Authorities Tuesday were trying to find out who stole a 30-foot Sea Scouts sailboat from a Marina del Rey dock and left behind a derelict dinghy at a nearby dock.
The Island Hopper, a 1979 Islander model that was used by area Sea Scouts, a co-ed program of the Boy Scouts of America, was taken from its slip between March 17 and March 21, the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department told KCAL9.
The scouts’ leader told the station that when he saw the vessel was missing, he noticed another similar, beaten-up sailboat had been left on one end of the dock.
Whoever left the sickly sloop behind had placed the stolen boat’s registration numbers on it and presumably was using the Island Hopper’s registration number, Sea Scout skipper Paul Renner said.
“When the sheriff arrived, he postulated that the perpetrator had seen our boat days or weeks before, and decided to `trade up,’ swap CF numbers and hope we didn’t notice,” Renner said.
Anyone with information about the Island Hopper’s location was urged to call the sheriff’s Marina del Rey station at 310-482-6000.