Nautical and Nice : Festivals in Dana Point and Newport Beach Receive Watery Raves

“Believe me, my young friend, there is nothing --absolutely nothing--half so much worth doing as simply messing around in boats.”

--Mr. Mole, in Kenneth Graeme’s “The Wind in the Willows”

*

If Graeme’s water-going storybook character is the kind to heed advice, he’s navigating his way to Orange County this weekend for two major celebrations of things nautical.

On Friday, the sixth annual Newport SeaFest kicks off 10 days of fun with the Wooden Boat Festival, which features three days of contests, games and parties (including several designed especially for kids). That festival is just one of 15 public events under the SeaFest umbrella, which also includes an outrigger canoe race to and from Catalina, a sandcastle contest, a pier swim and the Taste of Newport, a weekend-long blowout of food and music at Fashion Island.

The events take place throughout the Newport Harbor area; several are free, although some of the tonier dos will command a hefty price.

Over in Dana Point, the two-day Tallships Festival keeps a weather eye on nautical history, offering interactive events, displays and performances that pay tribute to 1800s sailors.

Hosted by the Orange County Marine Institute and sponsored by the city of Dana Point, the festivities begin Saturday with a parade of nine tall ships and schooners (including OCMI’s resident brig, the Pilgrim) and continue through Sunday evening with shipboard performances, races, tours and, new to this year’s event, a pirate encampment featuring the Port Royal Privateers, a Riverside-based living history group. Event prices range from free to around $20.

Here’s a rundown of both festivals. (See accompanying schedules for times, locations, costs and additional events.)

Newport SeaFest

Coordinated by the Newport Harbor Chamber of Commerce, SeaFest is touted as a “showcase for the Newport Beach lifestyle.”

The SeaFest roster does conjure up images straight from a chamber brochure: sandcastles glinting in the sun, tanned hard bodies in a rousing game of volleyball, kites dancing in an azure sky. (If you need a reality check, try to find a parking place on the peninsula.)

This weekend’s Wooden Boat Festival offers some of the best hands-on fun for kids and adults. Held in and around the Balboa Fun Zone, it features the “Nail and Sail Boat Building contest,” in which two-adult teams must build a boat and paddles of their own design in the shortest time possible, using materials--basically a couple sheets of plywood, some 2-by-2s, nails and caulking--supplied by the organizers. Later, the contestants race their homemade crafts around a course, hopefully finishing before they spring a leak.

Other activities there include a boat parade and dinner-dance on Friday and children’s boat-building classes, pier-fishing tournaments, costume and knot-tying contests Saturday and Sunday. Most activities are free or cost under $5; the priciest event is the dinner-dance, at $55 per couple.

Serious paddling also takes place at the Newport Dunes Resort, where about 50 men’s and women’s outrigger teams will race to and from Newport and Catalina Island in the U.S. Outrigger Championship. The women take off from the Dunes bound for Catalina on Saturday morning; the men depart Sunday from Catalina, arriving at the Dunes midday. Spectators can catch the race at the Dunes, or from the Balboa, Newport or Huntington Beach piers. For $8, visitors can also party with the athletes in a post-race luau at the Dunes.

Other SeaFest sporting events include a collegiate water polo tournament Saturday and Sunday (with teams from UCI, USC, UCLA and elsewhere) at Corona del Mar High School and the Theodore Robbins/KEZY volleyball tournament Sunday at Corona del Mar State Beach.

Rumor has it that the fine-grain sand on Corona del Mar beach is the best around for sandcastle building, and on Sunday visitors can judge for themselves at the annual sandcastle contest, featuring the work of about 25 professional and novice teams.

Highlights in SeaFest’s second week include the Antique SeaFair, which offers symposiums, auctions and an antique marketplace, Sept. 15 through 18 in Lido Marine Village. The Taste of Newport runs Sept. 16 through 18 at Fashion Island and offers food by 35 local restaurants and continuous entertainment headlined by Juice Newton, Jack Mack and the Heart Attack and Three Dog Night.

