Let me start by saying the boating community is AMAZING and there are some really nice and selfless people in this world. My post and video got over 4k shares in 24 hours. Without the help of that we would not have recovered my boat.
The person that stole my boat is still at large. The police and DNR are doing everything they can to build their case and apprehend him. If you want the gorey details keep reading...
There are some things I just can't make up....and the events surrounding this incident are just insane.
Thursday evening we are out on our boat and come back around 9:00pm. Put the cover on, lock up the vests in the head etc, raise the lift and leave the marina. Keys are kept with us at our home or in our pockets. Never left on the boat.(Boat is kept in a slip with a lift)
Around 12-1AM Dustin (thief) gets into an altercation with his father and beats him up pretty badly and stabs him. This is after he got into a car accident with his father's truck. He then walks about a mile from his father's home and goes to the marina where my boat is kept. Walks up and down the docks and selects my boat to hop on and steal. He hot wires the boat to get it started.
(Mistake#1- when we rented the slip we asked if we could put a lock on the box where the lift control panel was- the owner of the marina told us "people don't steal boats, that's not a thing. You're perfectly safe here. We have cameras just in case but stealing boats is not a big crime around here." **We are first time boat owners so we trusted the owner that he knows what he's talking about.)
Dustin drives the boat across the Chesapeake Bay to a marina on the eastern shore. In the early hours of Friday 5-6am he makes a video of himself driving my boat and sends it to his girlfriend. He cruises up and down the eastern shore waterways all day Friday.
Friday evening, he goes to a marina on the Eastern shore and docks it at a public marina and leaves it there overnight. He then spends the night at a friend's house who has a family and invites his friend and his entire family of 12 to 15 people onto my boat on Saturday.
Friday evening my husband and I go to dinner at a restaurant on the water. We drove our car (weather was iffy with the tropical storm so I wanted to drive). My son goes to the marina with one of my friends and her kids to go fishing off the pier. (They have a boat at the marina too) After dinner, we call my girlfriend and ask her if we are to pick up my son at her house or the marina. She said she's still at the marina so we'll see you when you get here. I say, ok we are on route 50 so we'll be there in 20. She says- you're driving? On the road? I say....yes... Why? She says.....ummmm where's your boat?? She then sends me a picture of my EMPTY slip with the lift down.
When we arrive to the marina, around 9pm we search around to see if possibly they pulled our boat for some reason. There were high tides the day before and the day of so maybe the boat lift wasn't high enough to compete with the high tides. Our boat wasn't on any of the dry racks, however our marina has inside storage which is locked every night. The Marina was closed at 6:00 so I tried calling the Marina, emailing the Marina, and using Facebook to contact them. There was no answer so we had to wait till the next morning to talk to the forklift drivers.
Saturday morning, at 8:00am my husband shows up to the marina to look around during the day to see if he can see our boat on any of the dry racks. at 8:30 a.m. the forklift driver shows up and unlocks the dry storage area. My husband goes into the dry storage and does not see our boat anywhere. He asks the forklift driver if they pulled our Yamaha out of the water. He said he did not, we then contacted another forklift driver and he had not pulled our boat. We contacted both of the owners neither one of them had seen our boat at all on Friday. The last time they saw our boat was Thursday evening when we had gotten gas and gone out for a cruise. We then called DNR. The DNR officer showed up took my full statement wanted to investigate my older children thinking they may have taken it on a joyride however I explained to him the keys were on my husband and myself that neither of our children knew how to operate the boat nor would they be so brazen to take the boat.
The DNR officer goes into the office and asks the owner to pull the video footage from Thursday night and Friday. they were not able to access the video cameras. Apparently they weren't downloading correctly. So they had to wait until Monday to get the camera company out there to pull the footage. (Remember that time the owner told us they had cameras out there just in case?
Oh and nobody steals boats, it's not a thing.
) *We still haven't seen any video nor have we been contacted by the marina.
I leave the marina around 9: 30am and go to my office. I then proceed to create a public Facebook post and share pictures of our boat stating that it was stolen and for everyone to please share the photos with everyone they know and look out on the waters for this boat.
Meanwhile, on Saturday Dustin fills up my boat with 87 octane gasoline from Royal farms.
He takes his friends and the family out on my boat all day Saturday. They are tubing, wakeboarding, kneeboarding, and having a grand old time on my boat. Dustin tells his friends that the boat belongs to his father. Dustin also tells his friends that he just installed custom speakers into the tower the night before so he wanted to make sure they worked which was why he had the boat all day Saturday. The people on the boat have no idea that the boat is stolen and continue to take pictures and videos of themself and everything around while on my boat. Dustin takes my boat to a sandbar located on the Eastern shore, and the tide goes out while my boat is sitting on the sand. The friend tries to push the boat off the sandbar and Dustin has the bright idea to gun it in reverse full throttle sucking up all of the mud gunk and debris that is underneath. He then has his friend go to the back of the boat and push the boat forward while he guns it full throttle in drive. Again sucking up everything that is on the sandbar. my boat is throwing BCU codes and saying to contact dealers. Dustin then calls several dealers and asks them what he should do to get the boat back in working condition because the engines would not turn on. The dealer's tell him you need to get the boat out of the water and flush the engines and get all the debris out of the jet drive. With no trailer, and no ability to get the boat out of the water, and the engines not turning on, he then calls a friend. The friend comes with his boat and proceeds to tow my boat back to a public ramp. On the way to this public ramp Dustin and the tow boat have to go under a bridge. these people do not know what they're doing and my boats smacked into a bridge. My boat also smacked into the other boat that was towing it. Dustin tells his friends that are on the boat that his father is coming to pick up the boat and they were going to leave it at a public boat ramp on the eastern shore.
