As a sailing cruiser, it’s very important to learn how to avoid dinghy and outboard theft. The key concept is to make your dinghy more difficult to steal than the next person, but how do you do that? Watch the video or read below to find out.
Dinghy And Outboard Theft – How To Avoid It Video
Three ways to avoid dinghy and outboard theft!
- Make your dinghy and outboard engine look the hardest to steel using these three locking devices. What we do is use chain rather than wire. With wire, thieves can easily use wire cutters and remove the line quickly. Chain is much more secure. Then, you’ll want to chain the outboard to the chassis of the dinghy. Install some sort of theft prevention around the fuel tanks – even if you make it look as if it’s locked down (and it isn’t). Finally, you want a chain from the chassis of the dinghy to the dock or whatever you’re going to attach the dinghy to.
- Don’t put your name on the outside of the dinghy. It tells thieves you’re not home. Dinghy and outboard theft is one thing, you don’t want to advertise that your main boat is unoccupied! We have our boat name and MMSI number inside the anchor locker of the dinghy. This allows people to contact us if they find our dinghy but doesn’t blatantly advertise that we’re not on the boat. Also, remove the HP sticker on the side of your outboard if it’s 20 HP or over. The most sought-after engine outboards are 2-stroke 20 HP or over. If you have a valuable engine, make it look like it’s not valuable. You can add also add a 9.9 HP decal or bang up the outboard cover or make it look old.
- Always raise your dinghy (davits/halyards) AND lock your dinghy to your boat at night and especially at every dinghy dock. Make sure to lock your dinghy to something solid even if it is pulled up on a halyard. We’ve known of thieves cutting halyards and sawing off davit lines! And if you take your outboard off at night (and perhaps store it on the side of your boat), make sure to lock the outboard to the main boat.
Prevent dinghy and outboard theft!
The moral of the story? When it comes to dinghy and outboard theft you need to lock down everything you can with the biggest chain realistic and make it look less valuable.