Beginners Can Kayak Beside World’s Best

If you’ve ever dreamed of being one of those perfectly balanced paddlers gracefully gliding a kayak through Newport Harbor, dream no more.

The Newport Aquatic Center on the shores of Upper Newport Bay will teach you how to do it and give you the opportunity to learn right alongside some of the world’s best athletes--including Olympic gold medalists.

While the center, which opened last January, is an official Olympic training site, it is open to the public and offers 2-hour clinics for beginners for as little as $5.

Or you can join the nonprofit center for $250 and get unlimited use of its boats, rowing equipment, lockers and waterfront facilities. So far, the new center has signed up 300 members.

“A lot of people still don’t know we’re here,” says George Jenkins, center director and a former rowing coach at UC Davis. “We’d especially like to get more young people involved. We are just now beginning a recruiting effort in the high schools for the junior program which is getting under way.”

For a yet-to-be determined “nominal fee,” Jenkins says youngsters from 12 to 18 can learn to paddle a kayak or row a sleek, narrow racing boat called a shell. “We are really trying to get a lot of kids involved,” he says. “They don’t have to have any experience. Kids who are not highly competitive can get involved and do well in these programs.”

In simple terms, a kayak is a portable canoe, about 14 feet long, propelled by a single occupant using a double-ended paddle. The paddler faces forward.

In a one-person rowing shell, which is about 28 feet long, the rower faces backward and pulls on a pair of oars. Beginning rowers start out in wider shells that are more stable and less likely to tip over with an inexperienced occupant, Jenkins says.

“With a kayak it isn’t if you tip over while you’re learning,” Jenkins says, “it’s how many times you tip over.”

It takes a long time to get to that smooth, graceful stage in kayaking, he says.

The center currently has 35 boats, including one-person kayaks and one- to four-person rowing shells, ranging from 28 to 45 feet in length. Center plans call for additional boats, a boat dock and a weight-training room.

“The facility is currently only 8,000 square feet,” Jenkins says. “When it is completed it will be 18,000 square feet.”

A group of rowing and paddling enthusiasts actually began laying plans for the center more than 8 years ago, but the process was slow because the site is on public tidelands and needed approval from 13 different federal, state and local agencies and the voters of Newport Beach.

The project was funded by private and corporate donations and by a grant from the Amateur Athletic Foundation, which dispenses surplus funds from the 1984 Olympics.

Curt Fleming, who competed in rowing in the 1984 Olympics, is president of the center’s board of directors.

“Our primary objective is to expose the use of human-powered craft to the youth in the community. Secondly, we hope to channel these youths into international competition,” he says.

Fleming points out that 13 athletes who competed in the 1988 Olympics--including gold medalists Greg Barton and Norm Bellingham--trained at the center.

However, Fleming is quick to add that such high-powered athletes train alongside children, senior citizens, businessmen, parents and other rowing enthusiasts in the community.

“From the beginning, we’ve wanted this to be open to the public,” he says. “To people who want to get together and learn how to row and paddle.”

Once considered an elitist sport, rowing is increasing in popularity, according to Fleming, who attributes the change to television exposure in the 1984 and 1988 Olympics.

Membership in the United States Rowing Assn., a rower’s club and the sport’s governing body, has doubled in 2 years to about 25,000, according to the association.

Clinics are held at 9 a.m. each Saturday at the Newport Aquatic Center, 1 Whitecliff Drive, Newport Beach. Kayaking clinics are held at 10:30 a.m. on Sundays. The center offers only flat-water, in-the-harbor kayaking; no ocean kayaking is taught. Phone: (714) 646-7725.

On the Waterfront appears each Saturday, covering boating life styles as well as ocean-related activities along our 37-mile coastline. Send information about boating-related events to On the Waterfront, Orange County Life, The Times, 1375 Sunflower Ave., Costa Mesa, 92626. Deadline is two weeks prior to publication. Story ideas are also welcome.