NEWPORT BEACH : Museum Has a Re-Berth in Harbor

After years in cramped quarters on the Balboa Peninsula, the Newport Harbor Nautical Museum is cruising into new territory.

The museum recently moved to much larger quarters aboard a former riverboat restaurant moored near Linda Isle. It will be symbolically christened tonight at a champagne-and-fireworks gala to celebrate not only the expansion but also what patrons hope is a new era.

“Newport Beach was about the only city of its size that did not have a decent-size nautical museum,” patron Richard Steele said.

“San Pedro has one. San Diego has one. San Francisco has one. Newport Beach had a hole in the wall, way out of the way and underfinanced.”

The museum features an unusual ship-in-a-bottle collection, a rare model-ship exhibit and displays of early Newport Beach history, including mementos of yacht club activities and other memorabilia such as “Lovely Ladies of Newport Harbor,” a photo display of famous yachts that have anchored in the bay.

For the christening, more than 400 feet of bunting, first used on the U.S. battleship Missouri, will adorn the 33-year-old Mississippi-style riverboat.

“There’s a rich history in the city’s harbor,” said William E. Bluerock, who designed the barge and is donating his time to redesign its interior. The museum, he said, “is a way to preserve our heritage.”

Family Restaurants Inc. donated the riverboat. Museum patrons raised $680,000 to pay mooring fees and the lease on the adjacent parking lot through the year 2006.

Catherine Nash, the museum’s executive director for seven years, said supporters hope to raise as much as $50,000 at tonight’s celebration, which will feature a $100-a-ticket dinner and dance.

That money, she said, will help to keep the museum afloat while it is being renovated.

Steele, whose family gave $420,000 to the museum through the Harry and Grace Steele Foundation, said, “We hope that in a few months it will be able to pay for itself.”

As part of the celebration, the U.S. Coast Guard will give a 21-gun salute in memory of Bettina Bents, an avid sailor who was one of the first advocates of a Newport Beach nautical museum.

After Bents died in 1986 of a respiratory infection at age 26, her family vowed to keep her dream alive.

“The vision has now become reality,” said Marcia Bents, Bettina’s mother and chair of the museum’s executive board.