Yachts

A Coast Guard cutter rendezvoused Sunday with a sailboat found adrift eight days ago in the South Pacific and confirmed there is a body aboard that probably is that of Garden Grove attorney Manning Eldridge, skipper of the long-overdue boat. It probably will be Friday or later before positive identification is made, U. S. Coast Guard spokesman Scott A. Hartvigsen said in Honolulu. Eldridge, 41, had sailed in the yacht, Marara, from Tahiti on a voyage to Hawaii seven months ago.

A $1-million yacht originally reported as stolen turned up Monday in Mexico, where it was apparently taken in an ownership dispute, police said. Robert Cirac, 44, of Laguna Hills told police that his 65-foot yacht was stolen from Harbor Island on Friday. But Monday, police said the yacht was apparently owned by three different parties, including Cirac.

The Coast Guard found a yacht that had been crippled in rough seas southwest of Guam and sent a patrol boat today to tow the boat and its crew to safety, officials said. A C-130 search and rescue plane from Hawaii spotted the Royal Taipan about 120 miles east-northeast of Yap, an island of the Federated State of Micronesia, said Lt. Kent Youel, a Coast Guard spokesman in Honolulu.

In a report filled with vivid details of disaster on the high seas, the U.S. Coast Guard said Friday that a South Korean freighter was responsible for ramming and sinking a Santa Clarita family's yacht last fall in the South Pacific, killing two children and their father.

A 27,000-ton cargo ship arrived today in port at Inchon, South Korea, to face an international investigation in the ramming and sinking of a yacht off the New Zealand coast in which three Southern Californians were killed. The Pan Grace, owned by a South Korean shipping line, apparently remains the sole ship not yet investigated in connection with the Nov. 24 sinking of the 47-foot yacht Melinda Lee.

A yacht carrying 12 Americans on a diving trip and a crew of four sank in the Gulf of California, port officials said Tuesday. Two people, one an American, were rescued, and the search is continuing. The Mexican-registered Santa Barbara sank early Monday near Isla Tortugas, Andres Mladineo, an engineer with the Guaymas port authority, said. The island is about 60 miles southwest of Guaymas. "There was a little wind, and the boat turned over," he said.

Federal authorities have seized a 75-foot yacht and frozen several accounts controlled by a San Diego County man who bilked investors out of millions of dollars. A federal court in 2001 held Vladislav Steven Zubkis liable for orchestrating an elaborate "boiler room" scam that illegally raised $10 million from more than 1,100 investors through a company called Z-3 Capital.

A luxury yacht that belonged to executed dictator Saddam Hussein will be towed from Greece to a port in southern Iraq after the resolution of an ownership dispute, the Iraqi government said. The 269-foot yacht is fitted with swimming pools, salons, a secret escape passage and a rocket-launching system. French authorities seized the boat Jan. 31, 2008, after it docked in Nice. It is undergoing maintenance work in Greece, and Iraq plans to sell it.

Philanthropist Richard Steele didn't just leave his custom-made, $1-million dream yacht called Wide Waters to Orange Coast College--he bequeathed funds so his ship's full-time captain could go with it. The captain, Todd Lee, didn't know what to expect after Steele died in March 1996 at age 77. No longer would Lee sail the 70-foot luxury boat from Mexico to Alaska for Steele, who enjoyed domino games and family nights in front of the on-board fireplace.