Going coastal

Introduce a friend from New Zealand to the waterfront in Southern California and you’ll probably get a puzzled look, and maybe another of those peculiar questions about our culture.

“Why are all these sailboats boats here?”

By “here,” your visitor means here at the dock.

Why, when the sky is fair, the winds light and steady, the sea gentle, are all these boats idle and unattended at their moorings? Why is the seascape from Malibu to Dana Point, or from Ventura to San Diego, so, well, empty?

The New Zealander’s point of view is that sailboats have glory and purpose. Your visitor may mention that Auckland earned its nickname, “City of Sails,” on account of the acres of white fabric pulled taut and dancing across the blue harbor on just about any weekend short of a winter blow.

“What’s up with you Californians?” the visitor may say.

This is not a simple question to answer.

The ritual is the same, big boat or small: The snout is pointed into the breeze, the sails are raised, sent aloft, unfurled, hoisted -- one, two, however many.

The easy zephyrs so typical of Southern California rub across the surface of the sailcloth, filling and pulling it tight.

Then, by the same aerodynamic principle that keeps the jetliner aloft, moving air creates a suction on the outside of the wing-shaped sail. The boat begins to advance. The gurgle of a wake opens behind and the rudder bites into the sea, providing steerage. If there is enough breeze, the boat leans, heels, as it glides forward.

There are few sensations quite so graceful and in harmony with nature.

With enough sailboat underfoot, with enough skill in the cockpit, with enough stores below, the 70% of world that is ocean is within reach.

Or maybe you have in mind just a lazy jaunt around the harbor in an 8-foot dinghy.

Either way, the cleanest air and most wide-open space hereabouts reward you with quiet and with liberation.

“[W]henever my hypos get such an upper hand of me, that it requires a strong moral principle to prevent me from deliberately stepping into the street, and methodically knocking people’s hats off,” wrote Melville, “then I account it high time to get to sea as soon as I can.”

“It’s easier to learn than people expect,” says Knowlton Shore, program director at Newport Sea Base, a maritime instruction center for youth. “To get proficient, it usually takes longer than people expect.”

On this particular Saturday, 10 boys ages 9 to 13 have gathered with their parents at the Sea Base flagpole in Newport Beach for the first of seven three-hour lessons, Sailing 101.

Their instructor is Berkeley Green, a staffer who has been on the job long enough to have taught at least one of the Sea Base grown-ups how to sail.

“I learned to sail when I was 8,” he tells the boys. “What you’re going to learn here today is a little about weather, about water safety, about communications. And hopefully, you’ll have a lot of fun too.”

Parents of the boys drift away. They have watched these kinds of lessons -- classroom time, nomenclature, firsthand observation. Yawn.

Or, maybe not.

“Raise your hands if you’ve ever been on a boat,” Green says.

Whoa. This is a salty bunch. One boy has been on a ferry. A couple have been on cruise ships. Some have paddled a kayak. Others have ridden in motor boats. Three have sailed with grown-ups.

Only two parents, a dad and a mom, will return early enough to witness the truth.

Actually, what these boys will learn this morning is how to sail a sailboat. On their own.

In a span of only two hours, they will pick out a life jacket, and launch and rig 10 Walker Bay sailing dinghies. A few words about wind direction, about tacking and jibing, and then, one by one, the boys will be pushed into the busy harbor.

For 45 minutes, they will wrestle with the breeze, and with the unforgiving fact that sailboats can make headway in many directions -- but not all directions. By trial, bump and error, they will get a taste of the quirks of the game, such as remembering to push the tiller to the starboard in order to turn to port. For those who weren’t listening about keeping their heads down when changing course, the lesson will be driven home by a tap on the noggin from the boom.

The transformation is so swift as to be startling.

Boys who started out wobbly now ride steady, low and balanced. Their loose control of the sail is now tight. Their zigzag wakes straighten.

Under the watchful eye of a chase boat, they are ordered back to the dock.

Now, having sailed, learning about sailing will make more sense from here on.

THE greatest wilderness in the world begins on the yonder side of Highway 1.

The largest playground on the planet extends from this shoreline across an arc of 180 degrees, encompassing an expanse of 64 million square miles -- an area 20 times as vast as the contiguous 48 states.

The biggest creatures ever to roam the planet cruise not so far from the smog blanket of our own urban terrain, a day sail from Ventura.

Marine biologist Sylvia Earle, one of the greatest explorers of our age, has noted wryly that humans know more about the surface of the moon than the floor of the sea just offshore.

If you steer toward the navigational buoys just outside the breakwaters of Southern California harbors, you can be pretty much assured of rousing families of sea lions. There is anecdotal evidence, repeatedly tested, that exuberant dolphins can be attracted and enticed to dance by playing Little Richard’s “Good Golly Miss Molly” on a stereo in the cabin of a fiberglass sailboat, where sound waves can be transmitted through the water.

When you are watching for the subtle signs of our old passing friend, the gray whale, the freeway traffic reports on the radio are deliciously out of context.

