Exploring the Harbor on a Catamaran

Psychedelic express would have been an appropriately funky name for this vessel skimming by the Long Beach coast. It’s purple, red and yellow. It’s cheap. And it is Southern California’s only water taxi run by a transit district.

On its first run of the day, the catamaran called AquaLink departs from the Queen Mary at 11 a.m. It stops at the Aquarium of the Pacific and pushes off at 11:20 a.m. for the Alamitos Bay Landing on the city’s east side. At noon, the boat heads back to the Queen Mary.

Friday through Sunday, AquaLink makes this 14-mile round trip in 90 minutes. It may not be the quickest way across town. But for a buck each way, none of the 20 passengers on a recent Friday is complaining.

“A white zin and a chardonnay please,” Lyle Wright says at the galley, ordering glasses of wine for himself and his wife, Fay, who are Seal Beach retirees. He winks. “Get us through hard times and all.”

It’s noon, and the passengers are about to get a wide-angle picture of California’s fifth-biggest city, a snapshot from a side even many residents don’t see. The waterfront view will range from the charter fishing boats near the aquarium to the downtown financial district and the heavy-lifting port that is the city’s backbone.

This voyage comes compliments of the Long Beach Transit District, which launched the AquaLink service on July 5. Its aim is to link by land and sea the city’s major tourist attractions. At each AquaLink port, a transit bus connection is available for riders to venture elsewhere in Long Beach.

By Labor Day, the 75-passenger AquaLink was averaging 225 daily boardings and was traveling half-full most of the time, transit officials say.

That turnout was almost double the ridership expected, said Guy Heston, assistant general manager of the transit district, adding, “Frankly, we weren’t sure what was going to happen.” With summer’s end, the average daily number of passengers has dropped to 148 and the taxi’s fall-winter operation has been reduced to a Friday-Sunday schedule.

AquaLink is part of a city strategy to draw more visitors to its waterfront. It has exceeded expectations, even though a key element of the waterfront’s commercial district, the vast Queensway Bay shopping-dining-movie complex, remains unbuilt.

Heading east, on the inland or left side of the boat, AquaLink putt-putts past the small fake lighthouse, then the bigger fake lighthouse that mark Shoreline Village’s shops and the Yard House, which boasts of being the second-busiest restaurant in L.A. County; past green- and blue-glass skyscrapers, the grassy void where the Queensway Bay project may one day be seen; past the pearl-white Art Deco Breakers Hotel, where Liz Taylor and Mike Hilton wed.

Behind the catamaran, gulls circle over the gentle wake. On the right, a sightseeing helicopter zooms overhead toward the Queen Mary. Ahead is the giant white dome that is the old Spruce Goose hangar--until recently home to sound stages and movie productions, and the future staging area for Carnival Cruise ship passengers.

Fifteen minutes underway, the catamaran motors outside the breakwater and its engine revs up. Because it is faster and a bit bouncier, this is a favorite part of the ride for children.

A 2-year-old boy in tie-dyed shirt and jeans yanks off his hat and leans into the stiff breeze whooshing by the vessel. A woman’s hat flies off and vanishes in the wind.

Pleasure boats under sail drift by and then suddenly disappear into the heavy marine layer.

Jessica Hamil of Long Beach, seated in a plush seat, spends 15 minutes ogling the scenery, which takes on a fresh look from offshore.

Recovering from arm surgery, Hamil, 42, has the day off from her job as a bookkeeper for Southern California Edison. She decided to take a friend on a birthday boat ride.

“You don’t always do stuff in your own city,” she says, noticing the towering whale mural circling the Long Beach Convention Center. “But this is just great.”

At the tip of the breakwater, which runs parallel to the coast and was built to shelter Navy ships in port, Hamil and a few other passengers reminisce about their childhoods. Their families, they say, boated in the area before construction of the rocky breakwater, when Long Beach had a shore lapping with “lovely waves,” said a woman in her 80s.

Wailani Gjertsen, 38, a Long Beach homemaker with three children, sips coffee and admires the downtown skyline. “I’ve seen all the changes in the past 20 years in Long Beach,” she says. “And I think it’s great.

A fisherman casts his line off the breakwater as AquaLink steers into a shimmery mist where nothing is visible ahead for a while. A foghorn can be heard.

Flanking the catamaran now is a big pipeline and a dredging operation just outside the red buoys marking the entrance to the harbor.

AquaLink turns left, into the channel. Seal Beach fronts the right side of the channel. On the left is the end of the Belmont Shore peninsula, anchored by the venerable Long Beach Yacht Club.

Rock jetties line each side of the harbor entrance. Children with their dads and grandpas in hats plaster Velveeta on fishhooks and plunk in their lines.

In one of those public transportation moments in which conversation sprouts among strangers, Hamil sings along with the piped-in music, a Sheena Easton tune. “ ‘My baby takes the morning train,’ . . . This song came out when I was in high school.”

The AquaLink nears the city’s eastern flank, the Alamitos Bay Landing, a popular boarding spot for residents of nearby Leisure World in Seal Beach.

“I’ve lived in Seal Beach for 23 years, and my family had a boat here in the 1940s,” says Bawn Hanner, looking into the wind, sweeping silver curls off her face. “And still I didn’t know all this was out here.”