Twice stolen, twice found: Paddling team’s boat recovered again, this time minus motor

A boat twice stolen from a Gig Harbor paddling team was recovered Tuesday night from beneath a Puyallup River bridge hours after the search began anew.

The 16-foot WinTech catamaran belonging to a coach is important to the team, which is heading for the national championships in Florida next week.

It was discovered missing at 9 a.m. Tuesday from a dock outside Anthony’s in Gig Harbor. That’s the same place thieves stole it from the first time.

Team members and board members drove the coastlines hoping to find the boat but were unsuccessful. Just before sunset, a fisherman spotted it beneath the 11th Street Bridge.

Puyallup Tribal Police recovered the boat and released it to the team, which said the registration numbers were scraped off and the motor was missing.

Nevertheless, “…we are so happy to have it back (mostly) intact,” the team wrote on its Facebook page.

Because the thieves apparently dragged it 300 feet up a road and scraped it up, the boat was being towed back home. And fitted with a GPS tracker.

The $10,500 boat was first stolen sometime between July 8 and 10. It was found July 11 sitting in the sand along Marine View Drive and returned to the team missing a battery and three of the four bolts in the engine mount.

“To have it happen twice is shocking,” board member Kirsten Gregory said.

This story was originally published July 26, 2017 at 7:09 AM with the headline "Twice stolen, twice found: Paddling team’s boat recovered again, this time minus motor."