A SPECIAL REPORT: BOATING

BOOM . . .: The county is home port for nearly 60,000 boats, but once it was also the sailboat-building capital of the nation. . . . Peaking in the late 1970s, 20 or so manufacturers in Costa Mesa produced about 80% of the nation’s sailboats. “At the time, I’d guess we were pounding out seven or eight big sailboats a day,” says Roger MacGregor, whose MacGregor Yachts is the last still there. . . . “Most of those companies were bought up by large corporations that ran them into the ground.”

County Armadas

Of California’s major coastal counties, Orange County has the most boats per 1,000 population.

Orange: 24.8

San Diego: 20.3

Santa Clara: 19.5

Los Angeles: 12.0

San Francisco: 5.6

Source: Calif. Dept. of Motor Vehicles, U.S. Census Bureau