At 52, Chuck Stearns Is Back for More : Water-skiing: After retiring in 1985, he’s returning to try for 12th victory in Catalina race.

When Chuck Stearns won the Catalina water-ski race for the first time, it was 1955 and he was 16. He was called Chucky then and was the youngest winner in the race’s history.

When Stearns won the same across-the-channel-and-back race in 1982, it was his 11th victory, and no one else has won it more than three times. At 44, he was the oldest winner.

Stearns, 52 and as muscular and optimistic as ever, will be in this year’s 42nd annual Catalina race, which starts Sunday at 8 a.m. from Long Beach Harbor. It will be his first attempt since his retirement, after the 1985 race when he finished eighth overall.

“If we get calm water, we’ve got a chance at the overall,” Stearns said he as he watched his wife, Mary, paint the number 811 on the sides of the white boat that will pull Stearns the 62 miles from Long Beach to Avalon and back. The numbers, in keeping with Stearns’ trademark swim suit, are polka-dotted.

“We’ll probably be the smallest boat in the race, so we need a break in the water to have a chance against the big guys, but we’re ready,” Stearns continued. His tow will be from a 16-foot boat owned and driven by Kenny Colombero, a former barefoot water-skier from Ontario.

“I won my first race in back of a 16-foot Gold Digger that Bob Reem was driving, but that was 35 years ago and an 18-foot runabout was considered a big boat then. Now, most of the fast guys have around 32-footers.

“We figure we can make it over and back in an hour, maybe an hour and five minutes. Then we’ll have to see how we make out.”

The record is 54 minutes 56 seconds, set by Mason Thompson in calm waters in 1987 with Vic Edelbrock driving his Scarab. Thompson bettered Stearns’ record as the youngest winner three years earlier when he was 15.

Kurt Schoen of Mesa, Ariz., won last year’s race in 1:00:47, with a tow from off-road racing driver Tim Herbst of Las Vegas. It was Schoen’s third victory.

More than 100 teams from seven countries will take off together Sunday in a mass start to what is universally considered the premier water-ski race in the world.

When Steve Moore of England won the world championship in Australia, he said his biggest thrill was winning the Catalina race in 1986.

“Catalina is the one race everybody shoots for,” said Edelbrock, who is also a noted speed accessories manufacturer. “One year, I won three out of four races on the same program at Clear Lake, but even that didn’t beat winning Catalina. It’s the ultimate.”

If Catalina is the ultimate race, then Stearns is its ultimate competitor.

He was a student at Bellflower High School when he won in 1955 and ’56. Then he won three races in a row in 1958-59-60 while earning a degree in mechanical engineering at Long Beach State, and followed with victories in 1962, ‘65, ‘71, ’75 and ’79. In 1982, Stearns was named one of seven charter members of the Water Ski Hall of Fame at Winter Haven, Fla.

“They thought I was retired, so they made a beautiful plaque with my 10 Catalina wins on it, and then I came back three months later and won it again and screwed up their plaque,” Stearns said with a grin.

Stearns pioneered use of the single ski when he won in 1955, and all winners since have used one ski. In the original Catalina race, from Avalon to Redondo Beach in 1935, competitors rode aquaplanes, huge “ironing boards” that were phased out after World War II when skis became popular. Harry Laughenhouse, a two-time winner, was the last Catalina champion to wear two skis.

“One ski makes a difference in cutting down drag, and it is also easier to recover when you lose your balance backward or forward,” Stearns said. “In rough water, it is much easier to handle one ski rather than two.”

Stearns also set a world record of 122.11 m.p.h. in 1969 at Long Beach Marine Stadium and won numerous world and national ski championships in slalom, trick and jumping.

Two of Stearns’ memorable Catalina races are not among his victories. Both involved his father, Bill, a general contractor who loved the water and instilled skiing in his son.

In 1954, Chucky made his first try in the channel race and was leading when his dad, riding as an observer, was bounced out of the boat. By the time they stopped and got him back aboard, Stearns had lost several minutes. He finished third.

Each contestant has an observer, who sits facing the skier and acts as a communication center between the driver and the skier.

“If I want the driver to slow down, I jab him once in the ribs, and if I want him to speed up, I jab him twice,” said Mary Stearns, who has been her husband’s observer for two victories. “We have other ways to communicate information, but basically an observer’s toughest job is holding on when the boat starts bouncing around in the wakes and swells.”

On one occasion, Chuck’s brother was the observer and his father the driver during a tense duel with longtime rival Butch Peterson, a three-time winner from South Pasadena, when both boats missed Catalina in the fog and continued out to sea.

“It’s easier to miss than you might think,” Stearns said in recalling the incident. “Avalon sits at the tip of the island and if it’s foggy, and you’re the least bit to the left, you’ll miss it. It was so foggy that day, we couldn’t see a thing, but the water was real calm so we were still running about 50 (m.p.h.).

“Three of us were running close together and we all ended up on San Clemente Island. If we’d missed that one, the next island would have been Hawaii. I’m surprised we even made it to San Clemente without running out of gas.

“Butch and I pooled what was left of our gas and gave it to the other guy, and sent him back to Catalina to report where we were. We sat around eating raw clams and abalone, but we also saw a bunch of gun shells lying around, and that made us nervous, especially when we saw a sign that said, ‘Prohibited Area.’ San Clemente, we found out, was a (naval) gunnery target.

“It must have been around midnight when we thought we heard something, so we lit a fire and it got out of hand, and before we knew it, it looked like the whole island was on fire. It turned out, what we’d heard was the Coast Guard looking for us, and when the island lit up, it wasn’t hard for them to find us.”

Bill Stearns drove in five races that his son won, making him the winningest driver in the Catalina record book.

With 100 skiers coming up out of the water together, the start looks like a fish feeding frenzy with water being churned as the boats fight for position heading out the narrow Queen’s Gate breakwater opening to the channel.

It makes racing easier to get off among the leaders, but both Stearns and Schoen have proved it’s not totally necessary.

In 1982, the engine misfired on Stearns’ boat, and before driver Burt Court could get it restarted, the other skiers were gone and the water was choppy from their wakes.

“We lost at least five minutes at the start and then we had to go through some really rough water for about five miles,” Stearns said. “We were 13th through the island, but we managed to get back to Long Beach in front.”

Two years ago, Schoen was still sitting on the deck of Herbst’s 38-foot Mr. Terrible when the flare went off, signaling the start of the race.

“I was sitting there, waiting for the start boat to come by before I got in the water, but I guess we missed it,” Schoen remembered. “Tim Herbst pushed me off and started taking out rope. The rope got a big knot in it and we lost about 20 feet of rope because there was no time to stop. It turned out to be a blessing because the water was rough, and the shorter rope put me in a better wake of the boat and we won.”

Sunday, Stearns will face a formidable field that includes three-time defending champion Schoen, world champion Ian Pickle of England, former world champion Moore and Gary Tomlin of Long Beach, who was leading toward the end of last year’s race when he fell after hitting a wake from a spectator boat.

Rose Johnson of Oakley, Calif., winner of the last three women’s championships, is back and favored to make it four in a row. She set the women’s record of 1 hour 2 minutes 59 seconds in 1987.