[Leica] Decoy is the name of the game

["Alan Hull" <hull@telia.com>]

You guys with nappy diaper bags and radioactive warnings have got it all
wrong.  Thieves are not interested in your cameras, those days are gone.
They want cash or credit cards.

Keep your camera bag looking like a camera bag but arrange another bag to
look like it contains your wallet, tickets, house keys, address, credit
cards etc.  Bite the bullet and buy a European purse, cheap one of course.
They are not at all effeminate.

When I was in Jugoslavia at the outbreak of hostilities, the currency
inflated almost hundred percent per day.  I deliberately bought wads of the
stuff, to use as decoy material which I left lying around my boat.  Nothing
concentrates a thieves mind like a great wad of cash.  It short circuites
his brain.

When I sail my boat in third world countries, I have more gear aboard
(cameras, radios, lap tops, navigation, cash and credit cards, booze etc.)
than most of the villages I am anchored off.  There is no way I can protect
it from the increasing number of fishermen trawling with an AK 47 in the
bilge.  Decoying them is the only defence.  The name of the game is to make
thieves think that you are stupid.

Alan