What to do when you discover your boat is stolen

But sometimes someone else wants it more than you do, and aren’t prepared to pay for the privilege. With around $11 million worth of boats reported stolen throughout Australia each year and good second-hand boats and outboard engines fetching big money, like it or not your boat has an invisible target painted on its side.

One of the problems with maintaining boat ownership is that there is no single register for boats; a big oversight given that many boats, just like cars, are given individual build numbers that are associated with the hull for the life of the vessel.

While a car’s vehicle identification number is added to a searchable national database that allows police to trace stolen cars, there is no such database for hull identification numbers.

Deterring theft is easy; there’s plenty of information out there on what to do to try and prevent your boat from being stolen. However, there is very little information telling you what to do once you realise your boat has gone.

It’s important to act quickly and decisively, as the thieves will be looking to get your boat out of sight as quickly as possible. At most, you’ll have a few hours. Don’t bother jumping in your car to search the immediate neighbourhood; your boat won’t be anywhere nearby.

Very few cases of boat theft are the opportunistic ones, such as when your boat is just sitting in the driveway on its trailer ready to tow away. Leaving your boat attached to the car can be risky; all the thieves need to do is unhitch it, push it back, and attach it to their vehicle.

Note that most insurance policies will demand that you take “necessary steps” to prevent your boat from being stolen, so submitting a claim where the thieves just backed up to the trailer, hitched up and drove off may prove a difficult case to argue.

The lack of a national database for boats makes it very easy for thieves to re-birth them with new hull identification numbers that can’t be traced, or even replace older boats with newer look-alikes -- so-called surrogate boats. Making it easier again for thieves is the fact that in some parts of Australia a boat does not even need to be registered -- just the trailer it sits on.

A large boat rebirthing ring was busted on the Gold Coast in 2013. Boats and personal watercraft were stolen to order interstate and given new hull identification numbers in Queensland. They were then sold on to their new ‘owners’.

The money the theft ring generated from the scheme was in the millions, with at least 58 boats and jet skis rebirthed.

So let’s just say the worst has happened. Here’s what you can do.

It’s fair to say that reporting a stolen boat to police won’t count too highly when it comes to allocating the resources needed to track it down, but it’s still a very important first step in the process of recovering your boat.

For starters, your insurance company will want to know if you have reported the theft.

Theft, including the theft of a boat, is considered a non-urgent crime, so don’t expect police to turn up at your house with lights blazing and sirens howling, the forensics squad following hot on their heels.

It’s also advisable to contact your local transport authority, alerting them to the fact your boat has been stolen and providing them with the boat and engine details. You may have to back your call up with a follow-up visit to a service centre with physical proof of your identity and a copy of the police report.

As soon as you put down the phone to the police, post something on social media.

Use a photo of your boat with any posts so people have an idea of what they’re looking for. Cross-post across any groups you think will be able to help with the search, such as local community pages, fishing groups, boat owners’ groups and so on.

If anyone posts a comment, follow it up straight away and ask for the time they think they saw your boat, a description of the vehicle towing it and its occupants, the road it was on, which lane it was in (this will help if it’s the last confirmed sighting and you suspect the thief made a right or left turn), and the direction in which it was heading.

People like a good evolving drama, so update the groups regularly with your progress to encourage others to keep up the hunt and report sightings.

Boat owners always have a healthy dose of other-boat envy, and will make mental notes of boats they see being towed on the road. The good ones will recognise the make and model almost instantly.

You may have been pottering around in the back yard when your boat was stolen, but the neighbours might have been peering through the front room’s curtains wondering what the strange vehicle was hooking up to your boat

The information they provide could be valuable in determining the identity of the vehicle used to steal the boat, and the direction your boat is heading.

Neighbours could also have home security systems with street-facing cameras that have recorded all or part of the event. The clues they provide can go a long way to helping other people jog their memory of what they might have seen.

There’s no guarantee that fitting a GPS tracker to the boat will allow you to pinpoint its location.

This is because if the boost is a professional job rather than an opportunistic drive-by, the thieves will have done their homework and pulled over on the side of the boat as soon as practically possible to search for a tracking device.

With more insurance companies refusing cover unless a tracking device is fitted, the bad guys are becoming more switched on to them.

This is why stolen boats will likely have electrical damage as the thieves trace the wiring to search for a hidden tracker the fastest way possible – ripping it out.

One way around this is to fit two tracking devices to the boat – once one is found, you can build a false sense of confidence in the thief’s mind that the job is done.

Another way is to use a self-powered tracking device that you can hide away in a spot that any potential thief is unlikely to uncover. The issue here is that these devices have a limited life span before needing a recharge, so unless you’re on top of power management it could let you down at the worst possible time.

Your boat is likely to be somewhere around where it was last sighted. That location may take several days to filter through to you as people catch up with the thread, but it’s a fair bet that your boat is somewhere around that last location.

It’s time to draft up a grid and do a street-by-street search. Trawl neighbourhood streets looking for boats parked behind gateways, or covered boats sitting in driveways.

If you think you see your boat, don’t take the law into your own hands. Phone police and report that you suspect you’ve located your stolen property, and leave it to them to act on your information.

Once again, don’t expect police to come rushing to your aid to kick in doors and whack on the handcuffs. They’ll politely roll up, knock on the door and ask a few questions once they have time.

The only downside to this is that your boat may be on the move again in the time between when you believe you’ve found it, and the time that the police turn up for their social call.

Most boat insurance policies will also cover the loss of fishing gear. That said, it pays to read your policy carefully for any loopholes.

One of the common gotchyas in the insurance policy fine print is that while fishing rods and nets may be covered, and even the marine radio and chartplotter if you’ve taken out extended cover, there may be no obligation to replace any of the expensive fishing lures, hooks and sinkers lost in the theft.

Check, too, whether your policy includes replacing life jackets, anchors, and even your favourite pair of polarised sunglasses.

It pays to ask plenty of questions from your insurer before you sign the dotted line.

This is where you're largely out of luck. Once the identity of your boat or PWC is changed, police have a tough time confirming the true identity of the boat and its ownership history.

In all likelihood, even if a stolen vessel is recovered, police will be very limited in terms of their ability to confirm that you once owned it, let alone bust the people who stole it for the crime.

Boat owners who know every scratch and ding on the boat stand a much better chance of assisting in the recovery, especially if they can back up the claims with photos and receipts for the electronics.

Otherwise, the only way you're likely to get it back is to buy it.