Harbor Folks Decking the Decks and Bows for Holiday Parades

Jackie Coupe gets excited just talking about it.

“Last year was spectacular,” the Huntington Harbour resident recalls. “Our two-story home was solid lights; the trees in the yard, solid lights. We strung lights in more trees lining the bulkhead and even made trees out of lights.

“And then we went to the store and got more lights and really went crazy. It just seems if you get into this, you get into it.”

And Coupe is into it again this year. She and her friends--plus hundreds of other home and boat owners around Huntington and Newport harbors--are in the midst of building, gilding, glitzing, lighting and otherwise decorating for this year’s holiday boat parades:

* The Symphony of Lights, which will start at Trinidad Island at 5:15 p.m. Dec. 9 and 10 and circumnavigate Huntington Harbour.

* The Tournament of Lights Christmas Boat Parade, which will make its way around Newport Harbor nightly from Dec. 17 to 23, starting at 6:30 p.m. at Collins Island.

“We plan to wax off all competition and have been thinking about how for the last six months,” says Joe Hughes, president of a Newport Beach general contracting firm and owner of the Lazy H III, an 83-foot motor yacht--the Huntington Harbour Yacht Club’s official entry in the Symphony of Lights.

Hughes’ crew, like all entrants in this 27th annual holiday aquatic festival sponsored by the Huntington Harbour Philharmonic Committee, is vying for the big daddy of parade prizes--the Sweepstakes trophy. So instead of settling for Most Beautiful, Most Effective Use of Lights, Best Tribute to the Holiday or another of the lesser trophies, Hughes is going all out to make sure his vessel interprets this year’s parade theme--a Symphony of Toys--unbeatably. That’s why his decorating plans are secret.

“You go for the big one, you take no chances,” he jokes.

The competition may be all in fun, but it’s fierce nevertheless, says Clint Wells of Fullerton, a TWA captain who also captains a 45-foot motor yacht moored at Huntington Harbour. “It may be a big festival, with everyone in a party mood,” says the skipper, who last year outfitted his boat to resemble a glowing, floating jukebox, “but everyone is out to beat everyone else.”

Balboa Yacht Club members Rick and Pat Wesselink of San Juan Capistrano agree. “The extent some people go to and the money some people spend is quite something,” she says. “Very impressive.”

Like Huntington Harbour’s parade, Newport Harbor’s 81st Tournament of Lights, sponsored by the Newport Beach Chamber of Commerce around the theme “Holiday Spirit,” is also bringing out a competitive spirit in participants. Some are working up to 12 hours a day and spending $15,000 or more gussying up their sailboats, motor yachts, waterfront homes, docks and yards with lights, greenery and animated figures.

Since 1908--when a homesick Italian gondolier led eight canoes lighted by Japanese lanterns around Newport Harbor, paying homage to a seven-century-old moonlit regatta held annually in the Grand Canal of Venice--Orange County’s holiday festivals of lights on the water have inspired enthusiastic community involvement, say many who participate.

Today, boat parade entries are animated, computerized, larger than life.

And there’s no shortage of volunteers to work on them, says Wells, who for this year’s Huntington Harbour parade has had no trouble rustling up 20 friends to build a revolving carousel on his boat. “Of course, this isn’t a one-man job. It takes a lot of help, and help that knows what they’re doing.”

The job of decorating for a boat parade is not as easy as gilding the living room Christmas tree. There are ferocious Santa Ana winds to beware of, possible power outages to consider. During the parade, the fog may roll in so thick that the 200 or more boats crowding Newport Harbor or the 100 or so floating around Huntington Harbour will find themselves, as one parade participant said, “in a world of hurt.”

Also, pampered and prettied-up million-dollar vessels hardly lend themselves to such handy decorating staples as nails.

“One guy once had this brilliant scheme of putting aluminum foil all over his boat down to the waterline,” recalls Steve Stephens, 60, of Huntington Beach, whose 83-foot yacht will parade in Huntington Harbour as a giant Tinkertoy. “He had so much foil on that boat, we figured he must have owned the factory--foil he couldn’t get off”--not without scraping the paint off the boat.

Securing boat decorations safely--and ensuring that on-board generators can handle the electrical load--keeps decorating crews sufficiently challenged as they prep their vessels for the parades.

And they are not always successful. “There we were, all lit like the devil, and people all over the islands were having 100 people over for catered parties with musicians playing,” Stephens recalls of a particularly unfortunate parade catastrophe.

“And the lights blow. It’s a heck of a job, these decorations, and most people aren’t experts at it. They just know what looks good, and they try to get something bigger and better than ever--to outdo even themselves.”

And maybe that’s why some participants, owners of sleek, expensive sailing vessels particularly, prefer to use restraint in their parade presentations. One such Newport Harbor sailor will only outline his boat in tiny, pristine white lights, pooh-poohing the trend toward more and more elaborately animated boats resembling Pasadena’s Tournament of Roses floats. “A vessel simply and tastefully done,” he says, “Is surely enough to sweep the (Sweepstakes) trophy. Elegance will dazzle as well.”

And tradition will be embraced by many entrants, including Bill Hartge, a semiretired civil engineer from Huntington Beach. For the last several years, Hartge has rigged The Red Baron, his 36-foot sailboat, with a 55-foot-high martini glass fashioned from wooden framing and lights. And he has no desire to outdo himself by conceiving a bigger, better design, perhaps to equal the spectacle of the many boats underwritten by corporations and professionally designed under hefty budgets.

“We’re going to stick to that martini glass, because we’re recognized for it,” he says. “People being wined and dined on their docks during the parade will say, ‘There goes The Red Baron. They’re in the spirit--as always.’ ”

Orange Coast College student Tom O’Toole, 18, says, “The boat parades are Orange County’s version of a carnival on the water, or Mardi Gras or something.”

He is among those decorating the Balboa Yacht Club entry in the Tournament of Lights.

Also, Pat Wesselink says, “there’s always a boat parade party.”

Indeed, as the boat and home decorating gets into high gear, so does the impulse to entertain. And to stay at home to enjoy the changing scene outside.

Ray Coupe is an electrical contractor and thus no small part of the family’s consistently award-winning home decorations. His wife, Jackie, says: “After Thanksgiving, you keep seeing more and more lights come to life on the water. The whole area begins to glitter. It’s marvelous, really.”

Of course, she adds: “There you are, every night, constantly screwing in another light bulb in addition to all the shopping and wrapping and giving and going to parties. It’s all such fun and stress you have to go into serious recess afterwards. That or else pneumonia.”