Blind Teens Try a New Tack

Delia Garcia, 14, of Santa Ana had a question.

“How can we sail if we can’t see?”

Russ Lenarz, 37, crew member on the 42-foot yacht Sunda, explained: “You can tell where you’re going by the wind on your face. You just need a sight guide or two to tell you if there’s something up ahead.”

Lenarz, legally blind himself but a nimble sailor, told the young girl: “Actually a guy I sailed against once turned his boat backwards, so he could feel the wind better. He was totally blind, but he could sail, he could steer, all he had to do was face the wind.”

Satisfied on that score, Delia quietly voiced her next concern.

“I hope I don’t get sick.”

There were a few jitters on both sides Sunday as volunteer sailors at Balboa Yacht Club in Newport Beach took a dozen visually impaired teenagers from the Braille Institute’s Orange County branch and some of their closest friends out for an afternoon sail.

John Papadopoulos, 35, of Newport Beach is reigning national champion in his class of small racing boats, but Sunday was a different kind of outing.

“Up about six or eight inches, then you’re going to step down, wait, then another big step, down,” he said as Jose Negrete, 13, of Anaheim stepped carefully aboard a 14-foot racer known as a Lido 14.

“There’s a big metal thing above your head, it swings,” Papadopoulos said calmly. “That’s called a boom.”

Jose reached up tentatively, then clung to the horizontal metal bar for a moment.

After preparing everything he could think of for the young sailors, Papadopoulos still had fretted before they arrived about “the huge potential risk.”

But veteran club member and sailor Herb Tobin, 87, who has run the outing off and on for years, had no qualms.

“It’s something they don’t have otherwise,” he said.

Olivia Slick, youth counselor at the Braille Institute, said the whole point of Sunday’s outing, and other trips to go surfing, rock climbing and jet skiing was to instill confidence.

“It’s not to overcome blindness,” she said. “It’s to show them they can actually do whatever they want to.”

Indeed, although all of them acted like average teens, teasing each other and mooning over their favorite rock stars or secret crushes, these kids also have their share of quiet horror stories.

“Back in junior high school, elementary school, it’s just the way kids are. I was the only one who couldn’t see, so most of the kids were just mean,” said Michael Beaman, 14, offhandedly. “I feel like I’m a normal person. I’m in a new school now, it’s good. I’ve got a bunch of friends. They start yelling out real loud for me to sit with them at lunch.”

Delia said she had been taunted, shoved and deliberately hit on the head with balls more than she cared to remember.

“I’m not some kind of alien creature,” she said firmly as she took the helm of Sunda. “I can do it, I’m not some kind of huge paralyzed person. . . .

“Actually, I can sense stuff. I can sense where the air is, where the water is. Just by feel. I have really strong hearing. Sometimes I hear something my parents can’t. Like a cricket. I hate crickets. They make way too much noise.”

Delia startled Sunda skipper Graham Gibbons and his friend Carolyn Moore, both of Irvine, when she asked, “Has anybody seen ‘Titanic’?” as they sailed smoothly out of Newport Channel.

“Yes, why?” somebody asked.

“Because I’ve got a whistle on my life jacket, just like Rose [the lead female character],” she said happily. “Remember when they were about to sink, and she blew the whistle?”

For the next 20 minutes, Delia tooted at the roar of speedboats, the bark of seals, the slap of waves against the boat bottom.

“Oh cool!” she said. “I guess I might not get sick after all.”

On a boat called Karisma, skipper Peter Bretschger, 45, of Santa Catalina Island and his family were stunned when Lupita Martins, 12, of Hawaiian Gardens calmly took the wheel and sailed perfectly toward harbor.

“I was amazed at the way she could steer to right where the wind was,” said his son Chris, 14. “They were all really good.”

An hour in the sunshine with two young sailors erased all of Papadopoulos’ doubts as well.

“Beautiful!” he enthused. “In fact, it was just perfect.”

The kids agreed.

“I’m not going back,” Tim Hurwitz, 13, of Newport Beach playfully pouted in the parking lot. “I want to go out for another sail.”