New captain needed at museum wheel

David Muller has stepped down from his post as executive director at the Newport Harbor Nautical Museum, museum officials said Wednesday.

Muller did not immediately return a phone call Wednesday.

In a written statement, museum officials would say only that Muller had left the museum to “pursue new endeavors.”

“We had a visionary leader during the past few years,” James Reed, president of the museum’s board of trustees, said in the statement.

“David helped us take several important steps toward transforming the museum.

“He was very instrumental in a defining ‘visioning’ project that set a new and extraordinary course for the future: a commitment to mold this historic organization in to a top flight nautical museum.”

The Board of Trustees has appointed Rita Stenlund as the museum’s interim executive director. Stenlund had served as the museum’s director of development.

Muller had served as the executive director since June 2005.

When Muller took over, the museum was housed in a 13,000-square-foot converted restaurant space aboard the Pride of Newport riverboat in Newport Harbor.

In 2005, the nautical museum bought 34,000 square feet of waterfront property and adjacent docks in the Balboa Fun Zone with dreams of turning the area into a larger museum campus.

Two buildings in the fun zone now house the museum’s collections.

The museum is in the midst of a fundraising campaign to raise enough money to build a new, larger facility on the Fun Zone property.

The Pride of Newport was scuttled 16 nautical miles off Newport Beach in September 2007.

Under Muller’s leadership, the museum also became the permanent home of the elapsed-time record trophy for the Transpacific Yacht Race.

The museum benefactor, the late Roy E. Disney, who commissioned the trophy, offered it to the museum on permanent loan in 2007.

The trophy was created by sculptor Andrea Favilli.