In a secret lock-up, SUE REID finds the little boat that was a retired couple's ... trends now
Laughing and crying at the same time, French pensioners Eric and Nadia Blin peered in disbelief at the Mail’s photograph of their stolen cabin cruiser.
The tiny boat was snatched from the canal near their home in northern France one night in February by criminals who sailed it across the Channel with illegal migrants on board.
‘We were told by the French police that she had reached the UK with the migrants,’ said Eric last week at the couple’s house in the village of Watten, 15 miles inland from the port of Dunkirk.
‘Our police promised us Britain would return her to us. But we don’t know if that will ever happen.’
The couple are overjoyed that we traced their red and white cabin cruiser called Aidan (Nadia’s name in reverse) after combing the ports, boatyards, beaches and inlets along the coastline of Kent and East Sussex.
Eric and Nadia Blin on board the Nadia, which was bought for their retirement last year so they could enjoy the French waterways during the summer
We found the Blins’ boat, as our photograph shows, in the corner of an open-air compound, surrounded by wire fences, amid scores of black rubber dinghies seized by Border Force officers after illegally carrying migrants to the UK from France.
Its distinctive blue flooring on the deck area remains intact, as do an array of white fenders.
‘It’s the right one,’ said Eric as he stared at the photo.
‘I never thought we would set eyes on her again,’ adds Nadia.
Two-and-a half-months ago, as he drove to a petrol station to fill up his car, he glanced over the canal bridge and noticed Aidan was missing - the chains had been cut
Eric at the empty mooring - which is on a feeder channel to the canal leading from the village of Watten to the North Sea at Dunkirk - where he kept the Nadia
The theft of Aidan had left newly retired Eric and Nadia distraught, and their plans to spend this summer sailing the canal and its tributaries in disarray.
‘Every day without the boat is a wasted day of our retirement, which we hoped to enjoy on the water. It was going to be perfect,’ the couple, both 62, explained, as they talked over each other in their excitement after we knocked on their door.
Eric, a former welder, bought the boat online for £2,200 last August as a retirement treat for his wife, a former laundress.
He spruced up Aidan by re-painting her and found a mooring on a feeder channel to the main canal leading from Watten to the North Sea at Dunkirk.
Eric Blin with his outboard engine, which had been in his garage when his cabin cruiser was stolen by people traffickers transporting migrants across the Channel
The canalways near the village of Watten, where the Bins had moored their boat, which are used by people smugglers to transport migrants to the French coast and on to the UK
Nadia was thrilled. ‘We were going to spend this summer pottering about on the waterways, enjoying days out and picnics,’ she said.
That was until the people smugglers struck.
The trafficking gangs, which regularly launch their cross-Channel migrant dinghies from Dunkirk’s beaches, have moved their set-off points inland in a bid to avoid French police patrols.
Eric had chained the Aidan up securely for the winter at the bank near his terraced home. ‘I thought she was safe,’ he said. ‘I put the outboard in my garage and was going to get it out again for this year’s sailings.’
Then, one morning two-and-a half-months ago, as he drove to a petrol station to fill up his car, he glanced over the canal bridge and noticed Aidan was missing.
The chains had been cut. The mooring at the bank was empty.
‘I told the police that day,’ he recalled. ‘They made a report. We were
