OXNARD : Owners Win Release of Seized Yacht

The owners of a $300,000 sportfishing yacht based at Channel Islands Harbor have won its release from the Mexican government, which seized the Pacific Clipper in February for alleged illegal charter fishing in Cabo San Lucas.

“The bottom line was that a very powerful, and costly, attorney in Mexico City was able to get the decision reversed,” said Rick Grant, one of the owners of the vessel and general manager of a sportfishing company at the Oxnard harbor.

“They finally admitted that they seized it because of its past history, and that, unfortunately, I was caught in a web.”

Grant said he has spent close to $100,000 to get the boat back, including a $17,900 fine, more than $40,000 in legal fees and the cost of 15 flights to Mexico.

In December, he and his crew took the 65-foot boat to Cabo San Lucas, a resort on the southern tip of Baja California, intending to charter it to American tourists for up to $1,740 a day.

Before they had the chance to rent out the boat, he said, Mexican customs agents seized it on Feb. 18, claiming that it had been chartered several times since its arrival eight weeks earlier. Customs officials acknowledged that they had their eye on the boat because it was used for illegal charters a year earlier, before Grant and his partners bought it.

The Mexican government, unable to make the illegal chartering charges stick, kept the vessel on the lesser grounds that Grant left it in Mexico without properly registering it with port officials.

When the boat was finally returned to Grant on Thursday, he said, he was so eager to get out of Mexico that he and his crew set sail the next morning in spite of severe storm warnings.

They encountered bad weather for the first two days, Grant said. “We lost all our fresh water somehow, but I refused to go back.”

The boat is docked in its home berth. “Right now, there’s a big old American flag flying on the mast,” Grant said. “I can tell you, this boy will never go south of the border again.”