Old boats find new life

Alex Coolman

They bob slowly on the ripples of boat wakes, sometimes listing ever so

slightly on the chains of their rusty moorings.

They’re boats that were once snug and tidy, clean and cheerful. They’re

boats that once wore fresh coats of paint and highly polished wood.

Now they’re forgotten, all but abandoned. Day after day, they float

dormant in the harbor currents, slowly growing more decrepit. Eventually,

as their hulls warp and collect layers of bird droppings, they

deteriorate from objects of desire into objects of contempt and

complaint.

But when Carlos Lopez looks at the derelict vessels rotting in the sun,

his eyes light up.

He looks beyond the warped, leaky wood and the rusted metal, and he sees

potential. Lopez has a knack for detecting potential, even in the most

unlikely places.

He’s embarked on a program to pluck some of Newport’s mangiest,

least-wanted boats out of the harbor and transport them to a community

center he’s been running on the shores of Lake Elsinore since 1998.

There, Lopez performs some modest cleanup work on the boats, slaps a

little paint on them and anchors them to the ground.

The boats that were once floating eyesores become something else: a

playground serving as an inland armada for the children who act as

sailors. For the kids from churches and nonprofit groups who come to the

community center, it’s a lot more interesting than a jungle gym.

“Lake Elsinore is a very poor community,” Lopez said. “It’s good for

people to have a place to go for camping and that type of stuff.”

As far as Newport Beach is concerned, said harbor inspector Wes Armand,

Lopez is doing the city a favor.

A year and a half ago, he said, there were more than 20 boats in the

harbor that appeared to be hopelessly unseaworthy. Since then, some have

been restored, others have been destroyed and about half a dozen were

given to Lopez. The harbor has grown cleaner as his fleet at Lake

Elsinore has grown.

“These are boats that people wanted to get rid of,” he said. “They became

a liability. They weren’t of a quality they wanted to maintain, but

destroying a boat can cost $5 or $6,000.”

Lopez gets the boats for free, but he pays to have them trucked inland.

It’s the kind of savvy, inventive approach to business he’s been taking

since he moved here from Ecuador at the age of 16.

Back in 1965, when he came to America, Lopez was a dishwasher at the

Balboa Bay Club. Through long years of work, however, he’s become the

owner of the Santa Ana electronics company Alphanetics, which employs

about 100 people.

The community center at Lake Elsinore, he says, is just something he does

to give kids a chance to play and use their creative powers.

They can climb aboard the deck of an old powerboat and pretend they’re

crossing the sea, or they can take the tiller of a sailboat and strain

their eyes looking for mermaids and pirate ships.

The other day, Lopez was out in the harbor looking at a boat owned by

Newport Beach resident Carter Ford. It was a 41-foot ChrisCraft, a

once-gorgeous boat that was now a leaky, crusty mess.

Lopez’ opinion? He thought it looked pretty good.

It might not have a whole lot of seaworthiness left in it, but to Lopez,

it looked like an excellent vessel to navigate the oceans of a child’s

imagination.