He stole a tugboat, cops say, but this would-be pirate ended up adrift

A neighbor chased Douglass Crandall, 48, away from the bright-red, 350-ton tugboat-turned-yacht on Sunday.

But Monday morning, Crandall returned to a marina in Sausalito, Calif., and cut the boat’s heavy mooring lines, police told The Mercury News. Crandall, who police said is homeless, then jumped into the ocean and swam out to the boat as it drifted away. Police said he also broke a window on the boat.

The 107-foot boat drifted across Richardson Bay in the San Francisco Bay, where a ferry captain reported it to the U.S. Coast Guard as a navigation hazard, according KPIX.

“It could have run into other vessels, it could have run over other vessels,” co-owner Jennifer Flowers told the station. “It’s 350 tons of steel and it doesn’t care what it does when it hits something.”

Coast Guard sailors boarded the boat and found Crandall, who couldn’t explain why it was loose in the bay, reported The Marin Independent Journal. He was arrested on suspicion of theft and vandalism. The boat was towed back to port.

Joe and Jennifer Flowers use the tugboat, a restored 1955 military vessel, as a part-time home. Named the Owatonna, it was built for the U.S. Army for use in Korea but was never deployed and later handed over to the U.S. Navy for use at the Concord Navel Weapons Station, reported the publication. The Navy sold it to a private buyer in the 1990s.

“We don’t take it away from the dock and we’ve had it for 10 years, so this little adventure, that was it’s big adventure,” Joe Flowers told KPIX. The boat’s for sale for $1.5 million.

Broker Rick Peterson called the theft “silly,” according to The Marin Independent Journal.

“There’s nothing you can do to hide a big boat like that, and no one of our generation knows how to start the darn thing,” he said.

This story was originally published January 24, 2018 at 3:58 PM with the headline "He stole a tugboat, cops say, but this would-be pirate ended up adrift."