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The Harbor Report: Rowing coach put the ‘sea’ in OCC

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Between 1983 and 1985, I was at the Orange Coast College sailing center almost every day as a member of the OCC sailing team and then one year as coach. During this time, I met people like Jim Jorgensen, Brad Avery and Dave Grant.

At that time, Grant was the dean of students and the head rowing coach at OCC. It did not take much in the way of observation skills to quickly notice that Grant was the big man on campus. One thing I recall about Grant is that he was always a busy guy, and each day, you were greeted by him with a heartfelt hello and a laugh.

Jump forward some 30 years, and Grant has since retired from OCC. But I still get a very warm welcome and a laugh every time I run into him around the harbor.

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Grant was born in Los Angeles, and his parents lived in Alhambra. In 1947, after the war, when his father got out of the Navy, the family moved to Costa Mesa.

“Dad did not want to live in the city, so he purchased 5 acres of land in Costa Mesa so that my sister could have horses and I could have dogs,” he said.

Grant explained how he enjoyed exploring the bay, duck-shooting and water skiing.

“Kids used to sail their sabots around the bay and explore Shark Island, now called Linda Isle,” he said. “We would fish for crawdads. It was pretty wild, and we thought that it would go on forever.”

About that time, his father purchased a 24-foot sailboat with an outboard on the back, and the family would sail around the harbor and up and down the coast.

“Going out to the bell buoy was the most exciting thing in the world, and we would look down into the deep blue water and wonder how deep it was there,” he explained.

Grant then went on to Newport Harbor High School, OCC and UCLA. At this time in his life, he had rowed a little at OCC and some at UCLA when one day the phone rang and Basil Peterson, then president of OCC, was on the line. He asked Grant if he would be interested in a one-year assignment teaching American history and invited him to his office to discuss the assignment.

During the interview, Peterson hardly looked up from his desk as he explained the one-year assignment. “One more thing — the crew is a mess. Go straighten it out,” Pederson said as Grant was leaving the office.

Grant explained that he knew very little about crew, and, without even looking up from his desk, Peterson said, “I am sure you will figure it out.”

Later, while Grant was thinking of his new assignment, he happened to see a copy of Sports Illustrated with Harry Parker, the new head coach of the Harvard varsity rowing team, on the cover. Grant picked up pen and paper and wrote to Parker, asking him for his help.

Parker accepted — and invited Grant to spend a week with him.

“I really learned rowing from the best coach in the world,” Grant said. “He was fabulous, and he was my mentor through it all.” This turned out to be a long-lasting friendship, and OCC extended Grant’s assignment.

I asked Grant about some of his favorite moments as the OCC crew coach. He reflected back to 1968, beating Washington State University in the state of Washington. “Back then, that was like beating the UCLA basketball team at home,” he said.

I could almost see the smile on his face over the phone while he described to me the team’s trip to China in 1968 to compete in a rowing regatta. Grant was also invited back to China the following years as a coach. Grant noted that the team had been invited 10 times to the Henley Royal Regatta in England.

I asked him about the hard part of being the crew coach. “”Every year we would have great kids, fantastic kids that were under 6 feet tall try out for the team,” he responded. “The odds of these kids making a boat was very remote, and telling them this was one of my hardest things I had to do as a coach.”

I knew Grant has a great passion for the sea and plenty of sea stories. Here is one he told me: In 1972, during a six-month sabbatical, Grant and three of his closest friends purchased a Cal 28 by the name of Passages and sailed to Hawaii, Samoa, Fiji and New Caledonia, retracing some of the routes of Capt. James Cook.

“Well, I never told the crew how often I dropped the sextant, which always made for excitement during our expected landfalls,” he said.

Another time he and the OCC sailing director, Avery, were making plans for the college’s 65-foot sloop Alaska Eagle to sail in the Sydney-Hobart Yacht Race.

“The fire was blazing with my dog at our feet,” he said. “It was warm in my living room and very comfortable. Then fast forward into the race, and everyone on the boat was seasick except Avery and I while we smashed into these huge seas with water going over our heads constantly. Avery and I had three-hour watches on the wheel, and while Avery was coming onto watch, he looked through the boat’s port light and asked me to tell the story again about the fire and what a great idea this race was.”

Grant was inducted into the Intercollegiate Sailing Hall of Fame in Annapolis, Maryland, in 1975, becoming only the sixth West Coast mariner to be given that prestigious honor. He even found time in 1989 to climb the 19,240-summit of Mount Kilimanjaro in Africa.

I wanted a list of Dave Grant maxims.

He laughed and answered: “Regarding what to do when you lose, you can be disappointed but not discouraged, and as a coach, I would say, ‘I never give up until you give up.’ To a sailor, I would say, ‘A ship in a harbor is safe, but that’s not what ships are built for.’ This would always remind me to go to sea. There has been many times when I have used the quote from Cecil Rhodes, ‘So little time, so much to do.’ We have a lifetime to do these things, and we are crazy not to do them.”

We then talked about some of the changes he experienced in the harbor. He mentioned “the loss of the big sailing vessels in front of the Stuffed T Shirt, which is now called A’marree’s. It was always a sight to see the Goodwill, a 161-foot schooner, sail in front of the sea base. I also have a concern that the harbor is so built up now that kids have lost the chance for adventure around the harbor.”

When I asked him if he had any concerns around the harbor, Grant explained, “The harbor distinguishes us from most other cities. We have a harbor and we don’t take very good care of it. Why don’t we put huge amounts of money into cleaning things, making sure the catch basin running through the Back Bay is maintained and improved? We have a fabulous resort, and we don’t take very good care of it. If the city would put some money into it, it would be money very well spent.”

At the end of my interview, Grant pretty much summed it up in one short comment: “We are very lucky to be here.”

I have much more biographical information and notes regarding Grant on my blog site at lenboseyachts.blogspot.com. I have to tell ya, I learned a lot on this one.

Sea ya.

LEN BOSE is an experienced boater, yacht broker and boating columnist.

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