Oasis Sailing Club

By LEN BOSE

While traveling around the harbor this week, I came upon a place that gave me relief from my troubling situations. No, I am not referring to the Bahia Corinthian Yacht Club bar, but rather two particular Catalina 34s sailing out of the harbor most every day of the week. I then came to learn about the Oasis Sailing Club (OSC) at www.oasissailingclub.org.

The OSC has been around for some 43 years and is a part of “Friends of OASIS,” which supports and shares in the operation of the OASIS Senior Center in conjunction with the city of Newport Beach. If you do not know about Newport Beach’s Senior Center, Google “Friends of OASIS.”

Now here is the best part: The OSC has two sailboats at the city’s Basin Marina. Members can sign up for day and evening sails and the occasional overnight sail aboard one of the two Catalina 34s.

So you might ask me what is the “ketch?” No, there are no ketches (a commonly used sailing term, for those who didn’t, um, catch the play on words). To join the OASIS Sailing Club, it’s just $42 for the monthly dues, and sailing is free. The cost of joining Friends of OASIS is $15 per year for a single membership; $25 for a couple and $300 for a lifetime membership per person. Compare that to my Harbor 20 cost of $600 a month, just for slip rent. Ask your accountant if it’s tax-deductible. 

While talking to my good friend Chris Hill, a skipper member of the OSC, I asked if members need to find a skipper and then form a party to go sailing. He replied, “They don’t need to form a party...we do it for them!”

The boats need a certified (by OSC) skipper and a mate (or two skippers) to sail. The sailing schedule for the following month is posted online and in person at the OSC monthly meeting. Skippers and mates sign up first, because without them the boat won’t sail. Then the calendar is made available to all OSC members who, on a first-come, first-served basis, sign up for dates they want to sail.

The skipper has the right to limit the number of crew members to six, while some take up to eight. So, when people sign up, they can see who the skipper will be and who else has signed up to sail. Some choose their sailing by date, others by friends or skippers with whom they prefer to sail. There are groups who go sailing together on a regular basis, bringing food and libations to share and enjoy.

I then asked Hill about some of the other social events the club schedules each year. He mentioned the summer picnic, Oktoberfest, Christmas party, St. Patrick’s Day Party and Opening Day.

I wondered if the OSC offered any seamanship lessons. “We’re not a sailing school and often refer members who have no sailing experience to OCC for initial training,” Hill said. “For those who have some sailing experience, we have a mate candidates training program, where they can enhance their sailing and seamanship skills to eventually become an OSC mate, and in some cases, a skipper. The club has members who came from being new members who knew nothing about sailing, to becoming mates and skippers.

“We also offer seamanship training sessions on anchoring, boat systems, docking/undocking, man overboard and maneuvers, such as heaving and figure 8s. Of course, most of the skippers are very happy to share their knowledge, so informal education happens all the time.”

Another challenge I noticed while reading the OSC website, was the “Eva Challenge Series” where an OSC member takes one of the club boats out and around the oil platform “Eva,” then back to the harbor entrance. The record stands at three hours and 34 minutes, but I would have to think with the 2007 Catalina 34 added to the fleet this record will fall soon.

I asked if the OSC would fill up and limit its membership. At this point, that has not been a concern. I also should point out that any member of Friends of OASIS and the OSC can sign up for a sail. You do not have to know how to sail, you just need to want to be on the water.

This deal ranks up there with the Newport Aquatic Center and the Balboa Angling Club as being one of our harbor’s best kept secrets. I can’t think of a better way than spending an afternoon sailing around in the ocean with your friends, and it would be safe to assume the club will be more than willing to have volunteers come down and help with the maintenance on the boats.

Another thing for our local yacht clubs to consider is giving reciprocal privileges to the OSC members, and for some of our local marine industry members to show this group some love. 

