School Where the Grade Is ‘Sea’
Some come to live out the fantasy of sailing off to paradise. Others simply want to learn enough to pilot a 14-foot dinghy in Newport Bay.
About 6,000 people each year take classes from Orange Coast College’s School of Sailing and Seamanship. With courses that range from beginning sailing to the intricacies of diesel engines to crewing on a 65-foot yacht dodging icebergs on the way to Antarctica, the number of students and breadth of the classes not only sets OCC apart from all other community colleges, but also makes it one of the largest public sailing programs in the United States.
“It has a reputation of being probably the best in California, if not the best in the country,” said Mike Segerblom, executive director of the United States Sailing Center in Long Beach.
OCC’s program went high-profile late last month when the mast of its 66-foot ketch Bonaire dislodged at the keel as the vessel headed from Hawaii back home to Newport Beach. Five sailing students and a professional crew of three were forced to abandon the Bonaire in the Pacific and hitch rides home on commercial ships.
The Bonaire also exemplifies the symbiotic relationship between the school’s program and the wealthy, boat-loving city of Newport Beach, where it is based.
Like all boats belonging to the School of Sailing and Seamanship, the $500,000 Bonaire was donated to the college. About 50 boats are given to the school each year. Program director Brad Avery said he turns down six times that many.
With the largess that keeps the program going, the school provides instruction ranging from sailing trips to Tahiti to the correct way to varnish wood. It also leases boats to qualified sailors--and provides a tax write-off for donors.
A group of Newport yachtsmen, for example, leased the Bonaire for the Transpacific Yacht Race from Los Angeles to Hawaii for $40,000 and some maintenance costs to get the boat in shape for the voyage.
The school keeps some boats for instruction and leasing and sells others to raise money, taking in about $200,000 a year on sales and leases.
That’s nothing compared with the $1.7 million that the school is asking for Wide Waters, a 70-foot motor yacht with teak cabinets and paneling, leather seats and two 735-horsepower engines.
The school has taken the boat to Catalina and Ensenada the last four years, but it’s a bit posh for teaching, Avery said.
Richard Steele, founder of the Newport Harbor Nautical Museum, bequeathed OCC the custom yacht in his will. Steele’s estate also paid the salary of the boat’s captain for two years as OCC’s power boat instructor.
Another boat, the 65-foot Alaska Eagle, donated by Alaska businessman Neil Bergt in 1982, was named by Sailing magazine in 1993 as one of the “100 Greatest Sailing Yachts in North America.”
The yacht has crossed the Pacific 25 times and the Atlantic three times under Orange Coast College sponsorship, with its 12-member crews learning cruising skills. The ship landed in Tahiti a couple of days ago.
An upcoming offering is a 23-day trip from Ushuaia, Argentina, the southernmost town in the world, to Antarctica aboard the Alaska Eagle at a cost of $6,000.
Most classes are far cheaper. Courses in varnishing and fiberglass repair cost $30; decorative knot work can be learned for $49.
Byron Henderson of Newport Beach has taken advantage of many of the sailing program’s offerings over the last 20 years. He has sailed to Hawaii, Alaska and Vancouver, Canada, aboard the Alaska Eagle, and has taken some 15 seamanship classes at the college.
After a beginning class sailing Lido 14s, he took courses in celestial navigation, diesel engine maintenance, electronics, knots and sailing in heavy weather, among others.
The 60-year-old retired fire insurance agent has earned a captain’s license from the Coast Guard and is piloting a glass-bottom boat at Catalina, which he calls his summer job.
He recently bought his fifth sailboat, selling a 44-footer and buying a 53-footer he and his wife will sail from Gibraltar to Barbados in November, then pilot back to the Mediterranean in June.
“The program got me into a whole lifestyle I wouldn’t have dreamed of,” Henderson said. “It’s a dream I didn’t plan on having 20 years ago.”
The Hendersons are far from unique. With a couple of years of classes at the sailing school, a beginner can learn enough to sail the high seas.
“People come to us with the dream of sailing around the world,” Avery said. “We’re well-positioned to help them do that. We get the average person.”
The school is on West Coast Highway, across Newport Bay from Lido Isle, where many homes have their own docks.
Outside Avery’s window, a group of kids was learning to sail Lido 14s. The lessons are funded with a $15,000 grant from the state Department of Boating and Waterways as part of a program to introduce seamanship to children who otherwise might not get onto the water.
Among the groups taking part are the Orange County Probation Department, the Boys & Girls clubs of Huntington Beach and Fullerton and Westminster Youth and Family.
Orange Coast College, its main campus in landlocked Costa Mesa, is one of the largest community colleges in the state, with about 24,000 full- and part-time students.
It ranks second in Southern California, behind Santa Monica College, in the number of students transferring to University of California and Cal State University campuses.
The sailing program began as a collection of physical education classes in the 1970s. Anyone could take a class as long as he or she enrolled at the community college.
A great boost to the program came when industrialist William Pascoe donated two 50-foot yachts in 1976 and ’78.
“That really launched us,” Avery said. “All of a sudden we had these two very nice boats. We were one of the few schools around with big, nice boats. During that time, interest in [open-sea] sailing was increasing rapidly, not only in Southern California but across the nation.”
The passage of Prop. 13 in 1978 presented a crisis to the sailing program, one that it turned to its advantage. By 1982, the measure meant taxpayer money could no longer subsidize the program. “We thought, ‘What are we going to do?’ ” said Avery, who started working at the school in 1979.
The solution was to force the program to support itself, open the classes to the public and raise prices. Today, only 10% of its sailors are those taking sailing as a physical education class. A student pays $11 for an eight-week beginning sailing class; nonstudents pay $99 for a five-week class on the weekends.
Those who went out on the Bonaire had taken a mix of beginning and intermediate classes. Robert Pelletier wanted more hours for his sailing resume. The other four are Orange Coast College students on scholarships, which paid for a trip that was supposed to expose them to ocean sailing.
“It was fun, exciting,” said one of the students, Jason Voyer, 18. “There’s nothing like a new experience.”
