Return in triumph

June Casagrande

If you want the scuttlebutt on how to win top honors at the

Southwestern Rendezvous youth sailing competition, you’d do well to

talk to the crew of Sea Scout Ship 711.

For starters, these 10 young men know that the main definition of

“scuttlebutt” isn’t gossip or rumor. A scuttlebutt was what sailors

used to call a vessel to hold drinking water on a ship. Today, it’s

the title of just one of the 15 events for which this crew won first

place in last week’s Rendezvous at Port Hueneme Navy Base.

“There’s a 55-gallon drum of water; it’s about 400 pounds, and in

scuttlebutt you have to build a tripod that lets you lift the barrel

about a yard off the ground,” said Steve Ignacio, a 17-year-old

Huntington Beach resident who serves as boatswain for the Newport

Beach-based Sea Scout Crew. “Back in the old days, they would build

these to lift their drinking water onto the boat.”

The Sea Scouts are a group of 14- to 21-year-olds who are

“basically Boy Scouts on the water,” Ignacio said. The scouts teach

sailing and seamanship and, twice a year, take part in competitions

such as the Port Hueneme event, in which the local troop took top

honors.

“They did very well this year,” said Mike Stewart, who as skipper

of the troop’s ship, the Del Mar, acts as adult advisor to the youth

crew.

The Newport Beach team won the Golden Windjammer Award at the

event for taking first place among 17 crews, competing in rowing,

sailing, knots, first aid and some more exotic-sounding events such

as “mystery nomenclature.”

In this event, Stewart said, a number of gadgets used in sailing

are laid on a table under a cloth. The cloth is removed for 10

seconds. The teammates have two minutes to write down as many of the

items as they recognized and could remember.

“We just have a really excellent crew this year,” Ignacio said.

“It was awesome.”

In addition to Ignacio, the crew was composed of Dave George, 16;

Jonathan Harada, 15; Corey Kemp, 15; Chris McKay, 19; Dave Paquin, 19; Nick Peterson, 16; Matt Schneider, 15; Dale Stoica, 14; and

Daniel Stoica, 20.