A man watched as his stolen yacht washed ashore on a beach in Pacifica, California.(Photo : Wikimedia)
The owner of a stolen yacht was shocked when his boat washed ashore during a television newscast.
The 82-foot Californian luxury sailboat was featured in a news program as it floated in the surf of the Pacific Coast, Reuters reports.
At first, authorities thought the two men and women on board needed to be rescued, but they were eventually arrested on suspicion of stealing the boat after the owner, John Fruth, saw it on TV and claimed that it was his stolen boat.
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The thieves supposedly took the boat from where it was anchored in Sausalito before dawn and they sailed the boat to the town of Pacifica, near San Francisco, where it appeared on a popular surfing beach.
Police believe that the suspects, Leslie Gardner, 63, Dario Mira, 54, and Lisa Modawell, 56, probably intended to take the boat on a much longer outing.
Police on jet skis, the coast guard and a helicopter surrounded the boat but the suspects did not want their assistance getting off. Eventually they did get off the boat and they were immediately arrested after Fruth claimed the boat on TV was his and it was missing.
"He was seeing the news media coverage of a vessel that had run aground," Sausalito police Sergeant Bill Fraass said. "The individuals did not want assistance from the Coast Guard but were stuck on a vessel that could go nowhere."
The thieves had a good time on their short ride. The $4 million boat which sleeps up to six people in three rooms, was stripped of its main sail. The boat which is available for charter at $5,00 a day had beer and pizza on board. The thieves reportedly got sick after partying too much, so they floated along the surf.
Richard Splinder, publisher of sailing newsletter Latitude 38 found it funny that the thieves thought they would be able to get away with stealing such a large boat.
"We can imagine there might be one person dumb enough to think they could steal a very large and expensive blue-hulled yacht and get away with it - where are you going to hide with something so conspicuous?" he wrote. "But three people that stupid in one place?"
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