Oxnard Man Struggles to Recover Yacht Seized by Mexican Officials : Laws: The vessel was caught in a dragnet for illegal charters when it docked in Cabo San Lucas earlier this year.

Rick Grant sailed his sportfishing yacht to the southern cape of Baja California in December, intending to charter the Pacific Clipper to American tourists for up to $1,740 a day.

Mexican customs agents bearing machine guns emphatically scuttled those plans.

Mexican authorities conducting a dragnet of illegal charter vessels seized the $300,000 yacht on Feb. 18 when it entered a Cabo San Lucas marina to escape a storm.

The custom-built boat, normally based at Channel Islands Harbor, remains impounded while its owner fights to regain possession of it.

Meanwhile, the Mexican government--unable to make the illegal chartering charges stick--is keeping the vessel on the lesser grounds that Grant returned to the United States later in December without properly registering the boat with port officials.

“Maybe I don’t understand their laws, but it seems to me like they keep twisting the charges,” said Grant, an Oxnard resident, who insists that he never chartered the boat because of crew problems. “I said that if we’ve broken the law, at least issue us a fine.”

But Martin Torres, spokesman for the Mexican Consulate in Los Angeles, said, “We’re talking about a federal offense for which the only penalty is seizure.

“Just like here in the United States, when someone is caught driving a person who is an undocumented immigrant, the vehicle is seized, even if the driver picked the person up hitchhiking,” Torres said. “The application of law in both countries, for particular kinds of offenses, might seem harsh, even though the offense doesn’t seem that bad.”

American operators say seizures of American boats by Mexican officials are becoming more common. But in cases in which owners simply left their boats behind unregistered, the vessels have always been returned.

Grant is general manager of the Cisco Sportfishing charter fleet at Channel Islands Harbor, and a member of the board of directors of the Sportfishing Assn. of California. He bought the yacht last August with his brother-in-law and several other investors.

His mistake, Grant said, was taking the 20-year-old boat to the remote resort on the Baja peninsula’s southern tip, where its reputation preceded his Dec. 13 arrival.

Mexican charter operators in the past had filed several complaints with customs about the Pacific Clipper taking illegal charter parties out for marlin and other fish. In Cabo San Lucas, where the giant, sail-finned marlin is a precious tourist attraction, such chartering on the sly is common.

The transactions often involve a yacht owner’s business associates and friends in the United States. They pay for the trip in advance so owners can dodge Mexican charter-fee taxes, which can run nearly $300 a day.

Even more prevalent are the vagabond Americans who arrive in small boats and swipe business from legitimate Mexican boat owners.

“It happens so frequently that it’s become a major problem,” said Harry Nelson, president of Almar Ltd., a Rolling Hills-based company that manages Cabo’s marina and seven others in California.

“Americans go down there and figure, ‘Gosh, I can make some money,’ and they’re literally standing around hotels asking people if they’d like to go fishing,” Nelson said.

“They blunder into violating Mexican law, and the toes that are being stepped on rebel.”

Except for blatant offenders, Nelson said, Mexican authorities do not rigorously pursue violators in deference to the millions of American dollars that feed the resort’s burgeoning development and vacation trade.

About 200 Mexican boats, mostly skiffs, are available for charter in the Cabo San Lucas area. They compete legally with about 20 licensed American boats, all more than 35 feet long.

Apparently unaware of the change in the Pacific Clipper’s ownership, local charter operators had their eyes on the yacht the moment that Grant and his crew arrived after their 1,000-mile voyage from Oxnard.

Before embarking, Grant had paid a Mexican company $1,400 to get a charter permit. He found out too late that licensing documents were never filed.

Luis Bulnes, owner of the Solmar Hotel and 14 charter fishing boats, was one of four Baja operators who filed a complaint against the Pacific Clipper and four other boats that have since been released.

“We didn’t know if they had permits or not,” said Bulnes, a native of Spain who has led a fight to curtail American charter boats in Cabo San Lucas. “Mr. Grant is in a business (in the United States) like I am, but I have to defend myself because I have too many people who depend on me, the families of my workers.”

Torres, of the Mexican Consulate, acknowledged that investigators ultimately gathered only circumstantial evidence against the Pacific Clipper, including a flyer listing the yacht as available for charter in January.

Chris Phillips, operations director for the Mexican company that Grant paid for a license, acknowledged taking payment to secure proper documentation. But Phillips said he held off getting the permit because Grant told him in December, after a parting of ways with his skipper, that the Pacific Clipper was not going to be chartered during the winter.

Grant, who flew to Mexico several times between December and February, maintains that, other than letting the former owner take the boat on a 10-day trip in fulfillment of the mortgage agreement, only he, his brother-in-law, their family and friends used the yacht.

He still must answer the charge of leaving the country without properly registering the yacht at the marina. The requirement is intended as a means of keeping tabs on foreign boats, whose owners must pay a nominal fee every time they leave and re-enter the marina.

Though Grant signed a deposit contract at the marina office upon arrival--which made the marina operator legal guardian of his boat--it was canceled two days later when he moored the yacht on a harbor buoy rather than docking at a slip. He said he was never informed of the cancellation, let alone the gravity of it.

Grant wonders why customs officials waited to confiscate the boat until he got papers clearing him to leave and his crew was preparing to return to the United States in February, if he violated the law in December the first time he left the country.

Since the seizure, he has flown to Mexico eight times to meet with lawyers and government officials in Cabo San Lucas, Mexico City and La Paz, the state capital of Baja California Sur, he said. At his request, the matter is also being investigated by the U.S. State Department and the Mexican Embassy in Washington.

Should the Mexican government keep the yacht, it will probably be donated to a university for marine research, Torres said. But, he added, the case is not resolved.

“It’s being taken care of in a very serious manner, at a very high level,” said Torres, whose government is in the midst of negotiating a free-trade agreement with the United States. “It’s not just a unilateral decision.”

If Grant and his partners are unhappy with the final ruling, Torres added, “They can go to trial. The law provides for that.”