Proposal to Water Down Boat Parade Riles Some

Newport Beach usually drops its pretenses and puts on its party clothes this time of year, joining together for the Christmas boat parade, the town’s biggest bash of the holiday season.

But this year, the event is arriving with all the harrumph of a bah humbug, colored by a battle about whether to shorten the route and reduce the number of days it runs.

The changes would not take effect until next year, but homeowners who are slated to lose their waterfront seats are pouting loudly about the change, and they’re wasting no time mounting a challenge. Their crusade has already led to the resignation of Boat Committee Chairman Brent Hemphill, who got fed up after one critic of the new route threatened to ruin his business.

Some boaters say the controversy is taking the joy out of the 93-year tradition.

Kelly Nuttall, who will be at the helm of the lead boat for a fifth year running, was so disgusted by the threats against Hemphill, he nearly pulled out as well.

“In the spirit of the holidays, and in light of what happened in New York City, this is the time we should all be pulling together, not pulling apart,” said Nuttall, president of McKinna Yachts Southern California.

Launched in 1908, Newport Beach’s boat parade has become one of the nation’s biggest nautical events of the holiday season. For seven straight days, about 150 boats--from rowboats to giant luxury yachts--are decked out like homecoming floats and dance across the harbor, entertaining crowds from ship to shore as they compete for prizes.

In recent years, however, organizers noticed that fewer people were riding on the boats during the last few days of the parade. A survey taken of participants and residents found that some felt the parade ran too many days and the route was too long.

So organizers decided to limit the parade to five days and reconfigure the route to slash 15 to 30 minutes from the roughly three-hour tour through the harbor’s nooks and crannies. The survey found that a majority of boat owners were having trouble filling their vessels with riders for seven nights and their passengers did not like being out on the water in closed quarters for so long.

“After they eat everything and drink everything and tell every story they know, they want to go home, but they can’t get off the boat,” Hemphill said. “We start about 6 and we don’t get back until after 9. You can’t keep people on a boat that long.”

Densely Populated Area to Be Bypassed

But many residents who would lose their front-row seats to the parade are upset. The loudest protests are coming from Lido Isle and Lido Park, two strips of land along a channel chock-full of condominiums and luxury homes.

“They’re going to take the boat parade away from us, so we’re very upset about it,” said Jean Robinson, who lives on Via Lido Sound and has watched the parade for 20 years. “We all have parties every night . . . and we all look forward to the parade. It would be a shame not to have it anymore.”

Robinson and her neighbors say their channel is more densely populated than any other part of the harbor. They believe cutting their neighborhood from the parade route seems to go against the reason for the changes: to increase participation.

“It passes by more homeowners here than anywhere else on the route,” said Robinson’s husband, Ted. “They’re cutting out a whole lot of people. The result is just the exact opposite of the objective. It makes no sense.”

Protesters have been holding meetings and are circulating petitions. They’ve written letters to the Newport Harbor Area Chamber of Commerce and the Boat Committee, which organizes the parade.

Hemphill said the general complaints were one thing. But he decided the volunteer post was not worth the trouble after one homeowner--whom he would not identify--called him and threatened to start a boycott of his Costa Mesa carpet business.

“People are getting ugly about the whole thing,” Hemphill said. “I’m shocked. It’s just not worth the effort. We tried to do what’s best for the entire community.”

With eight days to go before the parade, boaters are rallying around Hemphill, disappointed the holiday spirit has been dampened by the turmoil. Some are still hopeful a compromise can eventually be worked out.

In Newport Harbor on Friday, Bob and Deanna Van Hoy of Orange were putting the final touches on their 57-foot McKinna motorboat, Pacific High, which already is decorated with Rudolph and other reindeer flying off the front of its bow.

“There’s a balance that has to be achieved,” Bob Van Hoy said. “Someone is always going to be disappointed. But it’s kind of sad how it’s turned out.”