain
the trailer to his house or garage. Not that that would have helped much. That just
slows them down for a minute while they cut the chain.
Other Tactics…
We’ve seen several methods, but the most effective seem to be the ones that actually
disable the trailer. This can be anything from putting it up on blocks, to putting
a heavy padlock on the ball latch, to our favorite… removing a tire. Just get yourself
a simple floor jack and you can have one of the tires on or off in less than a minute.
And since most thieves are looking for the “grab and dash” boats, yours will be
bypassed in favor of a juicier target. I guess it’s just too much trouble to carry
spares along when you’re out stealing.
And There You Have It…
So you see… losing your boat isn’t as hard as it seems. Basically, all you have
to do is… well, nothing. Something at which most of us are experts.
We’d like to here your boat theft stories…on either side of the equation…
