NEWPORT BEACH : Dreamboat Leaking, Right on Schedule

Connie James, her hand over her heart, retreated from the object she has watched grow from wooden planks into a 16-ton motorboat.

“Oh, oh, here goes,” she said Friday as a crane backed the Connilen toward the murky waters of Newport Bay.

It was the day she had awaited for 20 years, along with her son, Donald, and husband, Leonard, who built the 45-foot cabin cruiser in the back yard of their Santa Ana Heights home.

While the men were aboard hooking up the mast and fueling the engine, Connie and about 25 friends and relatives patiently waited down on the pier outside Basin Marine Inc.

Most had been on hand Thursday when the Connilen, a name taken from both Connie’s and Leonard’s, was lifted above their house onto a trailer and hauled to its new home at the marina.

The five-hour move was unexpectedly long, delaying the christening until Friday. Then the launching was stalled again when the men had trouble getting fuel to the engine.

About 45 minutes and 50 gallons of gasoline later, a lift rolled the Connilen to the pier’s edge, where 19-foot arms lowered her gently into the salty bay.

Most spectators rushed about with cameras to record the event. Some cried. Alyson Voboril, 4, was among those whose eyes moistened, but for a different reason. “I want my da da,” she said from her mother’s arms. Alyson’s father, Mark, grew up with Donald James and was on board to help navigate.

“I christen thee, the Connilen,” said Connie James, who was splashed with mock champagne, Hollywood Breakaway, as the bottle smashed against the edge of the 45-foot wooden vessel. “I’m glad I didn’t wear my ball gown down here.”

On board, James, his son and friends filled the water tank and monitored the bay water that bubbled steadily into a cavity under the stateroom.

“It’s a wooden boat,” Donald James said. “It’s gonna leak until all the joints swell up tight. . . . We’re not gonna sink.”

Leonard James, 56, said he figures that the boat will leak for a couple of days, taking in as much as a “couple of hundred gallons.”

Standing on the back deck and wearing a T-shirt proclaiming, “I was there for the launching of the Connie-Len January 1991,” James said the launching is more of a beginning than an ending.

He said he looks forward to spending his weekends on the water instead of in his back yard perfecting a project he started when his son, now 30, was just 10. It cost about $150,000 to build, plus $20,000 to move. The cabinetmaker spent the first 10 years building the boat’s exterior from mahogany, oak and teak. In the final years, he tinkered with the inside, carving out a stateroom, two restrooms, a galley and a shower.