On the Harbor: Things are heating up, from bay dredging and races to yacht club openings.

 

By LEN BOSE

We are coming into summer with some heat…I’m referring to the activity around the harbor. These last couple of weeks, we have completed the Ensenada Race, Yacht Clubs’ opening days, a new Harbormaster, the starting of dredging the Lower Bay, Balboa Angling Club’s Lily Call Tournament, summer sailing and people placing strange objects in strange places.

The Ensenada Race started on April 23 with a heavy marine layer and around 10 knots of breeze out of the southwest that picked up to 15 knots out of the west by the time we reached North Coronado island. I was aboard Carbon Footprint owned by Jim Devling out of the Balboa Yacht Club. As we approached the island, I noticed Steve Sellinger’s Santa Cruz 52 Triumph only a mile behind us and sailing close to the same speed. After the island, Sellinger’s team sailed exceptionally well and wound up taking home all the pickle dishes including 1st overall in PHRF. Team IT’s OK sailed very well, finishing 1st in its class followed closely by Team Bolt, 30 seconds behind on corrected time for 2nd in class. That close a race still has to burn a little. Overall, there was a consistent breeze down the course with a few of us unlucky ones running into the light breeze, in the bay, just before the finish line. That’s the Ensenada race – “What are ya going to do?” Post-race activities, as expected, were light in attendance. Word around the docks afterward was the organizing authority was trying really hard to bring things back to normal. I for one am already looking forward to next year’s race and staying for the party.

This weekend is the Bahia Corinthian Yacht Club’s and Balboa Yacht Club’s opening days. Last weekend was Newport Harbor Yacht Club’s opening day race on Saturday followed by Sunday’s opening day ceremonies. Looking at everyone’s photos and talking to a few friends, the ceremonies started to feel more like years gone by, and I am looking forward to BCYC’s opening day this Saturday. For those of you who are interested in Yachtsman Flag etiquette for dressing your vessel for the special event, go to my website at www.lenboseyachts.blogspot.com. The American Legion Yacht Club has already started their Monday night sundowners, NHYC is sailing twilights on Thursdays, and BCYC’s famous “Taco Tuesdays” start this Tuesday night.

Josh Cast 26.89 Halibut

On April 24 and 25, the Balboa Angling Club held its 58th Annual Lily Call Harbor Fishing Tournament. This year’s winners were: Fish type - Croaker: Josh East, 1.07 lbs. in 1st place; Fish type - Bass: 1st place was Kenny Knight at 2.44 lbs., 2nd place was Colin Sarfeh at 2.41 lbs.; and 3rd place was Ryan Later at 2.37 lbs. Kenny Knight also did well fishing for Corbina taking 1st place at 3.71 lbs.; in 2nd was Trenton Humphries at 2.91 lbs. and Tommy Tuman took 3rd at 2.89 lbs. Fish type - Halibut: Josh Kast crushed it at 26.89 lbs. taking 1st place; 2nd went to Colin Sarfeh at 11.8 lbs.; and Aaron Sariano took 3rd place with 5.48 lbs. I say this every year – Balboa Angling Club is the best value in town, so contact them about their Junior summer program.

I received word a couple of weeks ago that Paul Blank will be taking the helm as the city’s harbormaster. I’ve interviewed Blank many times over the years, and I can’t think of a better person for the job. Hit the link above to my website for an interview I did with him back in 2014. Very few people hold the same amount of passion and well-being for our harbor as Blank, who stays on task, is very easy to approach and quite frankly he “gets it.” This is a huge win for our harbor, and Blank has promised me an interview this month to get the full scoop from the bottom of the harbor.

Talking about scoops from the bottom of the harbor, the Army Corps of Engineers has contracted with Pacific Dredge and Construction to complete dredging of the main channel entrance and just around the corner up to the car ferry crossing. If I am not mistaken, the city will then contract with them to dredge the remainder of the Lower Bay. I’ve written about this before, and I hope that everyone understands that this a fantastic thing for our harbor.

People are placing strange things in strange places, and I thought I had seen it all. At the end of Lido Isle, a resident has opted to place a floating boat lift to support a vessel that appears to be over 30 feet tall and 70 feet in length. If I was to guess the boat’s name it would be called Eclipse, because that is what it’s going to do to the neighbor’s view of the harbor. The boat is kind of cool looking, but lifted out of the water by a floating dock lift is disgusting and just wrong. On another tack regarding placing strange things in strange places, I would like to know who ordered the piece of algae known as Caulerpa prolifera native to Florida and planted it in the main channel to slow down the dredging project? This comment has no facts backing it up, as it is a conspiracy theory that I truly hope doesn’t hold water. But, you tell me how does a piece of algae that would blow up our entire harbor’s ecosystem suddenly show up just days before dredging starts with a diver that knows what Caulerpa prolifera is, where it was located and who knew exactly who to report the findings to in order to stop the dredging? I am sure I’m wrong about this one, yet “the things that make you go hmmmm.”

