Hylton and Ingrid Hale have been planning it for years — ditch the rat race for a stint aboard a luxury yacht. They never thought somebody else would sail off with their dream.
But this week the Cape Town couple were frantically searching for their missing 17m Hanse 588 charter yacht Mischief which disappeared on July 14 from a Croatian marina.
It was stolen by organised thieves posing as wealthy clients who paid a hefty deposit to charter the yacht, only to disappear over the horizon.
“It has been a very unfortunate event,” said Hylton. “The people who stole the boat were well organised, paid the deposit and charter fees in cash, came into Croatia with fake Portuguese and Latvian passports, but the skipper who did the check-in was recognised as Russian.
“They knew how to dismantle the AIS (automatic identification system) tracking and go through a complicated menu system to switch off the cloud-base tracking system. We suspect the boat is in Greece, heading for Libya to be loaded onto a ship for the Caribbean, or they are heading to Turkey to try to gap it into the Black Sea to Russia.”
The Hales are well-known in the Cape Town sailing community. As owner of Big Blue Media, Ingrid publishes Sail & Leisure and the Royal Cape Yacht Club SAIL magazine. Hylton was central to the growth of the new Cape 31 class of racing yachts.
They bought Mischief new with friends last year and used it twice, most recently a month ago to sail around the Adriatic Sea. It was berthed at Marina Kastela near the Croatian coastal town Split and leased to charter management company Croatia Yachting.
“It was for our own use and to provide an income stream. When we were ready to go sailing we would take it out of the charter fleet,” Hylton said. “Our plan was to go cruising in about 2025, so this is devastating.”
“It feels like somebody stealing your house.”
The German-made yacht has four double cabins, a separate crew cabin, modern cooking facilities, the latest navigational equipment and high-performance rigging.
According to online boat sale adverts the yacht is worth around R11m.
It was chartered through a Latvian booking agent by clients using their own skipper. Hylton said the booking should have raised alarm bells because the “clients” paid in cash. “Who pays thousands of euros in €20 bills? The booking agent should have notified our management company,” he said, adding that about 40 yachts were stolen last year in Turkey.
To make matters worse the Hales discovered they were not fully insured for “fraud” — as in their case — though the insurance company was sympathetic. The case is under investigation by the Croatian police and registered with Interpol.
Since disappearing, Mischief was detected near Croatia’s southernmost island before the tracking device was disabled, and later in a marina near Corfu.
The incident has received widespread coverage on social media and the maritime press, including the Esysman SuperYacht News YouTube channel.
They knew how to dismantle the AIS tracking and go through a complicated menu system to switch off the cloud-based tracking system
— Hylton Hale, co-owner
“They [the thieves] came on board with a captain and then they sent him ashore for his dinner. While he was ashore they pulled up anchor and disappeared,” according to the channel. The suspects were described as two couples in their 30s, either Russian or of Russian origin. “The captain was interrogated by police and he was let go. They don’t believe he was involved,” according to the channel.
Yacht broker Bruce Tedder, who is also chair of the South African Boat Builders Export Council, said: “It’s a pity but it looks like the boat has gone and it might have slipped through into the Black Sea. It is probably stuck in Russia now and nobody will see it.”
Tedder said a similar theft happened to a South African client who lost a boat from a Turkish marina. “He just happened to phone the marina to chat about his boat, and they said but your boat is gone, you fetched it yourself. That was a year and a half ago and they’ve never found it,” he said.
The Hales shared news of the theft on their Mischief Yacht Facebook and Instagram pages, prompting a widespread response. “This picture was taken on our last morning on anchor just a few weeks ago. It seems ironic that in this shot the boat is facing forward, almost as if we’re looking ahead to the future, which has now been taken from us! Who would have known what was to come?
“Mischief is still missing, and now we are having to accept that she may be gone for good! We are utterly devastated that people could do this and destroy our dream so easily, without thought for the people who own her and who have put everything into her. We are just gutted!” reads the post.
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