Property taken from moored boats

Press, 18 March 1982, Page 6

Property taken from moored boats

Thieves have struck recently at yachts moored at Lyttelton and in Banks Peninsula bays. Detective T. A. Moyse, of the Lyttelton police, said that last month, the stern leg of a Volva. Penta inboardoutboard motor, valued at $4OOO, had been removed from a 12m launch at Purau.

In another incident, a $3OO Seagull auxiliary motor had been taken off a trailersailer parked in the Naval Point compound at Lyttelton. The compound was supposed to be secure. It was surrounded by a 2m-high wire fence. Thieves had also taken lifejackets and other items

from yachts moored at Lyttelton. This was the second time that the launch at Purau had been interfered with. Another stern leg of a motor had been taken from the vessel about a year ago. The theft had been well planned because the thieves would have had to have unbolted the stern leg of the motor underwater. The chances of recovering any of the stolen items were slim. In the last two years about 10 outboard motors had been reported stolen to the Lyttelton police. The chances of recovering them were low because they were easily disguised and the thieves sometimes stole them to use on their own boats. Dinghies had' also gone missing regularly. In the last two years, about 10 of them had been reported stolen, many of which had been left on the side of the road after use.

Boat-owners’ carelessness had encouraged many of the thefts, Detective Moyse said. Boat owners should remove any loose items from their vessels, including auxiliary motors, when they were riot in use and dinghy owners should take their boats home instead of leaving them on the side of the road.

The “pointless” theft of liferafts was also occasionally reported to the police. The liferafts were usually stolen . from large trawlers by drug addicts when drug supplies “dried up” in Christchurch in the belief that the rafts held emergency drug supplies. Often, the $3OOO liferafts were found destroyed on a remote road days later after having been ransacked by the addicts. Drugs were never stored in these insecure rafts.