Another stolen boat

[Wolly Bugger]

http://www.clubmarine.com.au/internet/c ... +Technical

Club marine has a few articles about stolen boats.

[barra mick]

Good article

Often on trips I jump out at supermarkrt, bait shops or something similiar....pretty easy to knock the boat off then

[skronkman]

One thing I use to do with my campervan (but not boat for some unknown reason) is use a heavy duty padlock from one of the safety chains to the tow hitch in place of a D shackle. It may not be strong enough in the case that gets unhitched while underway which is a concern but it would prevent your trailer from being unhitched by thieves when you duck into the shops or leave the trailer at the ramp. Perhaps you could weld on a third safety chain for the padlock purpose only? Does anyone make a lockable D shackle?

[hornet]

Problem is skronkman these low lives are prepared before they knock off rigs, they will carry bolt cutters as they know what they want.
Big enough bolt cutters will cut almost any lock.

[skronkman]

True hornet, you will never prevent all possibility of your boat being stolen but it might limit opportunistic theft (as in from the car park at the supermarket while you're in for 5 mins to grab a few travelers after a hard days fishing). At a ramp with 100 other trailers to chose from, my trailer only has to be harder to steal than the one next to me to possibly discourage its theft.

[hornet]

Your right skronkman , any deterrent is better than none, when I had my last boat I was toying with the idea of having a removable draw bar, the last 2 feet of it with the tow hitch and chains, and have another point down the draw bar with extra chains to leave hooked up to stop the trailer rolling away, then just take off the hitch and throw it in the boot, that would leave a square blank end with no where to hook chains or hitch.

[skuxliss]

Just wondering, the equipment in the boats like the GPS and sounders are they traceable like if you were to log on to a PC at home you could trace the movements of that device?

[Marty.A]

Just wondering, the equipment in the boats like the GPS and sounders are they traceable like if you were to log on to a PC at home you could trace the movements of that device?

I wonder if fitting a wheel clamp to one of the trailer wheels would help?? It would be a pain to put on take off but that could be another form of deterrent. If someone comes up with a solution to boat security they would make a fortune I reckon.

[skronkman]

Not a bad idea to remove the draw bar. Again, not infallible but much harder to steal than just hitching up and driving off.

To my knowledge there is no way to track your GPS/sounder. They are receivers only and don't transmit anything identifying themselves. Maybe the newer ones that allow you to upload your sounder logs include an identifying serial number but not heard of it being used to locate a a stolen device. You can purchase GPS tracking devices to install in your boat that have a SIM card and will alarm you and track your boat if it moves more than 20 meters from where you left it. They are cheap too.

Wheel clamps, hitch locks, chains and padlocks (beware: no good for insurance purposes), are all better than nothing.