Hi all
I can see everyone on this forum is waiting for more information about the theft, so having just returned home from recovering the boat let me fill you in on what actually happened.
Firstly though let me start by thanking everyone who posted positive messages on this forum, or replied to me individually - your contributions were really appreciated, and ultimately it is the publicity through this forum and onward posts to other forums or Facebook that led to the boat being identified 24 hours after the alarm was raised to the community. In particular I owe enormous thanks to the individuals who actually identified the boat in the location where it was found - near bridge 105 on the Staffs and Worcs, not too far from the marina it was stolen from.
I won't go into the detail of exactly what happened after it had been found, but I must thank the efforts of both CRT staff and Staffordshire Police last night (Wednesday) once the boat had been found - they were extremely supportive and helpful.
The person that stole the boat is a 60 year old male who is known to the police and has previous convictions - I won't be giving his name on this forum though as the police are following up. When the boat was found yesterday he was not on the boat but all, and I mean all, his possessions were piled up everywhere - he had basically moved in. The boat was full of his clothes, prescription medicines, dubious electrical gear, fishing equipment, food, dog food, roll ups - the lot. And there was cigarette ash around the place, including in a cup by the bed. There was also some personal correspondence which had his name on, as did the prescription medicines. However I'm sorry to say that he had removed all of the personal possessions we had on board - everything. Clothes, bedding, tools, books, DVDs, maps, pictures, soft furnishings, the boat manual, service record, our log books etc - everything had gone. And as you will probably have seen from the pictures he had made an attempt to cover up the boat name by overpainting it with red paint which he had bought specifically. However he did not start to overpaint until last week. He is clearly used to narrowboats - he has been managing through locks on his own (presumably) and when mooring had tied up neatly. And the interior of the boat is not in too bad condition - once the interior has been professionally cleaned, and the exterior repained it should look OK. It will, though, never be quite the same boat to us.
Anyway it looks like he accessed the boat by managing to pick the yale lock at the back of the boat, which is now damaged and fixed in the locked position. The engine key is more of a mystery but our engine key is by no means unique. At the moment there is no suggestion that he had duplicate keys from anywhere including the marina, or any other individual.
However the question remains why our boat out of all the boats? As others have speculated on here why pick a boat in a marina - why not on the towpath. More particularly how did he know our boat was unattended at the time? - we have liveaboards all around us in the marina! At the moment this remains a mystery - to us, and to the staff at Kings Bromley who have been extremely supportive. But we have to speculate that someone somewhere other than the thief knew our boat was unattended.
I hope the above explains something of what has gone on. Please though don't now inundate me with further questions as we have a lot to deal with in the coming days and I have done my best to explain what we know. If I have anything more useful to add I'll add it on here when I'm able.
Finally then huge thanks again to all those who have made a positive contribution to the boat recovery or provided helpful comments - the boating community collectively pulled together to help and we are very grateful.