Boarding a Boat

[safira]

I am at anchor in the St Marys river and had 2 people come onto my boat with out permission when I was away from it.
The basic senario is this:
I was going to repair a motor for a person and had the motor in my dingy at the public dock, the motor is a tohatsu, the person that wanted me to fix the motor decided to have someone else do the work instead. So the person and another went to my boat and seen a different engine, a mercury and took that engine, they found out that the engine they took was not theirs and took the tohatsu out of my dingy and put the mercury in it. It did take me a while to get all the parts back from this adventure as the merc was in a disasembled state, but finally got all the parts.
While a tohatsu and merc look almost identical when you take the cover off you can still tell the difference.
I told both people that I was very upset as to them comming on my boat with out permisson, and not to do it again.

What are the feelings on this matter of others?

[DRFerron]

Even if the Tohatsu was their motor, no way should they have boarded your boat without permission and, better yet, should have waited until you were there to assist them.

What if you had reported the missing motor to the police before you found out who took it? That would have wasted more of everyone's time.

[tommays]

My feelings are its why i ALWAYS have a lock on my motors

[safira]

It was a big misunderstanding as to them comming onto my boat, I have told each of them this that were involved in the problem.
And YES i do have a lock on all the motors now, actually all the equipment on the boat is secured in someway.

[CaptainForce]

I too would strongly disapprove of boarding a vessel without permission. Just curious,- Is this the St. Marys River in Maryland or at the Georgia-Florida state line?

[centaursailor]

Unacceptable, unless boarding to make a vessel safe as I have done recently when a
the headsail came lose on an adjacent boat.
Safe sailing

[safira]

I am At the St Marys river at the Florida/Georgia line.
Not to good of a idea with the quaruntine thing, You would have cops, DNR, Coast Gaurd, Homeland security and who knows who else checking you out. The way the government id they would probly make a new agency just for the person that does that,LMAO ... but I did like the idea he he he

[denverd0n]

I equate boarding someone else's boat uninvited with walking into someone else's garage uninvited and thinking it's okay just because the garage door is open. It is NOT okay! If I found someone in my garage uninvited I would be asking "What in the HELL do you think you're doing!?!" (And I might be reaching for a baseball bat at about the same time.)

It's not as bad as breaking down the door to get into the house, because they haven't actually damaged anything yet. But it comes close.

Now, in this case you say it was a misunderstanding. Okay, so maybe they thought you had given them implied permission to board the boat. I would make it clear that in the future the only time they have permission to board is when you specifically and explicitly say that they can.

[carl762]

They stepped way way over the line. I can't actually believe that somebody would think it ok to board you boat like that.

People never cease to amaze me. Personally, I'd hurt the guy!!!!! ... just to make it abundantly clear that it's NOT OK TO BOARD SOMEONE'S BOAT IN THEIR ABSENCE.