A Vancouver family who spent a year building a sailboat from scratch, only to find it stolen upon completion, say they are grateful for its recovery by the police after onlookers saw it lined up on a local waterway. was informed.
Duncan McDonald – along with his wife, Julie and two young daughters – spent more than a year building the sailboat from scratch. Nicknamed the “Sailor Do That” by his daughters, the boat’s maiden voyage was set off the waters of the Sunshine Coast for this Father’s Day weekend.
But their plans went awry when the boat went missing on Friday morning, less than a day after it was completed.
one in facebook postThe family says the boat—a 14-foot flat-bottomed top with a white base from bow to stern, and a blue sail on its mast—was near her East Vancouver home near Fraser Street and King Edward Avenue. The trailer was stolen. ,
The post was widely shared and the story was picked up by the local media as well.
On Saturday, Julie McDonald said the Vancouver Police Department called her husband to say he had received multiple reports of a boat running into False Creek in downtown Vancouver.
She said the VPD’s Marine Unit recovered the boat and took it to a Canadian Coast Guard station in the city’s Kitsilano neighborhood.
“It was definitely on an adventure within the last 48 hours, but we’re really glad it’s been retrieved,” Julie McDonald told Nation World News late Saturday.
The VPD did not immediately respond to inquiries as to who owned the boat and whether there was a criminal investigation into its disappearance and recovery.
McDonald’s said the Sailor Do That is damaged but can be repaired. Trailer not found.
She said she and her family were grateful to everyone who saw social media posts or media stories and searched for the boat.
“It was an emotional project for us, and my first reaction was, ‘Please watch our boat, keep an eye out,’ but people replied, ‘No, we’re getting this boat back,’ and they replied almost as much. Same emotion as we were feeling,” she said.
“And it got the boat back and I’m incredibly happy. It just adds to the story of this boat, so yeah we’re really happy.”