Closing weekend, SeaFest continues with a swimming race around the Newport pier and a kite festival in adjacent Balboa Peninsula Park on Sept. 17, and the SeaFest Family Fun Run/Walk Sept. 18 at the Dunes.

Tallships Festival

Gentlemen, is your sweetheart loath to make that long trip down the gangplank, er, aisle? Besides lootin’, carousin’ and general mayhem-makin’, the Port Royal Privateers, the newest participant in the Tallships Festival, boast tremendous matchmaking skills as well.

In their press materials, the pirates (otherwise normal Southern California folk who adapt personas such as Blackmark Noriega and Agnes the Red for their appearances), proudly claim “we have ways of makin’ ‘em wed yer mangy carcass, even if’n ya have breath like bilge water or are pockmarked.” Details on this were not available at press time.

At the Tallships Festival, the pirates will showcase these and other tricks of the trade and host children’s treasure hunts in encampments outside the Marine Institute. According to the institute’s director of maritime affairs, Dan Stetson, they’ll also stage some friendly shipboard confrontations during a Buccaneer Schooner Rendezvous on Sunday afternoon. Visitors are encouraged to play along with the brigands shore-side, and, for a fee, may even sail with them in the rendezvous. Return passage is almost certainly guaranteed.

By the way, this weekend isn’t the first time that pirates have tried to have their way in these parts.

According to Doris Walker’s “Adventurer’s Guide to Dana Point,” in 1818, a band of rebel pirates sailed into San Juan Bay under the leadership of one Hippolyte Bouchard. Bouchard hoped to spark a revolt among the locals against Spanish rule but received a less than warm welcome from the good residents of the mission settlement in San Juan Capistrano.

Miffed, he ordered his men (who had already fortified themselves with the padres’ homemade spirits) to set fire to a few buildings and shortly thereafter made a quick retreat. Rumors of buried treasure in the area persist, although it’s unlikely your kids will dig it up this weekend.

The Tallships Festival officially opens with Saturday’s midday arrival of the Pilgrim into the harbor, accompanied by eight other tall ships and schooners from San Diego to San Francisco and escorted by a flotilla of local boats, a Coast Guard cutter and a fireboat discharging its water cannons. The fanfare marks the close of the annual summer goodwill voyage of the Pilgrim, a 130-foot replica of the vessel on which Richard Henry Dana sailed from Boston to the California Coast before writing “Two Years Before the Mast.” The ship spends most of the year moored at the Marine Institute’s dock as a floating classroom for the facility’s living history programs for youths.

Other vessels will include the 117-foot schooner the Pilgrim of Newport, a replica of a Revolutionary War ship, and the 70-foot schooner Spike Africa, both operated as private charter vessels out of Newport Beach. Also on hand will be the 90-foot Swift of Ipswich, which is used in the Los Angeles Maritime Museum’s educational programs, and the 60-foot Witch of Wood, a four-topsail schooner out of Ventura that is modeled after early pirate vessels.

Visitors may also sign aboard as crew members during Saturday’s opening parade and a schooner race later that day. Tickets must be purchased in advance, and life preservers are recommended for small children.

On both days, professional musicians and singers will perform sailors’ chanteys (work songs) and forebitters (recreational tunes) on a stage near the Pilgrim. A collection of sea-themed visual art will be displayed and sold, and scrimshanders, the artists who create scrimshaw carvings on whale teeth and bones, will demonstrate their craft. A collection of antique nautical cannons will also be featured, along with the marine institutes’s ongoing hands-on educational displays.

* What: The sixth annual Newport SeaFest and the Tallships Festival in Dana Point.

* When: SeaFest is Friday, Sept. 9, through Sept. 18. Tallships Festival is Saturday and Sunday, Sept. 10 and 11, from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.

* Where: SeaFest at sites in and around Newport Beach (see page 8); Tallships Festival at and around Orange County Marine Institute, 24200 Dana Point Harbor Drive.

