Where Flotsam Surfaces for Sale

The place is a shipwreck, an amassment of boat parts stacked to the ceiling in an order that defies easy navigation. You may not find what you need in the chaos of Minney’s Yacht Surplus. But after an hour of searching, you’re likely to discover something else that you suddenly realize you can’t do without.

“When people come in here looking for something, we tell them to do the Minney shuffle,” said clerk Jeremy Haibel. “Go shuffle through things and see if you can find it.”

For nearly four decades, that has been the drill at Minney’s, a Newport Beach institution known up and down the coast for used sails, salvaged engines, hard-to-find hardware and manufacturer’s seconds.

“I’m a junk man,” said Ernie Minney, the 64-year-old owner -- the Fred Sanford of the sea.

There are buckets overflowing with stainless-steel nuts and bolts and rusty anchor chains. Shelves bulge with used pumps and motors, cowl vents, port lights and gauges. Milk crates are brimming with mast hardware; there are piles of pulleys and portholes.

Out front, there’s a small boat full of used life jackets for $2 apiece. For $395 you can have the boat.

Minney has 3 tons of propellers and a ton of sheet winches. Need a dried and stuffed sea turtle? He’s got a couple of those too.

“I got an awfully good idea of what’s out there,” Minney said. “It’s a total seat-of-the- pants thing. After 40 years, you know what sells fast and what sits there. Self-tailing winches -- I can never get enough of those.... I also got stuff back there that’s been sitting for probably 20 years.”

Minney grew up with the sea. His father captained a charter boat out of Catalina and in the 1950s moved the family to Newport Beach and became a yacht broker. After college -- and a yearlong sailing trip to Tahiti -- Ernie followed his father into the business. But it never suited him.

“I like a lot of time off,” said Minney, whose shock of curly white hair, wild eyebrows, pale blue eyes and ruddy, wind-scoured skin seem molded by years at sea. “When you’re a yacht broker, your weekends are all business, and you’re on call 24 hours a day.”

In 1965, he and his dad stumbled into the marine salvage business after they held a rummage sale of stuff they had collected over the years in a warehouse. “People just went nuts,” Minney said.

They opened their first shop on West Coast Highway. When his father died, Ernie took it over, eventually hauling his junk a few miles inland to his current location in a former restaurant and winery on Newport Boulevard.

“Everybody in Southern California knows about it,” said Brad Avery, director of Orange Coast College’s sailing and seamanship program. “You’ll see guys in there building the backyard boat of their dreams with absolutely no money. And you’ll see guys in business suits finding something for their million-dollar yachts.”

With the Internet, word has gotten around. A few weeks ago, three guys competing in a boat race in Australia suddenly needed new sails. They found the sizes they needed on Minney’s Web site, flew to Orange County, took a cab to the store, collected their sails and flew back the same day.

Minney’s inventory ebbs and flows unpredictably, relying as it does on companies going bankrupt, ships selling for scrap and garages being cleaned out by widows shedding themselves of their late husband’s toys.

“We buy stuff by the truckload from boat companies,” Minney said. “We’ll make a bid on a whole pile of stuff. In every pile, there’s always some gold, always some junk. We sort it out once we get it down here.”

Intriguing opportunities pop up every day. The owner of a leaky tub in Los Angeles phoned Minney last year and offered him first crack at salvaging parts from his vessel. Minney looked the tub over and offered $50 for each porthole, $5 for each gauge, $500 for the steering station. More than $4,000 worth of parts.

The boat was stripped, and Minney hauled his finds back to Newport Beach. A week later, police showed up and informed him that the real owner was undergoing heart surgery when a security guard decided to sell his boat off in pieces.

There’s a fair amount of stolen stuff floating around the edges of the marine junk business. Minney knows this because a portion of it leaves through his front door. With its labyrinth of dimly lighted aisles, tight cubbies and trusting employees, Minney’s Yacht Surplus is an enticing target for shoplifters.

Someone once took a crowbar to a side door and began hauling stuff out in broad daylight, during business hours. Minney installed security cameras to deter thieves. Recently, someone stole one of his cameras.

This ticks Minney off, but he keeps his leakage in perspective. “This is a fun business,” he said. “I look forward to coming to work every day. Not many people can say that.”

He walked up a stairway and out into a storage yard. A 40-year-old diesel engine, rusting and unwanted at $1,495, sits there. “This one’s in bad shape. I paid $500, and I’ll probably lose money on it.”

Minney pauses, and makes a junk man’s pitch.

“Give me $500, and it’s yours.”