Sunday, December 27, 2015

Boating thuggery

Two fishing skiffs quietly idle up a canal in the dark. One stops at the entrance of the basin to watch while the other one goes in and docks. The occupant climbs out of the skiff and boards the boat next door sitting on a lift. The grainy short on detail CCTV system records from afar the gyrations involved in trying to steal a MFD from the boat, and it's not elegant. 

This heist was not exactly the work of intellectual giants from the criminal underground. If you knew how the two MFDs were installed a small pair of pliers, Phillips screw driver and maybe about ten minutes would have freed both displays. A screw driver or the ilk is wedged under the panel corner and it was pried away, slowly, painfully, and with great exertion. 

Eventually a couple of epoxied on bolts failed. A corner is lifted and grabbed with hands. Then with a mighty heave the panel snaps in half freeing one side and exposing the MFD. The resulting loud noise from snapping a 3/8' thick piece of acrylic dash panel no doubt resulted in a more expeditious effort to now successfully just get one chart plotter instead of two and the newly created desire to flee soonest.

Unfortunately the entire panel is destroyed, and lot of wiring was to delicately say, very rearranged. As discovered later wiring had been, slashed or just ripped apart. These morons weren't into finesse. They just thankfully dropped the cables off of the MFD, snatched it and fled. To answer the inevitable question that's now rattling around in your head. It's a no! The video wasn't good enough to identify the perps.