Pacific Coast Highway

WHAT'S AFLOAT is published periodically. If you are planning a nautical event, submit the information to the Daily Pilot, 330 W. Bay St., Costa Mesa, CA 92627; by fax to (949) 646-4170; or by e-mail to dailypilot@latimes.com. SAILING CLASSES Orange Coast College is offering a six-week advanced marine weather class. The class is not for transfer credit. It will meet from 7 to 9 p.m. Thursday evenings, Oct. 16 through Nov. 20. Students will be taught forecasting techniques and the use of upper level charts.

Lauren Vane The driver of a stolen ambulance led police on a high-speed chase down Pacific Coast Highway through several beach cities on Friday, before finally ending in Dana Point when the driver crashed the ambulance into a median, police said. Huntington Beach police noticed the ambulance driving recklessly at 10:52 p.m. near Warner Avenue and Pacific Coast Highway in Huntington Beach, said Lt. Craig Juniger, of the Huntington Beach Police Department.

A Newport Beach man driving a pickup at Pacific Coast Highway and 6th Street in Huntington Beach struck and killed a 16-year-old girl and injured her boyfriend, authorities said Tuesday. Heather Stamm, a Huntington Beach resident, was taken to Hoag Hospital, where she later died, according to the Orange County coroner's office and Huntington Beach Police Lt. Dave Bunetta. Christopher Hulett, 27, of Newport Beach, was westbound on Pacific Coast Highway at about 8:30 p.m. Monday when he struck Stamm and her friend, Nathan Koontz, as they walked across the highway at 6th Street, Bunetta said.

NEWPORT BEACH - Legends of crews gone by will return to the Orange Coast College Boathouse tonight and Sunday for the 2000 Alumni Weekend. The festivities begin with an alumni dinner tonight at the Boathouse beginning at 7. The cost is $20 per person and the dinner will honor the crews from the Class of 1970, 1980 and 1990. On Sunday beginning at 10:30 a.m., this year's Pirates' crew will take to the water for a number of 600-meter "preview" races.

When covering breaking news, landmarks help to tell readers where the event occurred. In many cases, the environment around the police tape is hard to distinguish from any other place in a city. In photographer Kent Treptow's picture of the scene of a car chase that ended with a suicide near the foot of the Huntington Beach Pier, at the intersection of Pacific Coast Highway and Main Street, fewer landmarks would be better known. The Ruby's restaurant at the end of the pier and the lifeguard headquarters at its foot give readers a sense of exactly where the events took place.

Ralph Abinader was killed Thursday evening after the driver of the Ferrari he rode in crashed into a tow truck on Pacific Coast Highway in Newport Beach. The driver, whose name has not been released, was going westbound on Pacific Coast Highway, near Jamboree Road, in a Ferrari at an excessive rate of speed when he jumped the center divider and crashed head-on into the tow truck that was driving eastbound, said Newport Beach Sgt. Steve Burdette. The Ferrari split into two pieces and caught fire.

HUNTINGTON BEACH — Dane Williams’ friends gathered Saturday morning to honor his memory at one of the 23-year-old surfer’s favorite spots — off the beach by Pacific Coast Highway, just beyond the waves. Four days after Williams’ body was discovered in a San Diego alley, more than two dozen friends and family members held a “paddle-out” ceremony in his honor. The group ventured into the water near Williams’ family’s home on surfboards, carrying flowers and a wreath, and held hands in a circle as dozens of others watched from the shore.

June Casagrande The city next door has plans to build a 31.5-acre complex of commercial, retail, residential, office and restaurant space that includes 400 hotel rooms and 516 condominiums. What does this Huntington Beach development have to do with Newport Beach? Maybe nothing. Maybe everything. The Newport Beach City Council will decide Tuesday whether to put in their two cents on a project some believe could create traffic and other problems for its neighbors to the north.

Continuing his quest to free two jailed Border Patrol agents, Huntington Beach Rep. Dana Rohrabacher will speak at a rally held by the Minutemen at noon today at Main Street and Pacific Coast Highway in Huntington Beach. Monica Ramos and Joe Loya, the wife and father-in-law of jailed agent Ignacio Ramos, will also attend the rally. Rohrabacher has spent months urging President Bush and administration officials to pardon Ramos and Jose Compean, Border Patrol agents who were convicted in the shooting of a drug smuggler and have been in prison since January.

