SAN DIEGO (CNS) - The U.S. Coast Guard announced Wednesday night it has indefinitely suspended a search for an Oceanside man who went missing during a recreational cruise on his small motorboat.
For three consecutive days, two cutters and two helicopters crisscrossed roughly 600 square miles of water and shoreline from La Jolla to San Clemente in hopes of locating 52-year-old Loren Ruden, USCG Petty Officer 1st Class Henry Dunphy said.
The search was suspended at 7 p.m. and won't be resumed unless new information should develop, Dunphy said.
The FBI began investigating Ruden's disappearance Tuesday because it occurred in U.S. territorial waters, over which the investigative body has jurisdiction.
Ruden, a married father of three grown children, was reported missing late Monday afternoon after his border collie, Sadie, was spotted swimming to shore near an Oceanside jetty.
A beachgoer caught the animal and located Ruden's wife by using information on the dog's collar tag. How and where the animal had left the boat was a mystery.
The search for Ruden began in earnest that evening and has continued since.
About 6:30 a.m. Tuesday, Ruden's 21-foot skiff, named "Lucky Dog," was found unoccupied and slowly circling under its own power in the ocean north of La Jolla. A Coast Guard boat crew pulled alongside the vacated vessel, boarded it and turned off the engine, then towed the vessel back to Oceanside.
Authorities examined Ruden's boat, including its global-positioning equipment, in hopes of determining what happened to him, but found little to go on, Dunphy said.
Statements from Ruden's family led authorities to believe that one of several life jackets he kept on his boat was gone, providing hope that he had been wearing it when he went overboard.
Ruden, a commercial charter-fishing captain, was on a pleasure outing with his dog on the day he disappeared, according to his sister, Angie Richards.
