can a ship undock with out people in town seeing it undock.

[Piscator]

Sometimes you can even hear it on the roads leading to the town and everywhere else.

[the_antisocial_hermit]

lol, but that's a bug.

[Doug R.]

A harbor is just a building, so the same rules that apply to all other buildings apply to harbors. If you can't hear someone doing something in a building, you can't hear someone doing it in a harbor either.

[SekoETC]

But you can see someone starting to dock to a harbor. Because then they are outside it.

[NaruShadow]

no you hear them in town as well I believe. One of my charries was recently in Plakeur with a companion. The other guy picked a lock on a sloop, I hopped on board, and he started on another, the town guard heard and came into the harbour, dragged of my buddy and I undocked and made off with the ship.

[Doug R.]

There is another possibility, and that is that your buddy picked the lock twice, invoking the "lockpicking on the road" bug, which was heard by the town guard who happened to be on the road, and then came in and pinched your friend.

Or, a guard simply found you out fair and square when they walked into the harbor and saw two people standing on a boat on which they didn't belong.

[NaruShadow]

Could be, or there were some other people that docked in the bay after he started, perhaps they alerted him. For some reason he did not notice me though. Or he though the ship I was on was my own.