It happens to somewhere between 10 to 20 cruisers per season and last night we saw it happen again.

A Dingy and motor was stolen last night from a boat anchored in the Mazatlan Old Harbor. The dingy was on the davits, but only suspended about 1ft above the water. Two people in a panga simultaneously cut the 4 davit lines and the dingy splashed in the water waking up the sleeping crew who arrived on deck to watch their dingy/motor being slowly towed away around the ferry terminal break water and up into the harbor.

After a passing of about 5 minutes (for VHF radio calls and Alerting the Harbor Control) I picked up the poor dingyless cruiser and we set out up the harbor in search of the dingy, but as you might expect it disappeared into the darkness further up the Mazatlan Harbor estuary.
We were anchored 100ft away from the vessel and had chatted earlier in the day about the thefts here including locked motors being taken off stern pulpits at night. Unfortunately, the hassle of bringing up the dingy more securely appears to have presented an easy target for the thieves. They bypassed our dingy high on the davits with visible locking cables and went for the dingy with no locking cables suspended only a foot above the water off the stern, which was literally 3ft form the cruisers heads sleeping on their aft cabin pillows! The ability to hear someone in the act of stealing your dingy, isn't going to help you when they are already 5ft away and you are now dingyless to go after them!

Cruisers in planning read the US travel warnings for Mexico and ask if it is really safe, they worry about getting sick form bad food and water, and they worry about getting short changed in the dollar to Peso conversions. But after 4 seasons in Mexico hands down the No 1 threat to a Cruiser in Mexico isn't the drug gang wars or the risk of a bad case of Diarrhea. Besides a sunburn and hang-over, the No 1 risk is having their dingy or outboard motor stolen! The hassle and cost of replacement, even with insurance, if going to be a far bigger PITA than going overboard on dingy security. Buy the bigger lock. Buy the bigger cable and most of all, take the time to make your dingy or outboard look way too difficult to mess with trying to steal it!

Just a reminder and some advice from a cruising bozo. Treat your dingy and motor like every night someone will be floating through the anchorage looking for the easiest one to steal and plan accordingly...because on some nights, they are!