Piloting an old Newport tradition

Alex Coolman

As the big boats of Newport to Ensenada Yacht International race were

beginning their voyage to Mexico last Friday, Nate Dunham was setting out

on a voyage of his own.

But unlike the racers, Dunham wasn’t going 125 miles. In fact, he was

only going a couple hundred yards, piloting the puttering Balboa ferry

from one side of the channel to the other.

It’s a trip that only takes about five minutes to accomplish. It’s a trip

that Dunham, who is 23, has been making ever since he was 16.

Dunham is a pilot for one of the three ferries that takes people, cars

and bikes from the peninsula to the island and back again. It’s not the

most exciting job in the world, he said, it nevertheless has the

advantage of being outdoors and is easy to do.

And it’s also, as he notes, a way of participating in something that’s

“pretty much a tradition” in Newport Beach. The history of the ferry

stretches back to 1906, when the first trips crossed the channel.

The Beek family established the first permanent Balboa ferry service in

1919.

But the vessel seems to belong to the mythic heart of Newport Beach.

Perhaps it’s because there are so many old-timer stories wrapped up in it

-- like Judge Robert Gardner’s tale of how he once stole it -- or maybe

it’s because it seems to have a natural symbolic quality as it cruises

slowly across the narrow body of water.

Staring at the water from behind a pair of black sunglasses, Dunham

didn’t seem to have an opinion on this subject. When you have to cross

the channel almost 100 times in the course of an eight-hour shift, you

don’t worry too much about the symbolic ramifications of what you’re

doing.

Most of the people who work on the ferry today are on the younger side --

kids in their mid-teens to their mid-20s. The guy collecting the crossing

toll during Dunham’s shift, for example, was a 21-year-old from Costa

Mesa named Andy Gregg.

But if these employees are not wizened archivists of nautical history,

they’re people who care about the water. Dunham was an award-winning

sailor at Newport Harbor High School and today works as a sailing coach

on the days when he isn’t operating the ferry.

And when he runs across a piece of history about the water, Dunham knows

what he’s looking at.

As he piloted the ferry away from the spinning wheel of the Fun Zone and

back toward the island, Dunham lifted a finger to point at a boat that

was coming back from working at the starting line of the yacht race.

“There go the Beeks right there,” he said, pointing to the boat, Vamos,

which cruised slowly by. “That’s Seymour [Beek, who runs the ferry

service].”

Then he docked the ferry, loaded up a few more cars, and hauled them

across the water.