Boatyard Booze Burgler - Caught In The Act

After a fabulous month on SHINDIG we admitted to ourselves that it was time to get back to our own boat CINNABAR. A HUGE thanks to Capt Rob for allowing us to bring a pallet's worth of gear along on the journey.

We reluctantly said goodbye to Rob and JD, left Nuku Hiva, flew to Papeete (LOVE that city!) Then we did the short airplane hop to Raiatea.

Goofing off in the Hotel Sarah Nui, Papeete

Now we are in the Raiatea Carenage (boatyard) getting CINNABAR ready to go back into the water, which is fairly stressful. It feels like a completely different life from our voyage across the pacific on the good ship SHINDIG.*

CINNABAR high on her stands at the carenage. 

We are working everyday on tasks big and small, mostly big, and many of the boats around us have people on them just like us doing the same sort of work, hot, sweaty, dirty, and sometimes rainy and buggy. 

But there are diversions...Next to us is the boat EYE CANDY from Australia. 

Our view of Eye Candy from high atop "Mount Cinnabar"

We met Andrew and Claire last year in the Tuamotus. They were fun. They seemed so civilized, so, well, NORMAL. We knew they were a bit incorrigible, but little did we realize that Andrew and Claire are complete badasses.

Shortly after we arrived in Raiatea we began hearing about various boats that had been broken into with all their alcohol and sometimes other items stolen from them. Andrew and Claire arrived a few days after us and reported that all their booze (lots of it) was missing. We were lucky in that CINNABAR seemed untouched (so far), but many of our friends had their booze stolen (so expensive in French Poly) and sometimes flashlights, tools and other items as well.

Unlike us, Andrew and Claire are sleeping on their boat every night. One night at around 03:00 Andrew got up and noticed a flashlight in the boat behind them. He and Claire watched the light bobbing around inside the boat and realized it was being burgled!

They climbed down the ladder from their boat and quietly removed the ladder from the burgled boat so that the thief would have to find an alternate route off the boat (all the boats are quite high on stands). Eventually Claire saw the thief creep out the front hatch, notice the ladder was missing, and sneak to the rear of the boat which was closest to the ground.

Andrew was lying in wait with his camera. As the thief prepared to jump Andrew clicked off a few shots. 

Caught in the act! Attempting to hide his face, he was easily IDed by the gendarmes.

The thief growled "No pictures, I'll shoot you." Yikes! But was Andrew alarmed? Uh, no. He responded "F**k off!" and returned to his boat, camera in hand.

Andrew and Claire contacted the gendarmes (police) and eventually they interviewed Andrew and said they recognized the perp who is a repeat offender. Apparently he had been in jail locally but it was overcrowded so they released the jailbirds with less than a year left on their sentence. Andrew reported that "his" thief would be flying out the next day under armed guard to be delivered to the Papeete jail in Tahiti.

We were flabbergasted the morning of the excitement when we arrived and they told us all that had happened earlier that morning. "Really?" I exclaimed, "you had the wherewithal to move the ladder, trap him, take a picture, get threatened and then tell him to F**k off?!?" Andrew just smiled and shrugged. Unbelievable.  

Andrew the fearless, holding laptop with pic of the perp. He had more trouble with his prop shaft that gouged his head than he did with the thief in the night.

All in all the Carenage seems to be a decent yard, they seemed concerned about the thievery, and they have a gate that locks every night. Unfortunately there are holes in the fences, bad lighting and no 24-hour guard. We hope they take the cruiser feedback to improve security.

All I can say is that we're VERY glad to have Andrew and Claire as neighbors. EYE CANDY is our version of Neighborhood Watch, cruiser style.

A few of us go out to celebrate EYE CANDY's victory over crime. (L to R, the intrepid Claire and Andrew (EYE CANDY), Sylvia, Linda and Chuck (JACARANDA), Rob (ATHANOR))

NOTE:
*SHINDIG posted Part 2 of our journey across the Pacific. If you haven't seen it already check it out HERE at SHINDIGSAILING.