Sea ya.

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

BCYC attends NHYC Westside Team Racing Regatta

 

Larry Parker Photos

I’m in the grocery store looking for the best value wine, you know the one with the biggest discount. The phone rings and it is Jack Thompson asking if I would like to join the BCYC team for a team racing event in Harbor 20s organized by the Newport Harbor Yacht Club. My first thought was one of those old TV commercials of the crash test dummies, I do not know how to team race and the kids at the NHYC are some of the world’s best. Jack went on to explain that he and Christophe Killian are forming a team and they would like me to join them. I replied that I was happy to practice with them but there are many more experienced team racing sailors at BCYC they should call. 

Thompson sets up a zoom meeting a couple of days later with David Levy, Christophe Killian, and Aubrey Mayer in attendance, about an hour into the meeting I finally “get it” the notice of race indicates that one of the skippers must be over the age of sixty. “Ohhhh I understand now, you need an old guy?” I said.  This makes me a little more interested yet I still am seeing those crash test dummies.

Thompson organizes a couple of practices when I start feeling that maybe I can at least stay out of harm’s way. The kids keep telling me to sail fast, get in the lead, and don’t look back. As the event approaches, I made the mistake of looking at the other team’s rosters. Each team of three boats has at least two college sailing All-Americans some teams even the “Old guy” was an All-American skipper.

Race day arrives and the competitors gather for the skipper’s meeting, while glancing around the room I am taken back with the skill level of everyone attending. There is an old rule in sailing, make sure you know who is better than you on the racecourse. Well, I just happen to know everyone in the room, and if I did not know the person I recognized them from the different sailing magazines.

Our team name was the Corinthian Cruisers our goal was to keep our noses clean and not end up like a puppy being potty trained. Our team consisted of boat # 1 Jack Thompson & David Levy, Boat #2 Christophe Killian & Aubrey Mayer, # 3 me and Patrick Kincaid. The kids kept telling me to “Have fun and sail fast” in fact they reminded me of this so often I thought I had must have had a little accident in the corner already. We finish the first day going 2-2 and no one is saying a thing. In fact, we beat the team that won the whole thing that day, I had my first memorable moment when I finished the race and Killian looked at me and said: “ Now that’s team racing!” With a thumbs-up, and a huge smile.

Day two started at 10:00 and finished at 18:00 with ten races that day with long waits between races under the hot sun. The highlight of the day was finishing in sixth place out of twelve boats and qualifying in the gold round. Again, we all stayed rather quiet and said nothing about the BYC team, other than a large smirk on our face, not qualifying in the gold round. The day before BYC crushed us, to quote one of their teammates “That was not much of a race”. After a late afternoon break, we headed back out on the harbor for two races in the gold round. By this time I am fried, done, roasted, if my belly button was a meter it would have pooped out. At the age of 60 nothing pops any longer. We faced two of the best teams and I just got my nose rubbed in it and went back to the dock telling myself how I never want to do this “Team Racing” stuff again wondering how much could I sell my boat for?

The last day started at 10:00 on Sunday with a postponement until the Santa Ana winds calmed down at about noon. We had three races to go and although I was sailing well we lost the first two races. We still had a chance to make the knock-out round of the top six boats. At the end of the third race, going to the finish line, we pulled ahead and when I crossed the finish line I had another memorable moment with Aubrey Mayer, who had already finished, jumping up and down with a huge smile on his face. We had beat the only team with one win in the gold round and won on the tie-breaker too advanced to the knock-out round. Going into the next round we faced the team that finished in second for the event and they throttled us rather hard, winning the first two races out of three. Coming into the dock you would have thought we won the event finishing fifth out of twelve boats. Kudos with well done’s were received from all the competitors. Finishing in the top half of this event was extraordinarily gratifying with hopes of starting interest from within BCYC.

As President Biden would say “Now here is the deal” BCYC has planted the seed and has the top junior program in our harbor. You have built it and they have come, now we have to keep them. An active “team racing & match racing” program will keep the kid’s attention. If we provide the comparable tools as NHYC has we will grow because NHYC team is so deep that most of their team does not get any playing time. We have to WANT it, and the opportunity is now! Let’s take that next step up the ladder we already have most of the tools needed? Keeping young adults active and staying at the club has always been a challenge, this is one way to achieve that goal of keeping long family legacies for our history books. Huge shout out to Commodore Bacon for coming out on the water and cheering us on Saturday.

