Not going to downvote you since I use iTunes for streaming, but when they changed their policy a few years ago about DRM, they fucking deleted about 20 songs I wrote and recorded solo or with my bands. My friends had backups, but man that sucked. So beware, I suppose.
There is a trick to cleaning all cheese covered things! Wash it in cold water. Not hot or warm, cold. If the water is just a little bit warm it essentially melts the cheese so all it does is smear and not clean.
Part of it would depend on whether or not it has, as required of all self propelled ships above a low threshold GRT, an AIS transceiver. If it’s got one, and it’s on, I can find the ship in seconds (access to multiple large terrestrial and satellite AIS systems at work).
But I guess if they never intend to go anywhere near Port State Control, they could just turn their AIS off. People do it all the time to violate sanctions, avoid pirates, etc.