* Whereabouts: To the Marine Institute, exit the San Diego Freeway at Pacific Coast Highway and head west, then go left on Dana Point Harbor Drive. (Free parking and shuttle service available at the lot on Selva Road just north of Pacific Coast Highway.)

* Wherewithal: Ticket prices on page 8.

* Where to call: SeaFest: (714) 729-4400. Tallships Festival: (714) 496-2274.

MORE KID STUFF

COUNTYWIDE: SUPER SWIM CLASSIC

Swimmers of all ages and abilities can raise funds for the Leukemia Society of America by racking up laps Saturday, Sept. 10, from 8 a.m. to noon at public pools in and around the county. Free registration; prizes for pledges of $25 and up. (714) 633-6858.

IN ANAHEIM HILLS: DISCOVERY FAIRE

Kids can kvetch with critters, learn to play keyboards and more on Sunday, Sept. 11, from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. at the Oak Canyon Nature Center, 6700 Walnut Canyon Road. Exhibitors include Bowers Museum, Discovery Science Center and Griffith Observatory. Free. (714) 998-8380.

IN DANA POINT: HANDS-ON DANCE

Coast Ballet Theatre hosts a free afternoon of dance and dance-themed activities for children Saturday, Sept. 10, from 1:30 to 3:30 p.m. at the Dana Point Community Center, 34052 Del Obispo Road. Includes crafts, storytelling and dance workshops. (714) 498-3760.

TALLSHIPS FESTIVAL

Note: Times for sailing events are approximate, as they are dependent on wind conditions. For more information, call the Marine Institute at (714) 496- 2274 . For tickets to sail in one of the races or the opening parade, call Dana Wharf Sportfishing (714) 496-5794. Limited tickets are available, and advance purchase is strongly suggested. * Parade of Tall Ships

Vessels from San Diego to San Francisco accompany the brig Pilgrim into Dana Point Harbor.

When: Saturday, Sept. 10, about noon.

Best viewing: On the breakwater next to the Marine Institute, 24200 Dana Point Harbor Drive.

Free. Spectators may view the parade from their boats or on board one of the participating ships by purchasing a ticket through Dana Wharf Sportfishing, 34675 Golden Lantern.

* Port Royal Privateers Encampment

Members of the Riverside-based living history group stage mock weddings and trials and display “tools of the pirate trade.” Bilge-rats-in-training may take part in children’s treasure hunts both days.

When: Saturday, Sept. 10, and Sunday, Sept. 11, from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.

Where: Outside the Marine Institute.

Free, but treasure hunts are $3 each.

* Great Schooner Race

Four schooners will depart from Dana Wharf for a race just outside the harbor.

When: Saturday, Sept. 10, from 3:30 to 6 p.m.

Where: Dana Wharf, 34675 Golden Lantern.

Free. Visitors may also buy passage aboard one of the boats in the race through Dana Wharf Sportfishing.

* Buccaneer Schooner Rendezvous

The Port Royal Privateers engage in some “friendly” confrontation under sail. Cannon play is probable; mutinies are a certainty, and weddings performed at sea are good only for the duration of the sail, says the Marine Institute’s Daniel Stetson, director of maritime affairs.

When: Sunday, Sept. 11, from noon to 3 p.m.

Where: Depart from Dana Wharf.

Free. Again, visitors may “sign aboard” one of the vessels by buying a ticket through Dana Wharf Sportfishing. (Peg legs are optional.)

* Tall Ship Tours

Most of the tall ships moored at the Marine Institute’s dock will be open for tours after the parade and remain so through the festival. Schooners moored at Dana Wharf will be available before and after the race and Sunday’s buccaneer rendezvous. Crew members on many ships will be dressed in period costumes.

When: Saturday, Sept. 10, from 1:30 to 5 p.m.; Sunday, Sept. 11, from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.

Where: Dana Wharf and the Marine Institute’s dock.

Suggested donation: $1 for children, $3 for adults or $5 per family.

* Chantey Sings

Chanteys and forebitters, traditional songs of the 1800s sailor, will be performed both days. Audience participation is encouraged.