Sea ya!

Len Bose

On the Harbor: Remembering Gordon “Gordo” Johnson

                                                                        By LEN BOSE

In the early 1960s, there was a group of kids that grew up in the Bayshores community who became some of our harbor’s most knowledgeable and skilled yachtsmen. We had the Hills, Durgan, Duffield and Johnson families. Coop and Liz Johnson had three sons – Gordon, Dougal and David. All four families are extraordinarily close even after 60 years, spending time on our harbor and around the world together.

At the start of April of this year, Gordon “Gordo” Johnson passed away after a six-month battle with Leukemia. I was taken aback on hearing the news, and like so many other people from around the harbor, felt the pain of losing a close friend even if I had barely known the man. One of his biggest traits was making you feel that you are a friend.

At the age of 10, Gordo started sailing sabots, sail number 4355, at the crew base. Next at Bahia Corinthian Yacht Club, where he joined Dennis Durgan and Marshall Duffield all sailing sabots together on our harbor. The routine was simple then during the warm summer days: rig your sabot’s sail in the morning, head to Shark Island (now Linda Isle) and walk over the PCH bridge to Will Wrights for ice cream. Finish the day by participating in the summer’s evening racing.

Durgan and Gordo then went on to Orange Coast College, where they competed on the sailing team together. Winning the Douglas Cup and participating against other four-year schools, soundly beating them to the point where the sailing coach from the University of Hawaii asked if they would like a scholarship to his school and sail on the team. Both he and Durgan lived on Oahu in Kailua for a year and a half in a Quonset hut on the beach. When Gordo returned to the mainland, he enrolled at USC and became an All-American by winning the sloop and match racing championships. Somewhere during this time, he also crewed for Andy Rose and won two Governor’s Cups. Then he stayed on as the sailing coach at USC for the next couple of years.

By then, Gordo was the hot commodity as a bowman for all the Grand Prix racing boats from around the world. “When we lived on the Peninsula together, I recall someone calling on behalf of the King of Spain, explaining that there was an airline ticket waiting for him at LAX to come sail with the king, and this type of thing happened all the time,” said Gary Hill.

I asked the above group what was one of their favorite sea stories. The same story kept coming up. The year was 1975. Charles Jordon, the owner of the 37’ Paragon, called Durgan and asked if he would put a group together for the upcoming Transpac. Of course, Durgan turned to the Bayshores boys and invited Gordo and Duffield to join the team. On the fourth night of the race, which was the 4th of July, the crew had set the brand new spinnaker up. Gordo, as always, attached his mascot, “Bud-Man,” to the stern pulpit of the boat. It’s unclear whose skyrocket it was, but Duffy and Gordo thought it would be a good idea to light it on that night. The story goes that the rocket took off straight up then went straight into the spinnaker, then blew a hole in the head of it. Before the off watch came back on deck, they had taken the chute down, repaired it, then reset it. When the sun came up the next morning, there was more than one discussion on what had happened to the new sail. The team sailed to a 2nd in class and 8th overall that year.

Another great story was when Durgan and Johnson were in Hawaii and borrowed a Ranger 33 and Islander 36 and cruised the boats to Maui. On their way back to Oahu, “Gordo wanted to check out the leper colony on Molokai. I did not care for the idea that much, so we stayed aboard while Johnson went exploring,” said Durgan. “Next thing you know, Johnson was ‘streaking,’ yes he was butt naked. We just pulled out of the anchorage before the authorities arrived. He had his antics about him.”

Gordo sailed on two Southern Ocean Racing Conference (SORC) overall winning boats. He was aboard two Congressional Cups, a Lipton Cup and two Transpac overall winning boats. The list goes on and on. “He was a great shipmate on board, first to pitch in, great sail trimmer and driver. I am going to miss him. He was such a great storyteller,” shared Durgan. “My wife thought he was going with us on our honeymoon, he came over every Christmas Eve and helped me to assemble the kids’ toys, which leads to many other stories. He was always the first one to volunteer for the work parties at Moonstone. I love the guy as a brother,” said Hill.

A couple of years ago, most of the Bayshores boys gathered for lunch when Gordo pointed out that one of them was mayor of the city while the other was the commodore of the yacht club. Knowing what they all knew about the other brought out a rather deep round of laughter around the table.

While talking to Gordo’s brothers Dougal and Dave, they brought up how much he enjoyed fine wine, gardening and fashion along with a good story.

