Garden Grove : Bones on Missing Boat So Far Not Identified

A sailboat found adrift in the South Pacific has finally been returned to Honolulu by the Coast Guard, but the human bones aboard, which are believed to be those of a Garden Grove attorney, have not been identified, an investigator said Thursday.

Investigator Larry Rutkowski of the Medical Examiner’s Department in Honolulu said the sailboat, the Marara, was returned to Hawaii late Wednesday by the Coast Guard cutter Sasafras.

The craft was reported missing on Feb. 8 a week after Manning Eldridge, 41, was to have arrived in Honolulu from Tahiti. Eldridge had been on a worldwide sailing trip.

The boat was sighted 1,500 miles southeast of Honolulu by a Korean shipping boat on July 26. The Coast Guard cutter reached it on Aug. 2 and took almost 12 days to tow it back to Honolulu.

Rutkowski said because the remains found on the boat were skeletal, no autopsy could be performed. However, he said his office was working with the Army’s Central Identification Laboratory.

“The positive identification could take another day or two,” he said.

Rutkowski said it was unknown how long the person found on the Marara had been dead or the cause of death. However, he added that “from my investigation, there was no apparent foul play.”