When: Saturday, Sept. 10, from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m.; Sunday, Sept. 11, from noon to 5 p.m.

Where: Institute grounds, in front of the Pilgrim.

Free.

* “Gilbert and Sullivan on the High Seas: The Best of Pirates and Pinafore”

Orange County Light Opera Company presents excerpts from “The Pirates of Penzance” and “H.M.S. Pinafore.”

When: Saturday and Sunday, Sept. 10 and 11, at 6:30 and 8:30 p.m. (Additional performances Monday and Tuesday, Sept. 12 and 13, at 8 p.m. and Saturday, Sept. 17, at 6:30 and 8:30 p.m.)

Where: On board the brig Pilgrim.

Tickets: $20, advance purchase through the Marine Institute is suggested.

* Displays and Demonstrations

Inside the Marine Institute, there will be artist demonstrations of scrimshaw (intricate carvings on fossilized whale bone and teeth) and a collection of nautical cannons. The institute’s marine biology stations, including a large touch tank and a new ray exhibit, will be available.

When: Saturday and Sunday, Sept. 10 and 11, from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. at the Marine Institute.

Free.

NEWPORT SEAFEST

* Wooden Boat Festival

This event kicks off SeaFest with parade of wooden vessels from the Newport Harbor entrance up the main channel to the turning basin in Lido Village, and a dinner-dance. Continues Saturday and Sunday with “Nail and Sail” boat-building contests and a regatta, as well as contests, parties and fishing tournaments for children.

When: Friday, Sept. 9, at 5 p.m. (parade starts). Friday, Sept. 9, at 5:30 p.m. (dinner-dance at Balboa Pavilion). Saturday and Sunday, Sept. 10 and 11, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. (contests, boat tours and kids parties).

Where: Balboa Fun Zone (Balboa Boulevard at Main Street on Newport Bay).

Wherewithal: Events range from free to $55.

(714) 675-2645.

* Nautical Art Exhibit

Twenty-five works with Newport Harbor theme.

When: Saturday, Sept. 10, through Sunday, Sept. 25 (museum open Wednesday through Sunday, 10 a.m. to 3 p.m.)

Where: Newport Harbor Nautical Museum (1741 W. Balboa Blvd.)

Free.

(714) 673-3377.

* Arts and Crafts Display

Works by 100 local artists, live entertainment, food and drink.

When: Saturday, Sept. 10, from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.

Where: Balboa Peninsula Park (Balboa Boulevard at Main Street, on the ocean side).

Free.

(714) 644-3151.

* Outrigger Canoe Race

Men’s and women’s teams race to shore from Newport Dunes and Catalina. Start and end of race can be viewed from the Dunes and Balboa, Newport and Huntington Beach piers. Post-race luau at the Dunes open to the public.

When: Saturday, Sept. 10, at 8 a.m. (women’s teams depart from the Dunes). Sunday, Sept. 11, about noon (men’s teams return to the Dunes). Sunday, Sept. 11, about 2 p.m. (post-race luau).

Where: Newport Dunes (Back Bay Drive at Jamboree Road)

Spectators are free. Luau: $8. Dunes parking is $5.

(714) 551-3380.

* SeaFest Water Polo Tournament

Twelve collegiate teams, including UCI, UCLA and USC, compete in back-to-back games.

When: Saturday, Sept. 10, from 7 a.m. to 9 p.m. Sunday, Sept. 11, from 7 a.m. to 6 p.m.

Where: Marion Bergeson Aquatic Center, Corona del Mar High School (2101 Eastbluff Drive, Newport Beach).

Wherewithal: $5 on Saturday, $7 on Sunday, $10 for two-day pass.

(714) 457-1090, Ext. 13.

* White Linen and Jazz

Rhythm and blues concert featuring saxophonist Jeff Gonzales, buffet dinner, silent auction. Benefits the Orange County Performing Arts Center.

When: Sunday, Sept. 11, from 4 to 8 p.m.

