Regatta Chairman Is a Man of His Wood
Boatyard owner Marshall Steele is a man of few words. But mention wooden boats to Steele and listen as his quiet reserve slips away. Watch his eyes take on a faraway look and hear a bit of poetry slip off his tongue.
“Sailing on a wooden boat is like stepping back in time,” he says. “These boats have lasted so long. Some sit around and fall into disrepair, but then are brought back to life again. They were built to go on forever, to pass from generation to generation. You can physically feel the energy of a wooden boat, actually feel that it is alive.”
Keeping wooden boats alive in today’s fiberglass yachting world is not easy, but Steele is doing his part. As chairman of the Heritage Regatta for the Newport Harbor Nautical Museum, Steele is helping assemble one of the best collections of wooden sailboats on the West Coast for the event.
Nearly 40 boats, ranging from 16 to 86 feet in length, are coming from as far away as Ventura and San Diego to take part in the regatta Friday and Saturday in Newport Harbor.
One of the entries, a 46-foot yawl, belonged to Errol Flynn and was built in 1931. Another was built at the turn of the century and is still plying the waters off San Pedro. Some--such as Spike Africa, which was launched in 1977--are newer boats, built to resemble schooners of old.
But all have one thing in common: They are made of wood. Most were built more than 25 years ago, before fiberglass replaced wood as a boat-building material. Many entries are from the Wooden Hull Yacht Club, an organization of 86 wooden boat owners.
“I’d say about half the fleet is our members,” says David J. Smith, commodore of the club. “Some of our members have spent half a million dollars restoring their boats, many of which are becoming valuable antiques, living antiques.”
Smith says his club became involved in the regatta because the event benefits the Nautical Museum. “We are always looking to help anything having to do with wooden boats,” he says.
This regatta is the second one sponsored by the museum. Last year’s raised $15,000, according to Audry Nye, who helped come up with the idea of a race for wooden boats only.
“We thought something like this fit the museum because it shows our heritage,” she says.
The carefully preserved wooden boats provide quite a contrast to the fiberglass yachts of today, Nye says.
Boats will begin arriving in Newport Harbor at 5 p.m. Friday at the Balboa Yacht Club, 1801 Bayside Drive in Corona del Mar, where they will be on display. For information on how you can get a close-up look at some of these classic yachts, call the Newport Harbor Nautical Museum at (714) 673-3377.
If you want to take a ride on one of the boats, ask about becoming a regatta sponsor. For $100, you can buy a day’s worth of sailing for one person, and $500 will buy you berths for two, plus two Heritage Regatta T-shirts and tickets to race parties and dinner. For big spenders and corporate sponsors, $5,000 will purchase a day’s sailing for 14 people, plus other goodies.
If you just want to watch, you can do that for free by finding a spot near the jetty around 10:30 a.m. on Saturday. That’s when the boats will begin parading to the race area, which is outside the harbor near the Balboa and Newport piers. The race itself will begin at noon.
“We are going to try and sail as close to the coastline as possible,” says Steele, “so that people can really see the boats.”
Some of the vessels--such as Smith’s Lapworth 40, which is painted a fire engine red--will be easy to spot.
Others--such as Monika Sloan’s Spike Africa, a 70-foot schooner built to carry passengers and cargo--will be clearly visible because of its huge size.
The latter boat, whose home port is Newport Beach, is the official mascot for the regatta. The hand-built schooner was constructed in Costa Mesa by local sailor Bob Sloan over a six-year period and was launched in 1977. When Sloan died in 1986, his wife, Monika, took over the running of the boat and today she charters Spike Africa for everything from weddings to burials at sea.
In preparation for the regatta, Sloan says she has been polishing all the brass and touching up Spike Africa’s varnish. “We want to be looking as good as we can,” she says. “We work so hard on these wooden boats, pour a tremendous amount of time and money into them. This is really a chance to show them off. It makes it worth it.”
Marshall Steele agrees. “These people spend so much time restoring their boats, but they don’t get to participate in many events because there just aren’t many events for wooden boats in Southern California.”
Steele, whose Blue Moon Boatyard is one of the few in the area that specializes in wooden boats, says he estimates that there are approximately 3,000 wooden boats in the Los Angeles and Orange County area. And thanks to the efforts of people like David Smith, many of those boats are being saved from certain death.
“I heard about one man who was going to cut up a Lapworth 36 to get rid of it,” Smith says. “I said, ‘Don’t do it.’ Right now he’s trying to get the funds to refurbish it.”
For people who love boats and are good with their hands, Smith says that buying a wooden boat and fixing it up can be a real bargain. “You can buy a boat like mine for $20,000,” he says. “A fiberglass boat of the same size would cost $100,000.”
Once you sail a wooden boat, it’s hard to go back to fiberglass, Smith says. “People like the smell of a wooden boat,” he says. “The teak decks, the varnish, the bowsprits. Wooden boats just stand out. But it’s just the smell of the boat, I think. It smells very strong of wood.”
Learning Navigation. Beginning celestial navigation for the small boat sailor will be the topic of an eight-week course that starts Tuesday at the Orange Coast College Sailing Center, 1801 W. Coast Highway in Newport Beach.
Classes will meet from 7 to 10 p.m. each Tuesday and Thursday. For information call (714) 645-9412.
Sailing into Summer. Kayaking, canoeing, sailing and windsurfing are just a few of the boating related classes being offered this summer by the Dana Point Harbor Youth and Group Facility, 34451 Ensenada Place in Dana Point.
The facility also offers a number of summer day camps--all revolving around an ocean-related theme--for children from 4 to 14. For information call (714) 661-7122.
Sea Adventures. Summer camps will also get underway this month at the Orange County Marine Institute. The week-long camps range from a “Mommy and Me” program for 3- and 4-year-olds to a “Surf Science Camp” for 13- to 15-year-olds.
The institute will also offer its popular floating lab dusk cruises each Friday, beginning June 26. The program includes a cruise aboard the 65-foot vessel Sum Fun. For information call (714) 496-2274 or (714) 831-3850.