A sea of red, white and blue

Alex Coolman

BALBOA -- Bill Mathis was attaching a small flag to the railing at the

stern of his Freeport 36 sailboat Monday afternoon: a red, white and blue

banner representing nautical code for a letter of the alphabet.

“That’s ‘Charlie,’ ” explained Mathis, the former commodore of the

American Legion Yacht Club. It stands for the letter “C.”

But if the flag was a symbol for a letter, the decoration also stood for

something else -- the pride and patriotism that go into decorating a boat

for the Old Glory Boat Parade, which happens today in Newport Harbor.

“In the olden days,” Mathis noted, “they sent signals that way from one

ship to another.”

All around the harbor Monday, boat owners were decking out their vessels

with banners and decorations. Massive American flags flapped from tall

masts, and smaller versions of the flag twitched nervously in the breeze.

The parade will raise money for several causes, including the Long Beach

Veterans Hospital, the burn center of the Newport Beach Fire Department

and Olympic swimming hopeful Newport Harbor High sophomore Aaron Peirsol.

Dennis Lahey, co-chairman of the event, said it will also feature a

flyover by a group of National Guard helicopters.

Event organizers expect more than 200 boats to participate in the parade,

which begins at 1 p.m. from the east end of Lido Isle.

That number, should it pan out, will be an all-time high and a strong

comeback from low levels of participation that characterized the parade

in the early 1990s, before the American Legion Yacht Club took over

organizing duties in 1992.

The event, a tradition for nearly four decades, was once called the

Character Boat Parade. Boat owners would dress up in funny costumes and

cruise around Newport Harbor in their decorated boats -- their vessels

transformed into submarines, dragons and even bottles of scotch.

The numbers of participants declined and there was talk of discontinuing

the parade, which in the past was not set on a regular date each year.

But the event was saved and scheduled to run on each Fourth of July. It

took on a patriotic theme, with boat owners going all out with stars and

stripes all over their vessels.

However, the secret, Lahey said, is not just good decorations, but

enthusiastic volunteers.

“The folks that really make this thing successful are the people who

contribute,” he said.