* Max Rudolph Thieme; Engineer, Sailor

Max Rudolph Thieme of Thousand Oaks, who was credited with introducing the sport of sailing to a wider audience when he started the nation’s first sailboat charter club, died of heart failure Wednesday in a Thousand Oaks hospital. He was 72.

Thieme was a planning engineer at Northrop and an amateur sailor in 1962 when he created TransPac, a charter club for budget-minded sailors. He had grown disillusioned with yacht clubs and the high costs of purchasing and maintaining sailboats, and rented his club’s first three boats for as little as $14 a day.

Renamed Marina Sailing in 1977, the club is the largest charter club in Southern California, with 2,000 members and a 100-boat fleet. The club’s chapters are at Ventura County’s Channel Islands Harbor and five other small-craft harbors from San Diego to Marina del Rey.

“He was one of the first to make family sailing accessible in Southern California,” said Harry Munns of the American Sailing Assn. “What clubs like Marina Sailing have done is give people access to sailing for a very small amount of money.”

His daughter, Laurie Golden of Woodland Hills, described Thieme as “an old-fashioned man of strong values.” Her father, she said, “was a quiet, gentle man off the boat. On board, he was a take-charge man of the sea.”

Thieme was born Nov. 27, 1920, in New York City and attended Bronx High School, where he received a science scholarship to Fordham University. He left school to enlist in the Army during World War II and, while stationed in Europe, he fashioned a sailboat out of scavenged parts and taught himself to sail.

Survivors include his wife, Loretta; three sons, Cliff Thieme, Rob Lowry and Eric Lowry, all of Thousand Oaks; three daughters, Chris Mosier of Rolling Hills Estates, Amber Malkiewicz of Lake Havasu, Ariz., and Golden, and a granddaughter.

Funeral arrangements are under the direction of Forest Lawn Mortuary, Hollywood Hills.