Captain's Log, Supplemental: If the Shoe Fits

Those are the captain's feet in the bilges. They are not usually bare in moments like this.

Tuesday morning, I woke at my normal time and decided to answer nature’s call on land at the marina’s facilities. When I stepped outside, I noticed the engine room door was open and stuck against my toolbox, which was preventing it from closing on its own. I was surprised by this and immediately worried that I had left it that way since it rained so hard overnight. I stepped back inside and ran the bilge pump, and barely a squirt came out.

Still foggy from sleep and needing to finish my trudge to the porcelain palace, I failed to process immediately what I was seeing.

With nature’s call fully answered, I returned to the boat and looked around the cockpit with fresh, now-fully-awakened eyes. That’s when I started seeing the clues. Both of my toolboxes were unlatched, and one of them had an internal tray removed and sitting on the deck. I know that I have a tendency to be a bit absent-minded, so I started second-guessing myself. I looked into the tray that was left out, and it was completely dry inside. It had rained just before we went to bed Monday night. If I had left it like that, the tray would be full of water. Thinking back, I distinctly remembered latching all the toolboxes shut when the storm was bearing down on us. I’m starting to think to myself that someone came aboard while we were asleep.

That’s when Stacey stuck her head out the door as I was opening the engine room door again. I shared with her my hypothesis that I thought we’d had an uninvited guest overnight. No sooner did I have the sentence out of my mouth when I spotted it. Low in the dark engine room, laying on top of the portside transmission, was a baseball cap. It wasn’t mine.

The evidence. Yes, they did misspell "liquor."

Evidence solidly in hand, I looked at Stacey and said, “I knew I wasn’t crazy.” We stepped back inside and started composing a message to Charles, the city official who oversees the marina. I hadn’t written more than a sentence or two when we spotted him walking across the parking lot. I snatched the classy head covering off the table and trudged over to Charles and told him of our findings. He was immediately alarmed and vowed to call the police and go review the security camera footage, asking me about what time it happened. I told him it had to have been after midnight—the storm was around 11pm, and we were up for about an hour more before we both were out. He asked me if anything was missing, and at that point the answer was, “unconfirmed.”

Charles trundled off toward the marina building to review the footage while I returned to the boat to search for what wasn’t there. A cursory look through my toolboxes revealed that they seemed to contain everything they should—nothing seemed to be missing. I turned my attention to the storage container on the deck where I have been keeping our extra-long wet/dry vacuum cleaner hoses. The only other item that should’ve been there were my bilge shoes. The hoses were there. My shoes were not.

The thief took my bilge shoes. My old, dirty, worn-out bilge shoes. Whenever I get a new pair of kicks, the old pair is relegated to bilge use, and my previous pair of bilge shoes becomes garbage. That is what he stole. OLD shoes!

Around that time, I looked up, and one of our neighbors was noticing that his Jeep (with soft top) had been entered during the evening as well, and little was taken—and again, nothing of value.

Charles was walking toward us across the parking lot. “I saw him on the recording. He was on your boat for about ten minutes. When he came off, he didn’t have anything in his hands.” The spoils of his escapade were on his feet!

“I could see his hat when he went on the boat, but when he came off, he wasn’t wearing it, but he did seem happy.” Around this time, one of Hopewell’s finest rolled up. A nice lady in a spotless police cruiser. We gave her the hat, chatted about the facts of the situation, and then all retired to the marina building to review the video footage together.

This is really the sum total of the story. Nothing monumental happened. We all concluded that the fellow was likely drunk or high, possibly homeless, and almost certainly was walking around with either wet feet or shoeless, given his choices. Nothing of any value was stolen either aboard Stinkpot or from our neighbor’s shiny, red Jeep. We are, however, trying to keep better track of our valuables aboard for the time being and may add some security cameras of our own at some point. Neither of us wants to live with the paranoia that can come with situations like these, but we will take better precautions in the future.

As for the hat? Charles has it. We think he’s going to try to bait a hobo trap with it. If so, we’ll share whatever outcome there is from that effort.

As for me? I’ll be barefoot in the bilges for the foreseeable future.