Marine Thieves Beware

We get calls for all kinds of uses for our real-time GPS vehicle tracking system other than for just fleet tracking, such as teen tracking, asset tracking, and theft recovery. An interesting call came in the other day from a boat dealer that had just had a $100,000 boat with twin outboard motors stolen. It seems that the thieves are primarily interested in the motors. They steal the boat, take it to a hidden location, remove the motors, and then dump the boat hull on the side of the road or set it adrift in the water.

The boat dealer wanted something that would alert him if the boat moved, especially in the middle of the night. Our standard features would give him everything he needed to do the job. He could set up Unauthorized Use alerts which would notify him if the boat is moved at a certain time of day, or day of the week. Another alert he could set up would be Geo-Fences. It would allow him to create a virtual boundary around his boat yard and if the boat leaves that area an alert would be sent to his e-mail, cell phone, home phone, etc.

We had to overcome a few issues to make this system work for the boat dealer. The device had to be waterproof, easy to hide, portable, and be able to operate for extended periods. The dealer wanted to be able to have something he could throw down into the bilge where nobody would expect to look for a GPS tracking device. It had to be easy to move from one boat to another. And, he wanted it to run for a long time. We came up with the perfect little device in a completely waterproof housing that would operate for a month at a time on the standard marine batteries (if connected to a trickle charger on shore power it would run indefinately).

Now, this boat dealer can sleep better at night knowing there is a silent little "security guard" lying in the bilge of his most expensive boats. If he does get that dreaded call in the middle of the night, he will have a fighting chance to recover his boat AND motors, and put the bad guys away.