We noted last time that if you’re reasonably well-heeled it’s easy enough to protect your property here. Take the right advice, spend a bit of money (well, in some cases quite a bit) and your home can be made pretty well thief-proof. But in one area, recent reports have indicated, our local loadsamoneys are remarkably vulnerable. There’s been an increasing number of cases of yacht-jacking. Recently vessels have disappeared from berths in Villeneuve-Loubet, Cannes, La Napoule and St Tropez. The vessels in question were rather large; in other cases smaller vessels have been taken.

The somewhat surprising background was provided in a television interview with an officer of the gendarmerie maritime: “First of all, the bad guys have realised what opportunities are available to them. Sometimes owners leave boats, often worth millions of euros, moored in port, quite unattended and with no serious security provision. This can be for weeks or months. They’d never leave their houses like that. Usually what happens is that when the thieves have decided that a yacht’s there for the taking they sneak on board during the small hours, disable any satellite devices which might betray their whereabouts and sail away into the sunrise.”

Where do they go? “Mainly through the Med and then into the Black Sea, often via Malta. Once they’re in their home waters they give the boat a complete face lift and it’s ready to be sold on. There’s a lot of collaboration between marine law enforcement agencies but to be honest we’re often several steps behind the bad guys. Even if we do trace a stolen yacht to some port thousands of kilometres away the chances of claiming and recovering it are minimal. No doubt about it, this is going to be a growing problem. The only solution is for owners and their captains and crews to be more security conscious.”

From Riviera Reporter 117 - Oct/Nov 2006

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