College Program Schools New Sailors and Old Salts

Some come to live out the fantasy of sailing off to paradise. Others simply want to learn to pilot a 14-foot dinghy in Newport Bay.

About 6,000 people each year sign up for classes at Orange Coast College’s School of Sailing and Seamanship. With classes that range from beginning sailing to crewing on a 65-foot yacht dodging icebergs on the way to Antarctica, the number of students and the breadth of its classes not only set Orange Coast apart from all other community colleges, but also make 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 U.S. Sailing Center in Long Beach.

The reach of the college’s sailing program was illustrated recently when the mast of its 66-foot ketch Bonaire dislodged at the keel as the sailboat headed from Hawaii back home to Newport Beach. Five sailing students and a professional crew of three were forced to abandon the disabled boat in the Pacific and hitch rides home on passing commercial ships.

The Bonaire also provides an example of the symbiotic relationship between the community college’s seamanship program and the wealthy, boat-loving city of Newport Beach where it is located.

Like the school’s other boats, the $500,000 Bonaire had been donated. About 50 boats are given to the school each year. Program director Brad Avery said he turns down six times that many.

In exchange for the largess that keeps the program going, the school provides instructional programs ranging from sailing 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 Beach yachtsmen, for example, had leased the Bonaire for $40,000 to compete in the Transpacific Yacht Race from Los Angeles to Hawaii.

The school keeps some donated boats for instruction and leasing, and sells others to raise money, taking in about $200,000 a year on sales and leases.

That’s small potatoes compared with the $1.7 million 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 late Richard Steele, founder of the Newport Harbor Nautical Museum, bequeathed the custom yacht to Orange Coast College.

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 offshore 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, for example, run $30 each.

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.

The 60-year-old retired fire insurance agent has earned a captain’s license from the Coast Guard and pilots 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 that he and his wife plan to sail from Gibraltar to Barbados in November and then 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 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 in 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 the sport to youngsters who otherwise might not get on the water. Among those taking part are the Orange County Probation Department and the Boys and Girls Clubs of Huntington Beach and Fullerton.

The college’s sailing program began as a collection of physical education classes in the 1970s, open to any student. 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 1978.

“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 offshore sailing was increasing rapidly.”

The passage of Proposition 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, he said, was to force the program to support itself, open its 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 five weeks of weekend classes.

The five sailing students who went out on the ill-fated Bonaire, headed home from Hawaii, had taken a mix of beginning and intermediate classes. Robert Pelletier, for example, 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. “There’s nothing like a new experience.”