A pair of boat thieves are on the run after a bungled attempt to steal a runabout from a Russell property ended with the getaway vehicle abandoned and the boat flipped upside-down in a storage lot.

Senior Constable Mike Gorrie, of Russell police, said he was off-duty at about 8pm on Monday when a Gould St resident called him to report someone was stealing a neighbour’s boat which was stored on her property.

They had hooked the boat trailer up to a white ute then took off, she said.

Gorrie threw on his uniform and headed straight to Ōkiato in case the offenders tried to get out of town by ferry.

No vehicles in the ferry queue matched the description, so he headed back towards town – and passed the offending ute at Te Wahapu as it was travelling in the other direction.

By the time Gorrie turned around, the ute had vanished.

What followed was a game of cat and mouse as Gorrie searched side streets and the back road to Russell while the ute did its best to evade him.

Eventually, he was waved down by a member of the public who had seen the ute heading back towards Russell.

As Gorrie was passing the GAS petrol station on Aucks Rd, he instinctively drove into a neighbouring storage yard, where he found the ute abandoned with its lights still on.

The aluminium Stabicraft boat had flipped off the trailer and was upside-down on the ground.

The boat itself was not badly damaged, but the outboard was smashed up, Gorrie said.

He was unable to find the occupants, who appeared to have fled on foot.

The Mazda ute, which had false licence plates, had been stolen from Auckland in August.

The offenders had left a significant amount of DNA, fingerprints and other evidence in the ute, which was now undergoing a forensic examination.

Gorrie was keen to hear from anyone who had seen two people, likely a man and a woman, on foot in the vicinity of the Russell GAS station or Russell Sports Club at around 8.20pm on Monday.

He also wanted any other information that could help identify the offenders, such as CCTV footage from nearby shops.

They had clearly called into a fish-and-chip shop on Monday, because the ute’s cab was strewn with chips. Information could be passed to him at Russell police station or by calling the police non-emergency number 105 and quoting file number 220722-9110.

Earlier this year, a group of thieves actively targeted Te Haumi, near Paihia, scouting the area by day then returning by night for boats and trailers.

A number of those crimes, plus the theft of a swing from Paihia School, were solved by Focus Paihia’s new CCTV system.