It’s Full Speed Ahead for Marine Institute’s New Learning Center

Like a star atop a Christmas tree, a miniature sailing ship on a weather vane capped off the newest addition to the Orange County Marine Institute on Friday in Dana Point.

The two-story addition houses the Learning Center, which re-creates an early California customhouse with wooden walls and a shake roof. Next door, an adobe and tile house will serve as home to the institute offices.

Both are designed in 19th-century style to accompany the institute’s centerpiece, the replica of the two-masted brig Pilgrim, on which author Richard Henry Dana traveled the California coast in 1835.

The new buildings give the institute more room for its educational programs for children and adults, designed to introduce them to the wilderness that lies just a few hundred yards off the beach, said institute executive director Stanley L. Cummings. And the Pilgrim helps teach early California history, in addition to marine science.

“A community that ignores its history throws away its road map for the future,” Cummings said. “We look at ourselves as a learning laboratory.”

While the dedication festivities took place on the dock, schoolchildren were on board the Pilgrim--just like 255 other days and nights during the year--acting like the crew to learn about shipboard life in 1835.

“I liked when they showed us how to lift up the sails,” said Alicia Ruiz, 10, a fifth-grader at Valencia Elementary School in Laguna Hills.

Her classmate Lindsay Rosenthal was impressed they could use pulleys to lift heavy barrels. “It was cool.”

And the kids learned the tough side of a sailor’s life. One had to keep an onion in her mouth for talking too much, and others scrubbed the deck or sat in water for not paying attention.

The Learning Center and institute offices cost $550,000 to design and build, with about half coming from an endowment by the local Swenson Family Trust. Jim Swenson got the honors of perching on the firetruck ladder to place the ship on the weather vane atop the Learning Center.

Pat Hightower, 64, of Dana Point, who volunteers as a Pilgrim crew member, said the new buildings are a welcome addition to the Marine Institute and Dana Point.

“It adds to the Pilgrim,” she said. “It adds to the harbor. It’s pretty.”