Ear­ly yes­ter­day morn­ing, the newest high speed cata­ma­ran in the Clip­per Nav­i­ga­tion fleet, the Vic­to­ria Clip­per IV, was stolen from its berth at Seat­tle’s Pier 69 by a reg­is­tered sex offend­er who lat­er told police he was try­ing to use the ves­sel to get to West Seat­tle. (Why he did­n’t just walk or take the bus there is a pre­sum­ably a ques­tion that police detec­tives have asked him or plan to ask him).

The theft was dis­cov­ered by Clip­per Nav­i­ga­tion CEO Dar­rell Bryan, who hap­pened to be in the com­pa­ny’s offices around the time the Clip­per broke away from the dock and quick­ly real­ized that none of his cap­tains were aboard pilot­ing the ves­sel, as he recount­ed to the Seat­tle Times and the Vic­to­ria Times-Colonist.

Bryan alert­ed author­i­ties and before long the Seat­tle Police Depart­ment and the Coast Guard were on the scene. After attempt­ing to nego­ti­ate with the thief, , a SWAT team was able to board the Clip­per IV and take Samuel K. McDo­nough into cus­tody with­out fur­ther inci­dent. He is cur­rent­ly being held in the King Coun­ty Jail.

The theft of the Clip­per IV is already a con­tender for the most bizarre sto­ry of the year. It’s not every day that an eight mil­lion dol­lar high speed pas­sen­ger fer­ry is stolen. As Bryan wry­ly not­ed, it’s actu­al­ly the first time in the near­ly three decade his­to­ry of the com­pa­ny that some­one has tak­en one of its vessels.

But the inci­dent is also a sober­ing reminder that we need stronger secu­ri­ty mea­sures in place to pro­tect our ports, includ­ing the Port of Seattle.

Our two U.S. Sen­a­tors, Pat­ty Mur­ray and Maria Cantwell, have been pret­ty vocal over the years about the need to bol­ster port secu­ri­ty, and the rest of us would do well to lis­ten when they are speak­ing on the subject.

While we don’t know all of the facts of this case yet, police allege that McDo­nough sneaked onto Clip­per Nav­i­ga­tion’s premis­es, got aboard the Clip­per IV, entered the ship’s wheel­house, and start­ed its engines… all with­out being stopped. Sup­pos­ed­ly, he slipped into the restrict­ed area of Pier 69 by jump­ing the fence adja­cent to the sales kiosk, which is not topped with barbed wire.

And then, after he was aboard, he was able to get into the wheel­house, which was appar­ent­ly not locked — though it should have been, accord­ing to Bryan:

The ves­sel isn’t locked because it’s in a secure perime­ter, but the wheel­house should have been locked, he said.

“There is a lock­ing mech­a­nism, and you have to have the code to get in,” he said.

“Tomor­row morn­ing we will be going through every­thing. We’ll be look­ing at the lessons learned and what can we do to pre­vent this from hap­pen­ing for anoth­er 28 years.”

That “secure perime­ter” evi­dent­ly was­n’t very secure, since it was breached by a men­tal­ly trou­bled sex offend­er in the dark of night.

In the future, Clip­per Nav­i­ga­tion should­n’t assume it is okay to leave its ves­sels unlocked sim­ply because they are in berths that are behind fences and watched by sur­veil­lance cam­eras. Had the Clip­per IV been locked, McDo­nough would not have been able to sim­ply walk on board and make his way to the wheelhouse.

Had the wheel­house been prop­er­ly secured, McDo­nough would not have been able to get inside and access the ship’s controls.

Worse, the key to start the engines was appar­ent­ly in the unlocked wheel­house… and maybe even in the igni­tion. (Bryan told The Seat­tle Times a key is need­ed to start the Clip­per IV. He did not con­firm whether the key had been left in the wheel­house, but we sus­pect that’s what might have happened).