Sea ya!

~~~~~~~~

Len Bose is a yachting enthusiast, yacht broker and harbor columnist for Stu News Newport.

Ensenada Race Seminars. " How to increase your boat speed."

Is it your turn for the podium?

It's FREE!
"I have participated in the race more than once. Some people might wonder what keeps me returning to this race, I have to say it’s all about the good memories from no wind to gale force winds. The thrill of victory to the agony of defeat. Quotes from past crew members “ Why do we do this to ourselves” to “We are going to be there before the bars close.” Sleeping in Volkswagen vans to the suites at the Coral Hotel. Falling off real and statue donkeys or waking up with a new hat on. It’s all been good times and I want more while I can get them. That’s why I sail this race and stay for the party.”  Len Bose

Now you are planning to participate in this years Ensenada Race and you really want to beat that team down the dock that rubs your bottom the wrong way? You are willing to do whatever it takes to keep your crew safe and greet those competitors on their arrival to the dock at the Coral with a friendly “ How was your race?”

Bruce Cooper from Ullman Sails Newport Beach and Len Bose from the Santa Cruz 50 Horizon will review most of their secrets to achieve your top performance. If you can beat Cooper or Bose then you need not to attend, as you will learn “ keep your friends close and your top competitors closer.”

Topics you might find interesting:

Review the logistics of the race and delivery home.
Focus on your VMG.
Watch systems
Develop a game plan
Safety Requirements

This is the Second year Cooper and Bose have done this seminar together and have improved their performance and confident that you will do the same.

*January 31  Seal Beach Yacht Club 6:30 PM

*February 6th Dana Point Yacht Club 7:00 PM

*February 13th Bahia Corinthian Yacht Club 7:00 PM

*February 20th Long Beach Yacht Club 7:00 

*February 27th Silver Gate Yacht Club 7:00 

*March 26th Del Rey Yacht Club 7:00 PM

On the Harbor: Gearing up for the Newport Beach Sailing Hall of Fame

The first of the Baby Boomers generation of “Hall of Fame Sailors.” Standing (L-R): Saint Cicero, Skipper Walt Elliott, Dick McKibben and Don Elder. Front row (L-R) Chuck Pickering, Fred Schenck and Tom Skahill. Four of these sailors will be included in the Newport Beach Sailing Hall of Fame story

By Len Bose

Now that the New Year’s festivities are behind us and we can focus past our bow sprints again with resolutions made to keep our bottoms clean and mast tuned we look forward to the 2020 yachting season. That’s exactly what I have been doing over the holidays by pulling the Santa Cruz 50 Horizon out of the water to inspect her rudder bearings, mast and bottom in preparation for the upcoming sailing season which will include this year Puerto Vallarta and California Ocean Race Week.

On the harbor, the city’s new patrol boats have arrived and have been in service for a month now. Title 17 of the Newport Beach Municipal Codes will be going in front of the City Council within the next couple of months and scoops of funding will be gathered to dredge the low bay over the next two years. Before I forget, remember that our first of two winters King Tides will be arriving on January 10,11 and 12th. The second will arrive on February 8th and 9th and should we have a winter storm roll through at the same time the conversation will quickly change to 

sea-level rise.

So with all this going on around the harbor, I decided to take a step back in time and piece together The Newport Beach Sailing Hall of Fame with the intentions in the upcoming years do the same for Angling, Rowing, and Stakeholders of the harbor. This is not a new idea and has been tried before by other publications yet I wanted to give it a try and add a little more zest into it. Zest means research, research equals time. While the task is overwhelming, my passion for the harbor remains high. The response has been extremely positive when contacting people like Dave Carol, Brad Avery, Don Ayres Jr, Larry Somers, Tom Schock, Henry Sprague, George Twist, and Jane Farwell.

The theme of The Newport Beach Sailing Hall of Fame is to go back as far as I can in the past and up until the present identifying our harbor’s best sailors. I’ve started by checking out the Newport Harbor Yacht Clubs history book and skimming through the pages, reviewing the different yacht clubs trophy case’s looking for the names that have continuously been engraved upon them. With this information, I went to the names listed above for their observations and memories and have slowly gathered up the information. My next step is to find the best way to categorize and present our history on the harbor.

My first thought is to identify the generations within the United States. For example, the first name that comes to mind from the Silent Generation is Harlan (Hook) Beardslee. In 1934 and 1936 won, with Barney Lehman as crew, two Star World Championships. It was written that in a Star Mid-winter regatta that Beardslee withdrew from a race because he had fouled another competitor, who did not file the protest Beardslee withdrew. It was written in the Rhodes 33 class, that always showed up with a sizable fleet, yet the race was usually for second place when Hook was sailing his # 8 Seabee” Beardslee Won 9 out of 10 Rhodes 33 Championships between 1939 & 49. Tom Schock said, “He was a man of very few words, he was bigger than life”. 

From the Baby Boomer generation the first name that appears is Fred Schenck: Who is said to be one of the best dingy sailors to ever come out of the harbor. When Humphrey Bogart was racing Lehmen 10’s, Bogart asked Schenck if Lauren Bacall could sail with him to learn more. Schenck was 19 years old and had seen photos of Bacall, yet in person, she was even more beautiful. “She was something else”.  Schenck said to his friends at the yacht club dock after Bogart and Bacall retired to the pirate’s den. Schenck was the sailing master of Cirius II for Howard Ahmanson and sailed to Hawaii. It was said he could sail anything, from Olympic class Dragons off the coast of Spain to part of the crew of Walt Elliot’s Cal 32 “Escapade’ Lipton Cup wins. He won the Snipe Worlds once as skipper and 4 times as crew, won Lehman 12 Champs 1963 & 65, NHYC Burgee of Merit.

Each generation had their champion sailors and I am continuing my research to bring them to you and will starve to complete my task by the end of this month. Yet at the same time, this will end up a life’s long project as I uncover more information and photographs. Your help will be appreciated with any old stories you would like to tell me or photos you would like to share with me. Please contact me at boseyachts@mac.com or call me at (714) 931-6710.

Sea ya