A retired couple’s expensive boat stolen by a gang to smuggle migrants from France to England has been returned to them after a Herculean battle against officials by the Mail.
His favorite red-and-white boat, named Aidan and bigger than a bathtub, was delivered to pensioners in a picturesque village near Dunkirk in northern France amid tears, laughter – and lots of French-style kissing on the cheek.
‘Thank you, thank you again,’ said an emotional Eric Blin, hugging me as he saw Aidan for the first time since February.
‘We never thought our bateau would return. He went missing during the night from our local canal and we were informed by the French police and the British Border Force that a gang of smugglers had taken him to England.’
The retired welder bought Aidan on the internet for £2,200 as a gift for his wife Nadia, a former laundress. They plan to spend this summer taking out for a picnic along the willow-lined canal near their home in the village of Watten, which leads 15 miles to the North Sea in Dunkirk.
Eric Blin bought Aidan on the internet for £2,200 as a gift for his wife Nadia, a former laundress.
He plans to spend this summer picnicking along the willow-lined canal near his home in the village of Watten, which leads 15 miles to the North Sea at Dunkirk.
Mr Blin and Mrs Blin have been reunited with their beloved boat thanks to the Mail – Mr Blin is pictured here with Sue Reid Mail
However, that dream was dashed by smugglers who hijacked the boat to travel along the canal before making the perilous journey across the Channel to Dover with five migrants thrown aboard.
Mail search for Aidan (‘Nadia’ on the reverse, painted by Eric on the body) began when we first met the couple, both 62, when our investigation last spring to the spate of the theft of small boats by migrant smugglers from the Watten waterway to Cross the channel to the coast of Kent.
The village and canal are now a key point for people smugglers as they try to evade French police who patrol the beaches of Dunkirk and Calais to stop migrants crossing in small boats. The pair tell us about the missing boat and we promise to find Aidan – who we know must be hiding somewhere in England – and get him back safely.
After a week of combing the harbours, boatyards, beaches and inlets along the Kent and Sussex coasts, we were tracked by boat to the secretive and guarded Government Complex three miles from Dover.
Using an overhead drone, we were spotted in the corner of an open compound, surrounded by hundreds of smugglers’ rubber boats seized by the Border Force.
‘We didn’t know they were broken for scrap. We were forgotten by the country,’ Eric said this week. ‘Bravo to the Mail for finding our missing boat and fighting against the authorities who don’t care about us.’
Eric has moored Aidan for the winter two months after buying it in August 2023. He tied the boat safely to the canal bank near the couple’s house.
‘I thought he was safe,’ she recalled this week. ‘Then the smugglers came for him.’
The boat was stolen before midnight on February 9, after a gang scouting the area picked it, cut the rope and released it from the bank mooring.
Five migrants, including a minor, were put on a boat to cross to Dover. It is thought they paid a total of £6,000 for the trip.
The boat was stolen shortly before midnight on February 9, after a gang patrolling the area took it, cut the rope and released it from the bank mooring.
On Tuesday morning this week, we put the boat on a low loader behind a four-wheel drive for the trip back to France on the cross-channel ferry.
The stolen boat can be seen arriving at the slipway in the Port of Dover, ready to cross the channel back to France
The smugglers were found by French police at 5am, a few miles from the point where the canal to Dunkirk from the village of Watten meets the North Sea.
Although the boat is unseaworthy, has only four lifejackets and is dangerously overloaded, the officer does not stop the boat because it makes the journey dangerous.
It plowed on through the calm – but bitterly cold – night into the British waters. At the border in the middle of the Channel, the migrants on board were met and escorted to Dover by a Border Force vessel on the morning of February 10.
We have seen the Border Force photo, which Aidan shared with the Blin family after arriving in Dover. In a shambolic state, caked in mud and littered with migrants’ debris, including isolated gold-colored blankets thrown at them by gangs of smugglers.
The boat was then thrown by the British into captivity and left to rot in the months of rain and bad weather.
Aiden now has a hole in the hull and damage to the deck, which is thought to have been caused by the prongs of a forklift truck used to move it from port to lock after arriving in England.
When the Mail first asked the Home Office in London what happened to Aidan, we received an unhelpful response.
We are asking for the political help of Conservative Home Office ministers to find the boat and return it to the Blin family. They agreed to do so, but a snap General Election was called, throwing the promised rescue plan into disarray.
A first attempt by the Mail to tow Aidan on the back of a powerful fishing boat across the Channel late last month ended up halfway to France
Aiden now has a hole in the hull and damage to the deck, which is believed to have been caused by the forks of the fork lift truck used to move it from port to lock after arriving in England.
Finally, we approached a Border Force officer stationed in France who refused to answer questions because he ‘doesn’t deal with the media’.
The lonely wall is impenetrable. It is difficult not to conclude that Eric is right – no one in the official office on either side of the Channel cares a jot.
Frustrated, in July we hired a team of French lawyers to help get the boat back. He went through the difficult process of negotiating with the French and British authorities on behalf of the Blin family.
Finally, after many weeks, we got permission from the Border Force and the French police to collect the missing boat for Eric and Nadia from the confinement in Dover.
A first attempt by the Mail to tow Aidan on the back of a powerful fishing boat across the Channel late last month ended midway to France. The small boat was so badly damaged during the detention in England that it took on water and had to be towed back to Dover safely.
Our second attempt was successful. On Tuesday morning this week, we put the boat on the low loader behind the four-wheel drive to travel back to France on the cross-Channel ferry.
We then took 27 miles to the village of Watten for a happy reunion with the Blins.
There aren’t many good news stories in the world, but this is one. We promised the pensioners, and their daughter Melissa, who helps refugee families in France, to rescue the boat and give it back to them. And this week, happily, we succeeded.
