Sailing

The 2003 UC Irvine Athletics/Traditional Jewelers Anteater Golf Classic is scheduled for June 16 at the Mission Viejo Country Club. Proceeds from the event will benefit the UCI Athletic Scholarship Fund. Registration is at 10 a.m. and the tournament begins with a shotgun start at 11:30 a.m. Cost is $225 per player and includes green fee, cart, continental breakfast, lunch, hospitality bag, competition package and dinner. A hospitality hour, silent auction and dinner will follow in the evening.

The Newport Harbor High sailing team, the defending national champions, won the Anteater High School Regatta for the second straight year Dec. 9. The Anteater Regatta, hosted by UC Irvine and the Newport Harbor Yacht Club, featured 26 high schools and roughly 165 sailors from Point Loma to the Bay Area. Sage Hill, which finished in third place, and Corona del Mar, which was 11th, also competed in the event that one of the five Pacific Coast high school sailing regattas leading up to the national championships, which are in May of 2008.

Ahoy. This Saturday is the 18th annual “Sail for the Blind and Visually Impaired” hosted by the Newport Harbor American Legion Post 291 located bayside at 15th street on the Balboa Peninsula. This wonderful event will host more than 240 blind and visually impaired adults along with their escorts during this daylong event. The accompanying guide dogs are not forgotten either as a play yard will be set up for the dogs while their owners are sailing on the boats.

Mathis Winkler As an Arizona desert child, sailing was a little out of the ordinary for Catherine Malm. "I did all those sort of traditional mountain desert things," Malm said. But her grandfather sailed and got her hooked early on. She began lake sailing, entered her first race at 13 and began following her passion as a student at Pomona College. After meeting her husband, Jaime, during a regatta in Mission Bay, Malm came to Newport Beach and ran the junior program at Balboa Yacht Club.

-- Story by Young Chang; photo by Sean Hiller Rich Detwiler likes the underwater world of diving. Ask him what he likes even more, and he'll point out a small distinction: Being on the water. It lets him experience wind, air, sea and, most importantly, turbulence. The ups and downs of sailing are exciting for the Newport Beach resident. As a volunteer at Orange Coast College's School of Sailing and Seamanship, where Detwiler spends most his time on boats, he gets his share of thrills.

Chris Yemma In the competitive sailing world, there's good, and then there's Bill Ficker. A Newport Beach resident since 1953, Ficker, 77, was the first person to win the trifecta of major sailing championships, and, to this day, is one of two people to have accomplished the feat. Jack Nicklaus has won 20 major championships in golf, the New York Yankees have won 26 World Series titles, and Ficker and Dennis Conner, of San Diego, are the only two sailors in the world who have successfully defended the America's Cup, won the Star Class world championship and won the Congressional Cup. Considered the granddaddy of competitions in sailing circles, the America's Cup is the oldest continuous trophy in sports.

With its sails unfurled and a few cannon blasts, the tall ship Hawaiian Chieftain docked in Newport Beach on Wednesday after a roughly 300-mile, three-day voyage from Santa Cruz. A few spectators gathered at the Newport Sea Base to watch the 103-foot topsail ketch slowly emerge from the gray drizzle that hung over Newport Harbor, chugging up the bay on motor power before making a U-turn to dock at the Sea Base. A reproduction of a typical European cargo ship of the 19th century, the Hawaiian Chieftain will be in Newport Beach through Jan. 10, offering tours and sailing trips.

Lindsay Sandham Every year, the world's largest international yacht race, Newport to Ensenada, makes its grand start right here in Newport Harbor. This afternoon, around 500 yachts of all classes and sizes will hang around the harbor, with crews eagerly waiting to get out and start the journey down to Mexico. Some are hoping to bring back one of the world-famous trophies and some are goingjust for the fun of it. Balboa Island's Bob Morrison, 75, hasn't sailed the race in 25 years, but he and some of his old sailing buddies decided to give it one last go. "We go mainly for the hell of it," Morrison said.