There’s nothing in the world more powerful than a good story. To recall our life, the ups and downs, the times we pulled ourselves up from the dirt, the times we are recognized for our achievements, the remembrance of a brother, the keeper of all our stories and a good friend. We are all going to miss Gordo the storyteller!

Sea ya.

On the Harbor: The epic Newport to Cabo race

By LEN BOSE

The warmth I felt on my bald head indicates that spring has arrived along with the swarming beehive under my neighbor’s eve, which reminds me of the activity on the harbor when it appears things are returning back to normal.

The word “epic” best describes this year’s Newport to Cabo San Lucas hosted by the Newport Harbor Yacht Club, which took place March 19-25. The race started in 1971 and ran through 1991; there was a 10-year break and it restarted in 2001. Two things have always attracted me to this race. First, you are sailing downwind within the first six hours of the race and two, and the odds are more than 60 percent that the month of March will provide a windy race. This year, we had a windy race that propelled Horizon to the finish line in three days and three hours, which placed us 2nd in class and 4th overall, sailing under the Balboa Yacht Club burgee. Dave Clark aboard his Santa Cruz 70 Grand Illusion, Newport Harbor Yacht Club, won his class and took 2nd overall. Craig Reynolds, Balboa Yacht Club, sailing on Bolt a Nelson Marek 68, finished 2nd in his class and 8th overall. Compadres an Andrews 77 from the Balboa Yacht Club sailed to a 3rd in class.

This had to have been the most consistent breeze I’ve seen in this race which leads to a new course record of 1 day and 22 hours set by Roy Disney aboard his new Volvo 70 Pyewacket 70. That’s an average of more than 20 knots over an 800-mile course – that’s pretty fast for seven dwarfs. Just kidding, the crew consisted of 13 sailing giants with one of the crew Ken Read, who had just flown in from New Zealand after commentating the America’s Cup over the last four months on NBC. I wish I would have seen Read on the docks for his comments.

For us aboard Horizon, the race had moments when our skills were tested on late mornings, when the moon had set, we were still two hours before sunrise when it’s pitch black and you just came on watch. Your eyes are watering up from the breeze across the deck and you are trying to figure out what’s going on all around you. How windy is it, and how high are the wind gusts? Which sail do we have up and are all the lines clear that control the sails? A quick review with the off-going watch captain on the instructions from the navigator and are there any other boats around us? Then BAM, you’re in the game. One morning I went through the above procedure and took the spinnaker sheet then clipped into the jack lines (we wear a life jacket/harness that has a tether that attaches to a safety strap that runs down both sides of the boat that’s called a jack line). So, there I am trying to clear my tearing eyes and adjust them to the pitch-black surroundings, while looking at the sailing instruments gathering information on the wind and the course that we should be driving to keep the boat from crashing. It’s always intimidating at these moments when the wind is blowing over 25 knots with the thought crossing my mind if I can handle my turn at the helm.

Aboard Amante in 1987 Cabo Race

Just then, on this dark morning, I couldn’t see past the bow of the boat when a huge wave pounds into the side that drops at least 20 gallons of water over my head. No one else on watch gets wet, but I am spitting saltwater up as if I had just been dropped into a dunk tank. Okay, okay…game on, and I bitched and moaned for a good 10 minutes, as I felt the water start to work through my gear, and felt the squish of water in my wool socks. We enter another wave, and I get thrown into the cockpit landing on my knees still trying to trim the spinnaker hoping we were not going to crash. Just then the helmsman asked if I am ready to drive. I stand back up, untangle my tether, and move as fast as a 60-year-old can behind the wheel. Now I can’t move as fast as I once did in 1983 aboard Amante, the first time I sailed in a Cabo race, but after the first wave and cutting back to balance the boat out, I uttered a big sigh, then felt like I owned this. I am the king! I never had that confidence in 1983 with my skill level at the helm. To tell you the truth, that’s what keeps me coming back for more – the personal challenge one has with the sea with the understanding that one can be drenched and knocked down to their knees at one moment then feel at the top of their game the next.

Most every boat had their moments to challenge their skills with two boats receiving challenges from below the water. Doug Baker’s Kernan 75 Peligroso hit a whale at more than 20 knots and took all the fairing off the keel. The team had to drop out of the race and haul the boat to Ensenada in order to inspect the damages. Manouch Moshayedi aboard Rio 100 had a similar problem. If I heard the story right, they lost one of their two rudders when they ran into a shark, then had to drop out of the race.

I have to give a huge shout out to the principal race officer Dwight Belden and Race Chairman John Curci for again putting on an epic race in very difficult times. The awards presentation was fun again – when is free food and an open bar not fun? A WELL DONE must be given to the NHYC team!

Sea ya.

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