An Oyster 82 on the Beach

Curious.

That’s our reaction to this morning’s news that Darling, the second Oyster 82 built — launched in 2007 or 2008 and worth about $3.5 million — went up on the beach at Pacifica’s Linda Mar Beach, one of our favorite surfing haunts from back in the day.

The initial report in the Chronicle was that Darling had three crew — which is about normal. And that somebody had to swim out with a handheld radio for communication, which is not normal. As if such a luxury boat such as an Oyster 82 didn’t have a VHF radio — as well as a full complement of every other electronic known to the world of sailing.

An updated Chronicle item on the incident reported that the owner of the boat — name not given — had seen video of the boat on the beach while watching television, realized she was his, and called the Sausalito Police to report she’d been stolen from a local marina.

We’re dying to hear how this story plays out, because we imagine it’s a bit more picturesque than we know now. After all, we can imagine there might be one person dumb enough to think they could steal a very large and expensive blue-hulled yacht and get away with it — where are you going to hide with something so conspicuous? But three people that stupid in one place? On the other hand, the crew apparently managed to put the boat on the beach in not particularly bad weather, which strikes us as quite an accomplishment. So maybe they were in over their heads.

We want to emphasize that we know very little now, but suspect the story is going to get a more interesting in the next couple of days.

For a closer look at the boat before it was in distress, visit Ashley Perrin’s blog of doing a delivery of the big boat.