Friends of Dane Williams, the Hurley International intern whose body was found in San Diego Tuesday, plan to hold a ?paddle-out? ceremony in his memory today by the Huntington Beach resident?s home. At 10 a.m. by Pacific Coast Highway and 22nd Street, the group plans to paddle off the beach on surfboards and say a group prayer with Williams? surfboard in the middle of the circle. Williams? funeral is set for 1 p.m. Monday at Hope Chapel Huntington Beach, 715 Lake St. Williams, 23, went missing after a trade show in San Diego early Saturday.

NEWPORT BEACH (KTLA) - A so-called “King Tide” is being blamed for flooding in several coastal communities in Orange County on Thursday, according to KTLA . The National Weather Service is forecasting high tides along with rip currents for local beaches and all along the West Coast. The alignment of the earth, moon and sun is giving the seas an extra gravitational kick onto the shore, which can cause flooding in low-lying areas. Early morning flooding was reported in Sunset Beach, Huntington Harbor and Newport Beach.

Despite passionate public outcry from Huntington Beach and Costa Mesa residents about revived talks of the proposed 19th Street Bridge, Newport Beach council members are slow to distance themselves completely from the project. Councilwoman Leslie Daigle is requesting the city reexamine the bridge — which would alleviate traffic on the Pacific Coast Highway and Victoria Street bridges — ahead of either reaffirming the city's position to support it or come out against it. "We're taking it up as an accommodation to our neighbors in H.B. who are impacted by traffic," Daigle wrote in an email.

Huntington Beach police arrested a registered sex offender from Newport Beach for allegedly trying to get children to play with his parrot. At about 4:15 p.m. Saturday, a Huntington Beach resident called police to report a suspicious man near Main Street and Pacific Coast Highway. Authorities said Michael Joseph DeSilva, 65, was not making contact with any children at the time officers approached. But, witnesses told police, DeSilva was trying to get the kids to play with his parrot named "Mango.

NEWPORT BEACH — When she grows up, Piper Hunt's parents one day will have to tell her the story behind her birth certificate. It doesn't read like most. Delivered by: Steve Martin. Place of birth: Pacific Coast Highway and Dover Drive in Newport Beach. No, not Steve Martin, the actor, but Steve Martin, the nine-year paramedic for the Newport Beach Fire Department. The location, though, that's as accurate as it can be. As Piper's parents learned, their 5-day old daughter, who was delivered on Monday, is a patient listener.

James A. Stuart Stuart passed away March 22, 2010, with his daughter, Louise, by his side. Until his death at age 86, “Big Jim” was a teller of tall tales and a twinkle-eyed punster with a hearty handshake and a ready laugh. Jim served on the submarine USS Toro in World War II, then married Betty McDonald of Fountain Valley in 1946.  They raised three daughters in Newport Beach, and owned Jim's Muffler Service on Pacific Coast Highway, and later on Old Newport Boulevard.

The L-shaped bundle was giving Kelly Beavers trouble as she maneuvered it carefully toward a plastic crate in the lab at the Wetlands & Wildlife Care Center in Huntington Beach. A pair of webbed feet began kicking under the white sheet that she cradled in her arms. A long beak, which Beavers gripped tightly with one hand, thrashed about as well. Looking around the crates, which had been manufactured for dogs but were housing pelicans Tuesday afternoon, she opted for one that was small enough to hold a single, hot-tempered bird.

Ralph Abinader was killed Thursday evening after the driver of the Ferrari he rode in crashed into a tow truck on Pacific Coast Highway in Newport Beach. The driver, whose name has not been released, was going westbound on Pacific Coast Highway, near Jamboree Road, in a Ferrari at an excessive rate of speed when he jumped the center divider and crashed head-on into the tow truck that was driving eastbound, said Newport Beach Sgt. Steve Burdette. The Ferrari split into two pieces and caught fire.

Owned and produced by the nonprofit organization Oceanographic Teaching Stations Inc., the Roundhouse Marine Studies Lab and Aquarium has been open to the public since 1979. The organization’s goal is to promote educational opportunities and facilitate study and interest in the oceans, tidelands and beaches of Southern California as well as the effect the human population has on that environment. Some of the exhibits the aquarium features are a tide pool touch tank, a 3,500-gallon shark tank and an arch way tank.

What a waste of ink that insipid self-serving column was — and about a dead man no less (“Who’s laughing now that Carlin’s met his maker?” July 1). Jim Carnett wonders if “when George Carlin felt the onset of a fatal heart attack, did he experience joy or panic? We can’t know.” Really? Take a wild guess. What Carlin so brilliantly conveyed is the question of “Is there a God?” is the thing we can’t know. You have to have faith in, as George said, “an invisible man in the sky that will harm you and damn you to hell for not being a Christian ... but he loves you ... and needs money.