Ringing Out Something Old on Opening Day

Of all the 72 smartly dressed and impeccably maintained boats on exhibit for inspection last Sunday at Newport Harbor Yacht Club’s 69th annual Opening Day, a little, old steam launch caught my fancy most intensely.

The wooden hull of the S.L. Stoked, resting on trailer chocks at dockside, reaches back to the year 1910, while her steam engine dates back to circa 1906, according to her owner Steve Eadie of Newport Beach. Her hull was completely restored in 1982 at the Crosby Yacht Yard in Osterville, Mass.

Eadie was aboard her, sketching a diagram of her piping. Although he knows her piping arrangement by heart, he said he thought it was wise to make a diagram for those in the vast majority who know nothing about how steam engines were put together and operate.

Alas, Eadie’s father, who had spearheaded the vessel’s restoration, died just before it was completed.

“He never saw her run,” Eadie told me.

Stoked, her boiler fired by kerosene, makes about four knots on her cruises about Newport Harbor. Skipper Eadie says a cruise keeps him as busy as a pelican in a school of sardines. It takes about a half hour to fire her up, then it’s an active process of adjusting valves and watching gauges to keep the heat in the cylinders just right, he said.

Our party, hosted by Gingerlee Field, was made up of the H. D. Thoreauses, the Lyle Hesses, David Thoreau and my wife, all of whom showed great interest in an inspection of two famous yachts lying at offshore moorings. From the club’s shoreboat, we got a close look at Victory ‘83, the Ian Howlett-designed 12-Meter of the Yacht Club Italiano.

Victory is the 1984 12-Meter world champion and is presently being used by the Italians as a test boat in their challenge for the America’s Cup in 1987.

We boarded the Eagle Syndicate’s laboratory 12-Meter, Magic, fitted with an experimental winged keel. Magic, as well as Victory, were bare bones affairs below, virtually nothing but a hold for suits of sails. Magic’s performance, during current match races off Long Beach against Victory, is furnishing designer John Valentijn with information on how best to design the syndicate’s America’s Cup challenger, Eagle. The Eagle Syndicate’s club is the NHYC.

We were also interested in inspecting Cabaret, owned by NHYC’s commodore Stephen N. Barnard. His handsome, new flagship, an Alden design, is a Palmer Johnson-built, 52-foot ketch. This five-year-old yacht has led a widely traveled existence, having been shipped from Wisconsin to Germany by freighter and making the return trip from England to Rhode Island in 1984. She then traveled as a “land” yacht from Salem, Mass., to Newport Beach for her opening-day, West Coast debut.

Opening days like this one inspire me. All those yachts looked so well cared for, compared to my poor little sloop, Herald Bird, suffering from the climatic ravages of winter. I went home and promptly removed the Bird’s 12-year-old lifelines to be replaced with new ones. A can of fresh varnish, a packet of No. 150 sandpaper and some teak bleach is proof of my good intentions.

Sailing Notes

- Further inspiration may be gained when the Dana West Yacht Club holds its opening day ceremonies on May 19. A parade of decorated boats will precede the ceremonies a 11:30 a.m. in Dana Point Harbor. The parade will be participated in by members of the Capistrano Bay and Dana West Yacht Clubs. A joint reviewing and judges stand will be located at the Richard Henry Dana statue. The parade will make two transits of the harbor. CBYC will hold its opening day ceremony before the parade. The day before that, CBYC will hold its Mayflower’s Dinghy Regatta.

- A north San Diego County artist has won the second annual National Coalition for Marine Conservation (Pacific Region) art contest. Randall Scott, 22, of Escondido, took top honors for his watercolor of two kelp bass swimming in their natural habitat of a Southern California kelp bed.

The painting will be reproduced on the invitations and programs of two major Coalition fundraising events--the Sixth Annual Gala Dinner in Orange County on June 14 and the San Diego Oceans Benefit in San Diego on June 20.

- Changes in federal law and translocation of sea otters go hand in hand if the state is to balance needs of these protected marine mammals with the protection of our diminishing shellfish resources, says State Fish and Game Director Jack C. Parnell.

Parnell has sent a message to this effect to John Breaux, chairman of the House Subcommittee on Fisheries and Wildlife Conservation and the Environment. Parnell believes that without amendments to the Endangered Species Act, California will be unable to control an expanding sea otter population, and remaining shellfisheries will no long support recreational and commercial harvest of shellfish, primarily abalone.

The sea otter has been protected by California law since 1913. Since 1941, sea otters have multiplied in a refuge off the Monterey coast. Jurisdiction over the sea otter was assumed by the federal government in 1972.