Saturday afternoon I get a phone call from Dustin's father, he proceeds to tell me that he knows who has my boat and he knows where it is. He tells me it's on the eastern shore somewhere, and that his son has it. I asked him, how do you know this? He tells me "my son's girlfriend, sent me a video of my son on your boat in the chop tank river."
I have his father send me the video of him on my boat, I then proceed to upload the video to YouTube so that I can share it on all social media platforms. At that time I had Dustin's full name his telephone number his address etc etc. I blasted Dustin on social media telling everyone to look out for Dustin if they know him or where he is to please contact me. By this time my husband and I are in our cars driving 2 hours to get to the Eastern shore where my boat is suspected to be. We are not Eastern shore people and are not familiar with the area, I believe my husband just wanted to get in the car and go do something that helped find the boat. Now looking back that was a silly decision because the waterways on the Eastern shore are ginormous. But it made my husband feel better so
On the drive over I contacted Dustin through social media and asked him where our boat was. I explained to him I didn't care that he took it I just wanted my boat back and to please tell me where it was. He denied having my boat and told me that the video I had of him on my boat was an old video from a month ago and he was in fact on a client's boat that was not a Yamaha. He then began making Facebook posts of himself and tagging himself in Virginia claiming to have just completed a roof and claimed to be there all day. Although the picture that he posted of this roof was a stock photo of a brand new home that he pulled off line. Several people saw him comment on the YouTube video I posted on Facebook telling him that he was caught and the gig was up.
Saturday evening around 11:00 p.m. I got a phone call from a guardian angel and he begins to tell me that he saw my boat earlier in the day and his wife took a picture of my boat because it stood out to her. (Our 275se is the only one we have seen on the Chesapeake Bay so it catches people's eyes.) He tells me he saw the boat being towed back up north and that there were only two marinas where it could be towed to that had public access. he and his wife graciously jump into their vehicles and head towards the two public marinas. He calls one of his friends guardian angel number three who is closer to one of the marinas and asks him to drive down to see if our boat is there. He confirms our boat is at that marina sends me a picture, which I forward to a DNR officer on our side of the shore. my husband went to high school with this DNR officer so we had his personal cell phone number. Our DNR officer immediately calls DNR on the eastern shore and the local police and has them meet my three guardian angels at the marina where my boat was recovered. Guardian angel number 3 just so happens to have a trailer that will get my boat out of the water. He drives back to his home grabs the trailer drives back to the public marina and takes my boat out of the water and transports it to a secure facility. He doesn't return home till about 4:30 in the morning. Sunday morning we drive over to the Eastern shore to assess the damage take pictures etc etc. We have a certified Yamaha mechanic that will be taking apart our girl assessing the damage and doing a complete workup on our girl. We are also working with our insurance company to see how fast we can get money from them to pay for repairs if not we are willing to pay out-of-pocket just so that we can get back on the water.
This afternoon, I get a phone call from, let's call him Bob. Bob proceeds to tell me that he was on my boat with Dustin and tells me he had no idea that the boat was stolen, tells me that Dustin told him it was his father's boat etc etc. I asked Bob, how did Dustin start the boat? His response was he just pushed the buttons for the engines I guess he had the key fob. I explained to him no sir this boat does not have a key fob to start it. You need to have a key in the actual ignition before you can push the buttons. He said I don't know I wasn't paying attention All I saw was him push the buttons to start the boat.
I get a call from Bob's wife then, she tells me the same story, she then sends me pictures and videos that she captured while she was on my boat. I then get a call from Bob's daughter, same story, she too sends me pictures and videos of herself and everyone that was on my boat Saturday. I forward all of this information and the pictures and the videos over to DNR.
Right now, I have all of the information and proof that is needed to build a case for Dustin. I'm just waiting for DNR and the local authorities to do what they need to on their end so that they can put a warrant out for Dustin's arrest.
Needless to say, we have not gotten much sleep since Friday.
We are eternally grateful for everyone's help and support and love and the shares and the phone calls and the text messages that I received regarding our boat. I'm glad she is in one piece and I am glad we will eventually get to use her again.
If you've read this far, I hope you've enjoyed the the circus that I have lived this past weekend. I've been told by a couple people I'm in the wrong profession, that I should be a bounty hunter, or in some sort of detective business. I think I will stick to raising my four children and enjoying my time on my beautiful boat.
Never heard of such a thing. I hope he spends at least some jail time.