‘He’s Always Been a Rescuer’

Like a bad day at sea, the rains fell and the winds hissed during a harrowing February storm in Newport Bay.

Tooling along MacArthur Boulevard in his Chevy Blazer, Newport Beach ship captain Scott McClung saw motorist after helpless motorist become trapped in pounding, racing flash floods. Yielding to his urge to help, McClung spent the day hitching a big hook from his winch to pull stranded motorists free.

“He’s always been a rescuer. Always had that kind of rescue equipment--every kind of vehicle, and winches--he always had a winch,” said his sister, Sherie Weatherby of Templeton, Calif. “He was always prepared for emergencies.”

Friends, crew mates and members of Newport Beach’s close-knit charter boating industry are recalling such stories about McClung, 35, as the ship captain faces an uncertain future in the Mexican criminal justice system, where he is accused of illegally bringing weapons into the country.

A former volunteer firefighter and an emergency medical technician, McClung was described as a lifelong adventurer and fun-seeker who loved to introduce the thrill of a good time to others, but also to ensure their safety.

He also is considered deeply intense, sensitive and emotional by those who know him, and as passionate about his religious faith as he is untiring at work at his business, Certified Marine Expeditions, an 8-year-old charter company with a ship named the Rapture.

“He’s very protective of his crew, his boat and the people on his boat,” said Chris Lagerlof, a friend at Mariners South Coast Church in Irvine. “Scott was absolutely always the first one there to help.

“I guess there’s some irony in this: He cared about his people and did everything he could to protect them.”

And when he sailed into Cozumel on his new ship, the second Rapture, it was the two rifles and three shotguns, carried for protection against high-seas piracy, that landed him, his father, Eugene, and first mate Noah Bailey in a Mexican jail.

Devoted to His Faith

To crew members, Scott McClung is considered an able and natural captain. To fellow parishioners, he is a devoted advocate of youth ministries. To his family, he is the baby of four children. And to admiring nephews, he is the uncle with boats, motorcycles and “all sorts of really cool stuff.”

Yet, faced with a trial on illegal gun possession charges, the doughty ship captain collapsed in a Mexican courtroom and was hospitalized, now undergoing treatment for stress disorders. Although charges were dropped against his father and Bailey, a judge found enough evidence to order Scott McClung to stand trial in Cancun.

Before the Cozumel incident, he’d dive off the ship into the ocean, unflinching at the mile of water beneath him. He’d steel himself for hours at a time in the Rapture’s pilot house in the face of 30-foot waves, looking out at the “green water,” crew mates said.

Friends recall once, while serving as a groomsman at a wedding in Mammoth Lakes, rocks began falling from the hillside beside the chapel. “Rock slide!” McClung called out from the altar, triggering an evacuation and lifting two bridesmaids from the altar step.

“He’s not boring,” said Jason Cassista, education director for Certified Marine Expeditions. “He works as much as possible, but when he’s not, he isn’t going to Palm Springs to golf. He’s going to Cabo” San Lucas.

Along “Charter Row,” the west side of Newport Harbor where the charter companies anchor their craft and have their offices, the first Rapture was the biggest ship around for a while. At 115 feet, it was even bigger than the popular Spirit of Newport, which is 100 feet, and the luxurious MOJO, at 90 feet.

The McClungs’ new ship will be among the largest in the harbor and will be docked near the even larger Catalina Flyer along the Balboa Fun Zone.

Norm Goodin, owner of the MOJO, bought the first Rapture from Scott and Eugene McClung, renamed it the Icon and is putting it into his charter service. Goodin and others said the McClungs are known as sincere about their faith and decent in their dealings with others.

“I know Scott and his family and can tell you that you won’t find anyone nicer,” Goodin said. “They are decent, honorable people.”

Goodin and other operators, even though they are competitors of the McClungs, offered to lend time and crews to help out during the McClungs’ ordeal.

“If I didn’t know them as well as I do, I might think that there’s something else behind all this,” Goodin said. “But there’s nothing else behind it. If it can happen to them, it can happen to anyone.”

And, for a while at least, it has dulled Goodin’s appetite for Mexican charter business. Instead, he will be shipping clients to Alaska.

“I wouldn’t take the chance of taking a boat and passengers into Mexico,” he said. “I’m just not interested anymore.”

