Glenn Yarbrough’s Favorite Key: Sea

Over the years, Glenn Yarbrough has had a tough time combining his sailing with his singing. “You need an audience to sing,” says Yarbrough, who as a singer has recorded more than 60 albums and as a sailor has logged more than 40,000 nautical miles.

That need for an audience has lured the 62-year-old Yarbrough off his boat and back on stage--only this time he has come as both sailor and singer.

Yarbrough, former lead singer for the Limeliters, a popular folk-singing trio in the ‘60s, will bring his boating-oriented program of lecture and songs to Orange Coast College in January when he appears in the 1993 Sailing Adventure Series.

“I never intended to lecture on sailing,” says Yarbrough, speaking by phone from South Carolina, where he is recording a new album. “The thing I’m doing in Orange County is kind of new for me. I have always kept my sailing life private.”

Yarbrough sailed away from his singing career more than 20 years ago at the height of his success. Since then, he has owned 13 vessels, including the 85-foot schooner Tiki, which was used in the “Adventures in Paradise” television series.

He spent three years building his 55-foot ketch and then spent five years sailing the boat off Mexico, Central America and in the Caribbean. He is an accomplished seaman who prefers long-distance sailing to short cruises and day sails.

“I never liked to gunkhole down the coast,” he says, referring to short trips, “because the first three days I am always seasick. After the third day, it would clear up, so I don’t like to go for just a day or two. My first sailing was always to go across oceans.”

Although Yarbrough has sailed with his family, particularly his younger daughter who is in law school, he is now divorced and a solo sailor. His new boat, a 34-foot junk rig, is being designed for single-handed cruising.

Home, Yarbrough says, is wherever the boat is. And since his new boat, which is named the Brass Dolphin, is currently docked in Sequim, Wash., Yarbrough says Sequim is home.

He isn’t sure when he will set sail again. “I don’t know, to tell you the truth. You always want to get going again, but my career is kind of more interesting to me now than it used to be, so I may not sail as much as I used to.”

He paused for a moment and added quite seriously, “Or I may go away for good. Once you’ve sailed a boat and once you’ve crossed an ocean, it is a way of life that spells out full freedom.”

What keeps luring him away from the sailing life is his singing, Yarbrough says.

“One of the things that brought me back into the mainstream of working again was the fact that although I love to sail, on the other hand, I felt kind of self-indulgent. If I were a doctor or a dentist, there are places that would need my services. But the last thing any of these places need is another singer.

“Also, I began to realize that what I do as a singer is really quite important here in the United States because what I do really calms people down and makes them feel better. In the old days, before I started learning about the rest of the world, I thought what we needed was a dose of reality. Now, I think what we need is something to calm us down,” he says.

Sailing is definitely harder than singing, Yarbrough says, and there aren’t many similarities between the two pursuits. “The thrill of singing is in the give and take between the performer and the audience. For me, singing is communicating and touching people and when I see that happening, it is a thrill. But sailing is entirely different.”

Sailing is also more frightening than singing, he says.

“I have never considered singing scary. But there are lots of fears in sailing, especially now that I am sailing alone. You are completely dependent upon yourself. After a while, you get used to it and although there are a lot of frightening aspects to sailing, once it is over, you forget about being scared. But you never forget the good times.”

Yarbrough’s presentations on Jan. 29 and 30 at Orange Coast College will include practical cruising advice on long-distance voyages, based upon his own experiences. “It’s geared for people who have never done it and basically are afraid to do it,” he says.

During the lecture, Yarbrough will sing two or three selections from an album of sailing songs he recently recorded called “I Could Have Been a Sailor.”

He admits that it is the new album--and not his sailing experiences--that has brought the former Limeliter back into the limelight.

“To get the album sold, I have to come out of the closet as a sailor,” he says.

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Sailing Adventures. Other lecturers in the Orange Coast College 1993 Sailing Adventure Series include Richard Bristol, who provided the nautical expertise during the filming of the PBS series “On the Waterways.” Bristol will open the popular lecture series on Jan. 8 and 9.

Appearing on the Jan. 15-16 program will be Bud Warden, who sailed from Denmark, around Sweden and via the Gulf of Finland to Leningrad in 1988. His topic is “Sailing Through the Iron Curtain.”

The Jan. 22-23 lecture will be presented by Freya Rauscher, author of “Cruising Guide to Belize” and “Mexico’s Caribbean Coast.” Sailing with her husband, Tom, aboard a 33-foot sloop, Rauscher has logged more than 25,000 miles.

Concluding the four-week series will be Yarbrough’s program, “I Could Have Been a Sailor” on Jan. 29 and 30.

Tickets for individual programs are $8.50 each or $29 for the entire series. At the door, tickets will cost $10 per program or $35 for the series.

All Friday programs begin at 8 p.m. and on Saturdays there will be two evening programs, at 6:30 and 8:30. Lectures will be held in the Science Hall, on the OCC campus at 2701 Fairview Road in Costa Mesa. For information, call (714)432-5880.

The same series will also be offered in Ventura at the Ventura College Auditorium, 4669 Telegraph Road. Programs will begin at 7:30 p.m. Jan. 6, 13, 20 and 27. For information on the Ventura programs, call (805) 654-6459.