Bloodsport owner says boat was taken, damaged by someone familiar with his vessel
Bloodsport owner says boat was taken, damaged by someone familiar with his vessel - GulfCoastNewsToday.com: News
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Mike Davis' Bloodsport is laid up for repairs at Sportsman Marina
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Posted: Monday, January 5, 2015 4:21 pm | Updated: 7:26 pm, Mon Jan 5, 2015.BY JOHN MULLEN jmullen@gulfcoastnewspapers.com |
ORANGE BEACH, Ala. — Mike Davis isn’t sure who commandeered his charter fishing boat – and his livelihood – for a damaging boat ride New Year’s Eve, but he’s sure of one thing.
It had to be somebody who knows him and his boat, the Bloodsport.
“It hurts my heart to know that someone I know did this to me and my boat,” Davis said on a bright Monday morning at Sportsman Marina. “Someone who used to be a friend of mine, unfortunately, once.
“It breaks my heart.”
Two servicemen from Troendle Marine out of Pensacola were already on the scene accessing the damage and making plans for repairs to the colorful 38-foot vessel.
“We know it’s somebody that knew the boat because we have them on video coming up the dock,” Davis said. “We can’t tell who it is from the video because it was so dark. But we got them coming down to the boat at 11:42 and then the boat leaves at 11:54.”
To get on the boat and have it underway so quickly, Davis said, the person had to have intimate knowledge of how it operates and where things were control systems were located.
“That’s eight minutes to go down there by yourself, turn the generator on, crank the boat, undo the shore power and undo six lines,” he said. “That’s pretty fast. And then climb up in the tower, undo all that and leave.
“It’s somebody that knew the boat. It was pitch black and I had no lights on on the boat.”
Davis is also convinced it was a joy-riding situation because it was returned with a crash and had party remnants left aboard.
“If it was just somebody wanting to steal the boat and take it, it wouldn’t be here,” he said. “We’d probably never see it again. Basically I guess they thought they were going to take a booze cruise and get away with it and ended up tearing my boat up. There were champagne bottles and 12 packs of beer left on the boat.”
There was no joy in Davis’ face as he walked around the Bloodsport and looked at the damaged prop and rudders.
“We suspect it was taken straight out of the marina and run aground hard which shoved all the running gear up into it when they tried to back off the sandbar,” he said. “My rudder went into the wheel and kicked back out. On that starboard side you can’t spin it and it looks like they just twisted the boat on that rudder when they got it off the bar.”
The coup de grace was a hard landing into the end of the fuel dock.
“They managed to get it back to the marina and crashed the dock so hard it moved an 18-inch pylon two feet from the dock,” he said. “They crashed it. We have a whole bunch of running gear damaged, got some hull damage on the bow.”
In all, according to initial estimates, Davis sees about $60,000 in damage that could go higher after technicians take a closer look inside the hull.
It could’ve been worse.
“It almost sank,” Davis said. “When they pivoted on that starboard wheel there it shoved the shaft up into the boat and split my shaft log and it was taking on about 10 gallons of water a minute. When I got to the boat it had worn the batteries out and the bilges weren’t pumping any more so it was about to sink.”
Davis didn’t get there until almost noon on Jan. 1, and then because a friend who went to a boat at Sportsman saw the Bloodsport foundering at the end of a dock where the joy riders left it.
“My buddy, if he didn’t have to do laundry, it probably would have sank,” Davis said “He had his laundry detergent on the Eagle Express out there and so he just walked out on the dock and saw my boat drifting out there on one line, sinking.
He called my and said ‘it’s tied up off the fuel dock down here sinking, you better get down here.’”
Davis got the 38-foot 2007 Luhrs about three years ago, but has 16 years fishing experience in Gulf waters. He spent a few years as a deckhand on snapper boats, another few on the Lady D before running other people’s charter boats.
It’ll be a little while before he’s at the helm again leading fishermen out to catch trophy fish and fill freezers.
“Had to cancel big tuna fishing excursion for later in January,” he said. “If it’s just running gear and metal, it should take about two weeks. There’s no telling until we break it down and start getting into it. It could be a month. We’ll just have to see.”