Eugene McClung served in the armed forces--”The Navy, of course,” his daughter said--at the end of World War II. Then, beginning in the early 1950s, Eugene and Mozelle McClung contributed four children to the baby boom.

First was Cynthia, now living in Washington, then Sherie, in Templeton. Randall was third, and, six years later, Scott McClung was born in 1962. He will turn 36 on Thursday.

The McClungs always were a “close, traditional family,” and they still are; Eugene and Mozelle will celebrate their 50th wedding anniversary in December, and an on-board family reunion was the idea for the cruise that was cut short in Cozumel.

The elder McClung operated the rubber products manufacturing company started by his father in South Gate. Scott worked at the plant for a time; he never seemed fulfilled by that work, his sister said.

Deeply Involved With the Ocean

The call of the ocean for Scott McClung was strong, as was the call of his faith. As a boy, after the family moved to Laguna Beach in the early 1970s, he rode a bicycle to the harbor each day, toting a trailer loaded with lobster traps. Using a small skiff, he set the traps, then went to school.

“After school, he’d go back and check the traps,” Weatherby said. “He caught a lot of lobsters.”

The McClungs are a seafaring family. Scott’s grandfather had several boats, and the family owned a succession of pleasure craft.

For Scott McClung, it translated into other water sports. He was an avid surfer, diver and snorkeler. He swam competitively in high school.

And from his childhood harbor skiff, Scott McClung’s boats started getting bigger and bigger. He lived on one for a time off the Balboa Fun Zone, and he regularly fished thresher or mako shark, selling his catch to seafood markets and restaurants.

All the while, he was active in his nondenominational church, another passion that had its wellspring in the family.

One by one, the McClung siblings became deeply faithful, then their parents followed, Weatherby said.

At Mariners South Coast Church, Scott McClung was a volunteer staff member and group leader for high school and college students. He opened his Corona del Mar house to students for Bible study meetings and loaned out audio and video equipment for church youth ministry projects.

“He’s a role model for some of the youth, and he’s a very mellow guy,” said Tim Timmons, 22, a high school pastor at Mariners. “He’s a very consistent guy who likes to get things done.”

Particularly with new members of the youth groups or the church at large, Scott McClung is quick with a greeting, a smile and an outstretched hand, church members said.

“He’s more than a member. He’s a leader and servant to people in the ministry,” said Lagerlof, who is junior high pastor at the church.

Friends at church recall Scott McClung’s dream of a floating, adventuresome, on-board ministry taking shape more than 10 years ago.

McClung’s idea was a multidimensional voyage that gave youngsters both new experiences and new outlooks on faith.

“Scott got this vision and he started working toward that,” Weatherby said. “At some point, my dad grabbed a hold of his vision too.”

A Religious and Educational Mission

About four years ago, Eugene McClung sold the rubber mat factory and became partners with his son, investing money in a business that was not aimed solely at profit.

For a time, Scott McClung was part of Newport Harbor’s commercial charter boat life: corporate trips, harbor cruises, weddings and private parties.

“He started out with almost all secular charters,” Weatherby said. “Then he started getting some church groups and pretty soon, he dropped the weddings and parties and harbor cruises, which were nothing but trouble anyway.”

Throughout the summer, the Rapture took church youth groups on four-day expeditions to Catalina Island, blending a hectic recreational schedule with spiritual music and prayer meetings.

On average, the trips cost $200 per student. Though operating at a slight loss, the Rapture is known throughout Southern California and beyond, friends said.

“His boat ministry has been huge, gigantic,” Timmons said. “There’s nothing like it in the country.”

Later, the firm expanded the Rapture’s mission from commercial and religious to religious and educational, hiring a marine biologist, 29-year-old Cassista, who began shaping an educational component for the Rapture.

Now, public and parochial schools use the Rapture for oceanographic studies, typically four days of whale watching, snorkeling, water quality sampling and marine biology studies. More than 200 schools have sent students on Rapture expeditions, Cassista said.

Adam Weatherby, Sherie’s son and Scott McClung’s nephew, spent two summers during college working on the first Rapture.

“He could make a lot more money doing the commercial charters, but Scott’s heart wasn’t in that,” Adam Weatherby said. “He wanted to do the spiritual trips. That was the aspect his heart was in.”