NEWPORT BEACH : Vandalized Cleanup Boat to Be Replaced

Newport Harbor will get a new cleanup boat because vandals took the old one on a joy ride that left it damaged beyond repair.

“The boat basically was destroyed,” Harbor Inspector Wes Armand said. “It was actually banging around on the pilings under the pier. Whoever took the boat ended up running the boat aground.”

The vessel is an open, 18-foot aluminum skiff the city has used since 1984 to keep the harbor waters clean. It made rounds of the bay’s 32 miles of shoreline twice daily and its operators answered radio calls to pick up floating debris.

“Aluminum, Styrofoam cups, candy wrappers, residue from boat maintenance, if it floats, it ends up in the water,” Marine Safety Lt. Jim Turner said. “They skim up film and debris. If it’s on the surface, they’ve had to pick it up sometime, someplace.”

Officials are at a loss to explain why anyone would take the boat. But Armand said “the key was in a location where someone had to know a little bit more than the general public to get (it).”

The damage was done when vandals, under cover of darkness and fog early the morning of June 25, stole the boat from the Balboa Yacht basin.

According to a Marine Department report, some people fishing from Newport Pier called police to report hearing the boat’s engine on the water. By the time they saw the boat, it was under the pier, “submerged and breaking up,” according to a report.

Two other witnesses told marine officers that “four wet people ran past them through the B Street parking lot.”

Armand said the new $9,700 boat, which the City Council approved purchasing, should be in service within three weeks.