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The Love Boat won’t be making another run anytime soon.
The 70-year-old MS Aurora — the vessel which inspired the iconic television show — has been sunk for months, prompting concerns about local drinking water in the Northern California estuary where it met its demise and leaving local officials scrambling over what to do next, according to the Los Angeles Times.
“I’m heartbroken,” cruise ship historian Peter Knego told the outlet.
In the late 60s, when the Aurora operated as a cruise ship, its cruise director, fashion model Jeraldine Saunders, penned a memoir called “Love Boats,” filled with juicy stories that took place on the ship.
“You cannot imagine the things that happen on cruise ships,” she told the LA Times in 1972. “The sex lives of the officers, deaths, suicides, marriages, romances, nymphomaniacs … I realize that what all people are looking for is love. The world revolves around love.”
Producer Aaron Spelling based his popular romantic-comedy-drama series “The Love Boat,” which aired on ABC from 1977 to 1986, on the book.
Knego and others said it’s unclear what actually caused the boat to sink, claiming its demise is shrouded in “nefarious dark stuff.”
“It’s all very strange,” Knego said of the Aurora, which was also featured in the 1963 James Bond movie “From Russia With Love.”
It sank in May, less than a mile from the source of drinking water for the city of Stockton. Waste from the doomed ship, such as seeping oil, is posing a threat to its residents.
The city, which already has financial difficulties, now has to shell out money to keep the Aurora refloated, and does not care about its storied and glamorous history.
“There’s no love here,” Stockton’s community relations officer, Connie Cochran, lamented to the LA Times this week.
The storied ship was christened in 1955 as a German liner, then operated as a cruise ship on the Aegean Sea until it eventually relocated to the West Coast.
Eventually, the vessel was overrun by homeless and drug users.
Software developer Chris Wilson gave it another chance at life when he purchased the Aurora on Craigslist and created videos about its history on YouTube and Facebook in order to raise money to restore it.
But Wilson sold it last fall. The new owner, who has not been publicly identified, failed to file paperwork with the California Department of Motor Vehicles, Wilson said, and has not been located.
A San Joaquin County representative told the LA Times their main priority is how to safely dispose of the Aurora, not determining who owns it.