Bryan told Seat­tle tele­vi­sion sta­tions that the com­pa­ny will move quick­ly to fix the fence by the sales kiosk so it can’t be jumped any­more. That’s a good idea, but an even bet­ter one would be a top-to-bot­tom review of secu­ri­ty pro­ce­dures. Tough ques­tions need to be asked and answered.

For instance, how is it that McDo­nough was not noticed until he was maneu­ver­ing the Clip­per IV away from the dock, rip­ping off cleats in the process? (Secu­ri­ty cam­eras aren’t very use­ful if some­one isn’t mon­i­tor­ing them).

And why had the wheel­house been left unlocked?

Does the ratio­nale for leav­ing the ves­sels acces­si­ble when not in use make sense any more, giv­en what hap­pened yes­ter­day? If the ves­sel had been secured, it could have stopped McDo­nough from mak­ing it to the unlocked wheelhouse.

The Clip­per IV is one of the world’s fastest water­craft. Built in Bergen, Nor­way, and reg­is­tered in Nas­sau — pre­sum­ably for tax pur­pos­es — it is pow­ered by a water­jet propul­sion sys­tem and can trav­el at speeds of up to thir­ty-five miles per hour. It pro­vides con­ve­nient fer­ry ser­vice between Seat­tle and Vic­to­ria, British Columbia.

The Clip­per IV is a cata­ma­ran, mean­ing it has mul­ti­ple hulls. It is said to be dif­fi­cult to oper­ate, and it can’t be start­ed up just by turn­ing a key.

McDo­nough appar­ent­ly was clever enough to fig­ure out Clip­per Nav­i­ga­tion’s equiv­a­lent of a pre­flight check­list and start up the ship. But he did not have the skill to dri­ve it prop­er­ly, and as a result it appeared as if the Clip­per IV was adrift, going in cir­cles. Author­i­ties called McDo­nough’s short voy­age a joyride.

I’ve rid­den the Clip­per before, and it is a very cool boat. It can tra­verse the waters between Seat­tle and Vic­to­ria very quick­ly. The cross­ing of the Strait of Juan de Fuca can be bumpy, but Puget Sound waters are rea­son­ably calm most of the time.

Much atten­tion has been paid in recent years to bol­ster­ing secu­ri­ty pro­ce­dures for air, rail, and marine pas­sen­gers, to the point where (par­tic­u­lar­ly in air­ports) we have secu­ri­ty the­ater on a grand scale. It’s more for show than for effect.

Our approach to secu­ri­ty has been far too reac­tive and not proac­tive enough. We respond to inci­dents to pre­vent repeats but we don’t think cre­ative­ly to antic­i­pate and pre­vent new inci­dents. We’ve spent bil­lions to for­ti­fy the entrances to air­port ter­mi­nals, but even still, it’s been demon­strat­ed that peo­ple can get through secu­ri­ty with restrict­ed items unde­tect­ed. One fel­low has even fig­ured out how to build a gun out of items you can pur­chase after clear­ing air­port secu­ri­ty.

Clip­per Nav­i­ga­tion CEO Dar­rell Bryan might con­sid­er hir­ing the the equiv­a­lent of a hack­er or team of hack­ers and see­ing if they can pen­e­trate the com­pa­ny’s defens­es when most of the com­pa­ny’s work­ers are off-duty. Such an exer­cise could help the com­pa­ny bet­ter iden­ti­fy its vul­ner­a­bil­i­ties. A patched fence may stop the next Samuel K. McDo­nough, but what about some­one who cuts through the fence, or approach­es from the water in a kayak or rowboat?

Our ports are the gate­ways to our coun­try and our con­ti­nent for mil­lions of peo­ple and for goods and mate­ri­als made abroad. Their secu­ri­ty ought to be of para­mount impor­tance, and it does­n’t seem like it is. When a mul­ti­mil­lion dol­lar pas­sen­ger fer­ry can be stolen from its dock by one man in the mid­dle of the night despite being berthed in what’s con­sid­ered a secure perime­ter, it’s a sign that our port secu­ri­ty is not robust enough. This is a seri­ous prob­lem we need to address, and soon.