An Optimist dinghy stolen from the West End Sail Boat Club last week has been discovered in the Great Sound.

The single handed sail training boat, which now has a damaged hull, has been returned to the club, next to the lodging where team members of America’s Cup challenger Artemis Racing are staying on Watford Island in Somerset. The dinghy had been loaned by the Royal Bermuda Yacht Club to the Bermuda Schools WaterWise, to be used by Sandys Secondary Middle school students enrolled in the programme, but was removed last Thursday night.

“My opinion is that someone took the Opti, went for a joyride and after holing the bow, they cast it adrift sometime over the weekend,” Gus Miller, the Bermuda School WaterWise developer and Olympic sailing coach, told The Royal Gazette. “There is a hole in the bow face that could only have come from hitting something pretty hard.

“The chafe marks on the port bow would have come from rubbing against the rocks in the Long Island cave where it was discovered. Barry Brewer said that he saw something white with a red interior in the cave over the weekend. Someone else called Royal Bermuda Yacht Club to report it in the cave.”

Mr Miller said the wind direction of Thursday night probably caused the boat to drift south east, so that it ended up in the Great Sound.

WaterWise is a school-based programme that has integrated science, technology, engineering and maths. The school’s academic curriculum is woven into the ten WaterWise teaching segments that includes learning the discipline of the sea, while sailing in the Optimist dinghy.