We Was Robbed!

Eric with his returned passport on S-dock at Port Louis. You can see how easily accessible this area of the marina is to St. George's harbour entrance in the background. 

Firstly, I promise there's a feel-good post to follow this that will detail our week with Eric in Grenada.

However, there is one unpleasant incident to report:

Friday evening, a young woman, whose name we later learned was Sinatra (yes, like Old Blue Eyes) approached Noi at the Port Louis Marina pool. We'd been staying at the marina since the 7th, in anticipation of Carnival and later, for Eric's arrival. It was first a matter of convenience and secondly -- especially for Carnival -- one of security. The latter turned out not to be the case.

Sinatra said she had discovered Noi's identification and debit card in a bag on the street near her home in a town not too far from the marina. She said she'd assumed Noi was a foreigner, and therefore might be at the marina. Armed with Noi's photograph, she asked at the marina and found us at the pool. Sinatra promised to return with the items and did not ask for a reward.

Noi was not even aware that her wallet was missing. The last she remembered it was in a backpack in the boat and hadn't been touched in several days. When we returned to the boat, we discovered that the pack with the wallet was indeed missing (it contained the equivalent of a few hundred US dollars) and, worse, another pack was also missing -- one that Eric had brought with him that had contained his passport! This happened late on a Friday and Eric was due to fly out very early the following Monday.

While we were waiting for Sinatra's return, we cancelled the missing debit card and started looking into pushing Eric's flight back to give us time to get a temporary passport. Noi went to report the incident to the marina security.

The bags in the boat had been sitting in a corner of the saloon since Eric arrived. Neither of them had moved. We began to realize that a curious incident several days earlier had probably been a sign of the break-in that we hadn't recognized at the time. A padlock that we use to secure the Lexan companionway slats was acting strangely. It is a combination lock that had become hard to open and had actually slipped a digit. The original combination no longer worked. Padlocks going bad is a common occurrence in the salt air, so it was not a surprising development. Afraid of getting locked out, we got a new lock the next day and threw the old one out.

Later, on closer examination, I noticed the latch was slightly bent to one side, as if someone was throttling it as they tried to prise open the lock.

We are therefore quite sure that the lock was broken, the boat entered and bags stolen. It was odd that nothing else seemed to be disturbed, not even a laptop or iPads that would have been in plain view once someone entered the boat. The only thing we can imagine is that they wanted quick cash and either realized one of the bags had a wallet or just assumed they both might. In any case, we know for a fact that the bags had not left the boat in the previous week, so they had to have been taken from there.

I have a hypothesis about exactly how it must have gone down, which I will detail below.

When Sinatra returned with the items, she had two other young women, Angel and Cassandra with her. She explained that one of them was a Grenadian friend and the other a friend visiting from Trinidad. Noi gave Sinatra a few dollars for her trouble and asked if she had any idea about the passport, promising dinner for the three women if they could help find it.

Obviously, there were natural red flags here when it came to enlisting help from the women. But, the authorities seemed likely to simply take a statement and satisfy their bureaucrats (some things are the same the world over!). The chances that the passport would be returned seemed remote, at best.

Sinatra said she thought she knew who might have done the robbery ("drug people" in her neighborhood) and that she could make some phone calls to see if she could get the passport back. After about an hour of calling (while I talked to security personnel at marina), Sinatra said she had heard that a police officer had seen the passport on the street, picked it up and returned it to the station. Apparently someone in her town had seen this happen, or else the police officer had asked around if anyone knew about the passport. Not sure which.

Eric with Sinatra, left, Angel and Cassandra (or Cassandra, Angel)

The marina security requested the the three young women answer a few questions in the office and they did so without reservation. The police were called and two detectives from the Criminal Investigation Division showed up about 15 minutes later and also took a statement from me, Noi and the three women, including Sinatra.

When asked if the police had found a passport, the detective said "yes." Presciently, Eric's mom had photographed the faceplate of his passport before he left the U.S. and I had it on my phone. I scrolled back to it and showed it to the officer. He immediately recognized the passport! Whew! What a relief. The women gave each other a high-five.

