Brad Avery

The first boat to finish the 59th Lexus Newport to Ensenada International Yacht Race was the same one that finished first last year. Pyewacket, the maxZ86 previously owned by Roy Disney, pulled into Ensenada Harbor at 5:08 a.m. Saturday. The monohull boat, which was donated to the Orange Coast College School of Sailing & Seamanship last year, finished with an elapsed time of 17 hours, 8 minutes and 20 seconds. Brad Avery and Keith Kilpatrick co-piloted Pyewacket in the race.

Brad Avery Editor's note: This is the fourth in a five-part series about OCC's Alaska Eagle's voyage from Tasmania to New Zealand. We've spent the past few days exploring Preservation Inlet, and Dusky, Doubtful and Milford Sounds. A high-pressure system over New Zealand has created beautiful warm weather, making the verdant fiords and islands a cruiser's paradise. Fiordland, at the southwest tip of New Zealand, spans 100 miles along the coast, featuring a dozen steep-walled inlets reaching up to 30 miles inland.

"For years and years, people wouldn't come down here. It's really good to see people on this beach. There's a lot more people on this beach since [the residents] left." -- Jeannette Merrilees, a Crystal Cove activist, on the number of people now using the public beach. 'We can't understand why Costa Mesa -- who will get absolutely creamed -- has not joined the fight to support El Toro. To have only two council members here is pathetic." -- Tom Anderson, a member of the Airport Working Group, during a meeting on the proposed airport.

June Casagrande As the top racers in the world face off in the prestigious Transpac race, none other than Orange Coast College's own Alaska Eagle is keeping track of their positions and transmitting the information to shore. For the eighth time, the 65-foot sloop owned by the college's School of Sailing and Seamanship is the official communications vessel for the race, which kicked off this week. The first wave of racers left Tuesday from Palos Verdes for the race to Honolulu, which lasts a week or more.

Michael Miller A Marina del Rey boat owner has donated the Kialoa III, a famous, 80-foot racing vessel, to Orange Coast College's School of Sailing and Seamanship. Jim Kilroy, who owns the Kilroy Realty Corporation, announced his gift to the school on Thursday. The Orange Coast College sailing school will receive the 31-year-old yacht in June after its crew sails it to the United States from Panama. After its arrival, the school will use the 80-foot aluminum boat for its summer voyage to Catalina Island, as well as other educational trips in the future.

After less than a year in Newport Harbor, the celebrated racing yacht Pyewacket may have seen the last of these waters. Roy Disney, who donated the boat to the Orange Coast College School of Sailing and Seamanship last summer, is chartering the boat to race in the 2007 Transpac race from Los Angeles to Hawaii. To ready it for the race, Disney will pay for a renovation that will make the boat more competitive — but the modifications will leave the boat with a keel too deep to fit in Newport Harbor.

Likely launching the harbor's first significant dredging since its inception, the Newport Beach City Council is planning to approve an agreement Tuesday to dump more sediment at the Port of Long Beach. Already, the city has been towing barges of polluted mud from the Rhine Channel to the port, and officials recently secured space for additional contaminated dirt. That muck, and some non-toxic silt, however, has formed shoals throughout Lower Newport Bay, causing boats to increasingly run aground.

Brad Avery Editor's Note: This the final in a five-part series on OCC's Alaska Eagle's 2,300-mile journey in the Southern Hemisphere. Alaska Eagle is anchored at Tonga Roadstead in Tasman Bay, after a rough 350-mile sail from Milford Sound. Even though warmed up by the size and beauty of Dusky and Doubtful sounds, the crew was still unprepared for the narrow steep Fjord of Milford, with its granite walls reaching thousands of feet straight up. This stunning sound is 8 miles long by a half mile wide, but its height makes it huge.

The Orange Coast College Foundation will begin the process of putting Rabbit Island up for sale, but will give students and faculty a chance to seek alternate methods of funding for the British Columbian property. At the foundation's board meeting Thursday, several members described the island as a drain on OCC's financial resources and said they were keen on regaining the money they had invested in it. A core group of students and faculty, however, have asked the foundation to hold on to Rabbit Island, calling it a valuable academic resource.

Lolita Harper It is the 20th anniversary of the Alaska Eagle's training voyages and the crew is marking the occasion Saturday by embarking on a first leg that is twice as far as any nonstop trip it has ever sailed. The Orange Coast College School of Sailing leaves on another memorable voyage at 11:30 a.m. today that will include trips to Easter Island, Pitcarin, the Marquesas, Tuamotus, Tahiti, Moorea, Bora Bora, Fanning Island and Hawaii. "We want our students to find out what life on the long passage is all about," sailing school spokesman Brad Avery said.