A 70-year-old boat owner is in a state of shock after thieves raided her “only source of income” which was on dry dock at Consett Bay, St John.
Owner Yvonne Skeete said the boat, which was spared the wrath of Hurricane Beryl, was crippled by thieves late Saturday night or early Sunday morning, hours prior to the arrival of the hurricane.
She said her husband had made a final check on Pepper Hill on Saturday evening, June 29, and everything was secured. However, on returning the following morning around 8 a.m., he discovered thieves had stolen the boat’s engine, smashed the cabin door and taken two batteries, electrical wiring and a container of diesel.
“I am devastated. That’s my livelihood . . . that’s my hoe and my basket. I might have well had left it in the sea and let Beryl mash it up. What am I supposed to do now?” Skeete queried.
She estimated the cost of her losses at $20 000, with the engine alone costing $15 000.
“I checked on the price of that engine and it costs more than $17 000 now, I cannot afford that,” she lamented.
The Bayfield, St Philip resident appealed to anyone with information to either contact her or the police, adding that the boat was all she had to generate income for her family for almost three decades.
“I repeatedly tried calling [a Government official] but don’t care how I call I can’t get through. The pictures on my Facebook page, everybody knows about it, but I don’t hear anything from anybody,” an emotional Skeete said.
The boat owner said Pepper Hill had been uninsured for several years after she cancelled the insurance following an incident in which she made a claim after her boat was found partially submerged off Consett Bay and she was not reimbursed by the insurance company.
“So, I decided that instead of wasting hundreds of dollars paying insurance and then not being [compensated], I might as well use the money otherwise,” she said.
Skeete said she called in police who are carrying out investigations. She said in the meantime, her world is “upside down”.
Estimates from the Fisheries Division so far have indicated that more than 200 fishing boats have either been destroyed or damaged by Hurricane Beryl with 90 per cent of them uninsured.
Government has received a humanitarian donation of $500 000 from the CAF Development Bank of Latin America and the Caribbean to assist scores of fisherfolk whose vessels were damaged or destroyed following the passage of Hurricane Beryl.
“The Government is trying to help and the offer sounds good, but at my age I cannot pay back a loan because I would have to work doubly hard now . . . I cannot take it . . . I cannot,” she said, as she wiped the tears away. (JB)
