Super-Yachts Get Wind of Newport Beach Regatta

In the sun-kissed world of wealthy Newport Beach, forget about eyeing your neighbor’s new Jag. Check out the multimillion-dollar sailboats they’ll be racing today through the weekend.

These are people who take yachting to the extreme -- hiring professional crews, spending $1 million a year to race, competing in the Caribbean one month, the Pacific the next. Proceeds benefit the Hoag Heart and Vascular Institute of Hoag Memorial Hospital Presbyterian in Newport Beach.

Some of the world’s biggest and fastest boats will be racing off Newport Beach in the inaugural First Team Real Estate Invitational Regatta, an event organizers hope will bolster the city’s already formidable reputation in the sailing world.

“This is certainly the most impressive gathering of big, fast boats in a long time on the West Coast of the United States,” said Don Nowlan of U.S. Sailing, the sport’s national governing body.

Newport Beach has a long sailing tradition. There’s the Newport-to-Ensenada Yacht Race, which Humphrey Bogart, who owned a vacation home in town, sailed in. Orange Coast College in Costa Mesa boasts the nationally recognized School of Sailing and Seamanship. And UC Irvine’s sailing team, whose home waters are in Newport, is ranked sixth nationally, behind those of such blue-blood schools as Yale, Harvard and Brown.

Rather than sailing off into the distance, participants in the First Team regatta will compete in short, around-the-buoy courses. Races start each day at 1 p.m. and can be seen from the Newport Pier.

The 20 boats in the competition are so big -- the shortest is 48 feet, the longest 90 -- that organizers spent more than $50,000 to build 600 linear feet of temporary dock so that the larger boats could be parked in the bay.

“Anything over 50 feet that is a modern competitive sailboat cannot get into the bay these days,” said regatta co-chairman Jay Swigart, referring to the bay’s shallow depth. “You’ve got people paying $10 [million] to $15 million for a home, and they can’t keep a sailboat they can easily afford in front of it” because of the boats’ deep keels.

In the early planning stages of the regatta, a committee considered dredging the bay. But members opted for the temporary dock, but even that required extensive planning.

“We’ve had to go through the county, the city, the Coast Guard, the Harbor Patrol, the Army Corp of Engineers, the Coastal Commission,” Swigart said. “We had to hire a diver with GPS strapped to his back to find out where the eel grass is growing.”

If any eel grass is destroyed, the committee must replant it.

For Newport Beach physician Neil Barth, who once sailed in the Whitbread Round the World Race, the regatta is an opportunity to raise money for Hoag hospital, where he is chief of staff. At the same time, he gets to sail with some of the world’s fastest boats, including Roy Disney’s Pyewacket, which won its class April 23 in the Newport-to-Ensenada Yacht Race.

“This is an amazing event to have here. It’s just a shot in the arm for the whole yachting community in Newport,” Barth said, saying it could help revive big-boat racing in Newport.

One boat in the regatta, the Transpac 52, is so rare that there are only 10 in the world -- owned by the likes of the kings of Spain and Norway -- although three are slated to race this weekend.

Said Tom Pollack, one of the regatta’s organizers and executive director of the Transpac 52 Class Assn.: “Think of a really wealthy guy. He’s got 16 cars parked in his garage. He’s got a Bentley, a Rolls-Royce and over in the corner, he’s got the car he really likes the most. A little Ferrari. That’s what this boat’s like. It’s the Ferrari. It’s built out of the latest, greatest technology and they’re very affordable.”

By affordable, Pollack means that the Transpac 52 costs $1.2 million to $1.5 million. And unlike a larger boat like the Pyewacket, which requires a crew of two dozen, only 14 sailors man the Transpac 52.

Fred Detwiler, a businessman who splits time between Grosse Pointe, Mich., and southern Florida, shipped his Transpac 52 “Trader” west for the First Team regatta and for the Centennial Transpacific Yacht Race from Long Beach to Honolulu this summer -- at a cost of about $20,000, not including crew.

“That’s why I’m still working!” Detwiler said of his pricey hobby. “You start out in the small boats, and it’s competitive. Then your horizons get bigger and you get more confident.... But I’m an amateur. I do this because I like it.”