So why are there so many sailboats with so few of them under sail, even busy summer weekends?

There is an old complaint about Southern California’s coastal waters. You hear it from knowing salts who’ve sailed elsewhere. “There is no place to go.”

This, of course, ignores Catalina Island. Or the adventure of sailing from Los Alamitos at one end of Long Beach to Shoreline Marina at the other end for the sake of lunch. It does not account for the 70 or so grand sailboats that will gather at Rainbow Harbor in Long Beach this July for the centennial start of the storied Transpac race to Honolulu, or the many small-boat voyaging adventures that begin, conclude or pass through Southern California.

Mostly though, these doubters have forgotten that old American, Sunday-drive maxim: Getting away doesn’t mean going anywhere in particular.

You can ask the question of why so many boats are so seldom used for 25 years and never achieve an entirely satisfactory answer.

It seems plain enough that people with the means to own a boat -- and pay the monthly moorage fees -- are also likely to be endlessly busy, with work or other playtime diversions.

“Our weather is a blessing and a curse,” says Tom Lewick, founder and editor of Southern California’s daily e-newsletter of sailboat racing, scuttlebutt.com. “Because we’re not limited to a three-month sailing season, people seem to adopt a manana approach. They’ll go sailing tomorrow, next weekend. And face it, there are many other attractive ways to spend our time in Southern California.”

Still, that doesn’t entirely explain why so many people then maintain the bother and expense of a boat year after year. One imaginative explanation is that a boat, even if seldom used, provides a satisfying psychological escape hatch -- unused but ready, like a $100 bill in a hatband.

Once you have sailed, and sailed well, it is a hard thing to put aside forever.

Getting started, though, is strangely forbidding for many, unnecessarily so. Those who make their living on the docks of Southern California endlessly wring their hands: The short step from land to water is too often seen by the land-bound as a leap.

In truth, newcomers have several portals onto the coastal waters -- and from there the choices are as varied as all-out hormonal sailing competition or quiet family getaway cruising.

One approach is to go to school. Lists of instructional facilities up and down the California coast are maintained by the nation’s two big umbrella sailing organizations, the Marina del Rey-based American Sailing Assn. and Rhode Island-headquartered US Sailing. Coastal colleges often offer classroom instruction, in particular Orange Coast College’s School of Sailing & Seamanship.

Nearly all of these programs open doors so that graduates can find rental fleets of boats, both here and afar.

The local sailing magazine Santana, available free at chandleries and boat shows, lists classes conducted by the U.S. Coast Guard Auxiliary and others, and the periodical also offers glimpses into the Southern California sailing culture.

For youths beginning at age 8, the Newport Sea Base serves Boy Scouts and community residents with hands-on and classroom instruction, plus one-day, weekend and weeklong sailing adventures aboard the 1905 topsail ketch Argus.

Most established yacht clubs offer similar community instruction -- although a word of warning: summer classes fill up quickly.

For adults, an alternative approach can be called the “six-pack and a smile” tactic.

“The easiest and most sure-fire way to learn about sailing is to find other sailors -- go where the boats are,” says Janet Baxter, president of US Sailing.

The not-so-secret secret of the docks is that active skippers are often hungry for willing crew, even beginners. This is particularly true for weekday night buoy races that are held out of many yacht clubs, often on Wednesday or Thursday evenings, all along the coast.

“You may see a sign that says ‘members only,’ and that can be intimidating,” Baxter continues. “But if you hang around, you’ll discover that most of these people will welcome you. It’s always surprising to find that people need crew -- they don’t come with the boat, you know.”

Eager and presentable hands with soft-soled, non-scuff shoes are seldom turned down. Baxter says that her sailing club in Chicago even has a rule. “If there is a willing person on the dock who wants to go, you have to take them. A lot of friendships are forged this way.”

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Setting sail

Adults and children

* US Sailing, which calls itself the national governing body of sailing, maintains an encyclopedic listing of commercial and nonprofit sailing schools for adults and youths. Headquarters in Portsmouth, R.I. (800) US-SAIL1 Ext 1. (401) 683-0800. www.ussailing.org

* American Sailing Assn. is a vast network of sailing schools, headquartered in Marina del Rey. (310) 822-7171. www.american-sailing.com

* The Log, a popular California boating and fishing publication, maintains a directory of Southern California yacht clubs by harbor, as well as news from the waterfront. www.thelog.com

* Orange Coast College’s School of Sailing & Seamanship offers one of the nation’s most comprehensive curriculums. Newport Beach (949) 645-9412. www.occsailing.com

Children

* Newport Sea Base. Youth sailing instruction and programs. Newport Beach. (949) 642-5031. www.seabase.org

* Schools, youth groups and community centers often offer sailing programs and camps, including the Sea Scouts (www.seascout.org), the Los Angeles Maritime Institute (www.lamitopsail.org) and the City of Long Beach’s 76-year-old Leeway Sailing Center (www.longbeach.gov/park/facilities/parks).