So, because it was a weekend, we had a bit of a hassle getting the passport back in our possession, but eventually did. We treated the women to a dinner at the marina and they seemed quite nice and friendly. I tried inquiring about some of the odd details of the incident, and their knowledge of it, but with the thick Creole accent, I didn't get very far.

So, here's what I think happened:

First, let me say that when we were given our slip assignment on the 7th, we were placed as far out in the marina as it is possible to be, closest to the water approach. The dock (S-dock) is normally reserved for megayachts, but it wasn't filled, so they put us and a few other decidedly un-megayachts out there. At the time, I was a bit nervous about security in that spot, especially the ease with which someone could dinghy in from the harbour and land at the dock. But, at the time I dismissed it as paranoia.

Subsequently, I did see a few dinghies land there full of people who were obviously not from the marina, but I didn't think too much about it, having already satisfied myself that we were safe. On one occasion, I did see them chased off by marina security; however, on another, they landed and entered the marina. I probably should have reported that incident, but did not. It occurred during Carnival, and the people in the dinghy appeared to be revelers. I figured they meant no real harm.

So, my hypothesis is that sometime in the week, while we were off on an island bus tour or out snorkeling, someone pulled up in a dinghy, quickly jimmied the lock, possibly with a crow-bar, grabbed a couple of items and were off before security noticed anything amiss. Why they put the slats back in or re-locked, I don't know. Perhaps in hopes that we wouldn't immediately recognize what happened (and we didn't!).

I have a few thoughts about Sinatra and the other two women. Sinatra said she was just trying to be a Good Samaritan, and I would like to believe that's true. I am not sure what her motive could have been to return Noi's identification. If she and/or the others were directly involved in the burglary, it seems to me the reward that she received (and had no guarantee of receiving) was too small to risk getting caught. And, the promise of a dinner to help get the passport back does not seem a great enough incentive either. Also, it had been several days since the actual robbery. If the thinking was to return the identification in hopes of a reward, why wait so long? She had no reason to believe it would have taken us so long to discover the missing items and also no reason to think we might still be in the marina.

A few things, however, leave me with questions:

How did she know to look at the marina? There is a large medical college on the island with lots of foreign students. Noi could have been one of them. Sinatra's town, however, is closer to the marina. So, it might have been a logical place to look. Now, obviously Sinatra did know a few ins and outs of the way these crimes go down. She might also have known that foreign yachts are a target.

She said she found the identification the same day she tracked down Noi. Why was the identification in a plastic bag? We don't know, but it apparently saved most of the items from getting wet in several rain showers that had occurred during the week. The photograph of Noi that Sinatra says she used to track her down did have some water damage, which seems to bolster the young woman's story. Otherwise, if she was the thief and meant to try to return the identification for a reward, it would have been in her possession since the robbery and therefore, presumably, dry. The passport also had no water damage, but it could have been picked up by the officer the same day as the robbery. The police did say it had been in their custody for a "few days."

We probably won't ever know anything else. I will say that Port Louis Marina security -- after an initial defensiveness -- was ultimately quite helpful. I don't really blame them for what happened; I think it happened quickly and it was probably unavoidable. I would recommend some way to better monitor the outer dock, or to keep intruders from the water away. I don't know how that could be accomplished, but I am no expert in security matters, either.

I would also add that I don't think the three women were directly involved, but they almost certainly knew people who were. And, maybe they simply didn't feel like "ratting" anyone out. It might have even been dangerous for them to do so. Under the circumstances, I can understand that. If they had simply kept the items in their possession in hopes of a reward, they would have tried to return them earlier. Further, the fact that the picture of Noi was water-damaged lends credence, in my mind, to Sinatra's story of finding it on the ground.

Today, we are off to buy a better padlock!

NOTE: An earlier version of this post referred to the lock being "jimmied," however on further reflection that is not the right term for what we think happened. Jimmied implied that it was picked, which as a combination lock without any keyway,  would have been impossible. We think it most likely that it was leveraged apart, perhaps with a crowbar. This might also explain the bent latch.