Good points.
It is not uncommon in this part of the country for people to put up high performance boats between outings, so that is what I was thinking.
Since these boats are apparently high end, I would not be surprised to learn that they are being smuggled onto ships to be sold overseas. I recall seeing a piece on TV once about this sometimes being the fate of stolen expensive cars.
I hope that it is just theft and not part of a terrorist plan.
One of my favorite ports of call was Hong Kong (pre-china take over). There was a lot of trafficking in stolen high end cars at that time. An article in the Hong Kong Times described one of the incidents. The wife of an ambassador called the phone in her car wondering where it was. The thief answered and told her he was on a speed boat and that it was a very nice car and he thanked her for it.
The article went on to explain how the car thief crews were set up. There was a break in artist, a specialist driver,
and then the high speed boat crew.
One calm dark night departing Hong Kong we had one of those speed boats fly past us. There was no target on radar because he was close and a poor target but I did pick up his wake on the screen. He was faster than the hydrofoils that cruise those waters by quite a bit.
Hong Kong also had one of the highest Rolls Royce concentrations in the world at that time.
Yes, it could just be theft to sell to overseas markets, or perhaps they were “acquired” for drug running. A friend of mine used to stay in the Florida Keys years ago and would hear go-fast boats leaving in the middle of the night. Obviously they were not out sightseeing. lol