Where: Hyatt Newporter Amphitheater (1107 Jamboree Road, Newport Beach).

Wherewithal: $45

(714) 556-2122, Ext. 220.

* SeaFest Fun for Kids

Sea songs, stories, face-painting and a clown.

When: Sunday, Sept. 11, from 1 p.m. to 3:30 p.m. or so.

Where: Newport Beach Public Library, Balboa branch (100 E. Balboa Blvd.)

Free.

(714) 644-3172.

* 33rd Annual Sandcastle Contest

About 25 teams of expert and novice sand sculptors.

When: Sunday, Sept. 11, from noon to 3 p.m.

Where: Corona del Mar State Beach (Ocean Boulevard at Marguerite Avenue).

Wherewithal: Free to spectators. Team fees are $35 to $60; advance registration suggested. Lot parking is $6.

(714) 729-4400 or 645-6868.

* Volleyball Tournament

Team competitions throughout the day, plus live entertainment and food. Benefits Orange County Marine Institute.

When: Sunday, Sept. 11, from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m.

Where: Corona del Mar State Beach (Ocean Boulevard at Marguerite Avenue).

Wherewithal: Spectators are free. Team members pay $10; advance registration suggested. Lot parking is $6.

(714) 774-9600, Ext. 234 and 239.

* Corona del Mar 90th Anniversary

Buffet dinner and dancing to the High Society big band. Honors three of the city’s lifelong residents.

When: Tuesday, Sept. 13, from 6 p.m. to 11 p.m.

Where: Sherman Library and Gardens (2647 E. Pacific Coast Highway, Corona del Mar).

Wherewithal: $65, reservations required.

(714) 729-4400.

* Antique SeaFair

Symposiums, auctions and an antique marketplace.

When: Symposiums: Thursday, Sept. 15, and Friday, Sept. 16, from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Auctions: Friday and Saturday, Sept. 16 and 17, at 6:45 p.m. Marketplace: Saturday, 7:30 a.m. to 4 p.m., and Sunday, Sept. 18, 8:15 to 4 p.m.

Where: Lido Marina Village (Newport Boulevard at Via Lido).

Wherewithal: Fees: Symposiums are $95 for one day, $169 for both days. Auction admission is free. Marketplace admission is $4 to $8.

(714) 723-4229.

* Taste of Newport

Food from 35 local restaurants, entertainment by Juice Newton, Three Dog Night, Harry James Orchestra and others.

When: Friday, Sept. 16, from 5 to 11 p.m.; Saturday, Sept. 17, from 3 to 11 p.m. and Sunday, Sept. 18, from noon to 8 p.m.

Where: Fashion Island (Newport Center and Santa Rosa drives).

Wherewithal: $6 for adults; children under 12 are free on Saturday and Sunday. Food scrip is $1 each (most servings cost 2 to 4 tickets).

(714) 723-4229.

* SeaFest Pier Swim

Two-third mile race around the Newport Pier. Adults only.

When: Saturday, Sept. 17, 11 a.m. to noon. Registration starts at 10 a.m.

Where: Newport Pier (Balboa Boulevard and 21st Street). Contestants should meet at lifeguard headquarters on the pier.

Wherewithal: Spectators: free. Contestants: $12 (includes T-shirt).

(714) 644-3047.

* Kite Festival

Demonstrations of stunt and exotic kites, plus kite-flying contests for experts and novices. Free kites to children under 12 (while supplies last).

When: Saturday, Sept. 17, and Sunday, Sept. 18, from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.

Where: Balboa Peninsula Park (Balboa Boulevard at Main Street, on the beach).

Wherewithal: Free to spectators. Contest fees: $10 to $15.

(714) 673-0450.

*

Family Fun Run/Walk

8K events for adults, plus 1K for kids.

When: Sunday, Sept. 18. Races start at 8, 9 and 10 a.m.

Where: Newport Dunes Resort (Back Bay Drive at Jamboree Road).

Wherewithal: $10 to $20 (includes T-shirt and refreshments).

(714) 661-6062.