ON THE WATER -- A job unlike any other

Mathis Winkler

NEWPORT BEACH -- No one else in the world does what Tim “Skipper Tim”

Bercovitz does.

That’s because he’s the commodore of the American Legion Yacht Club in

Newport Beach, the only legion yacht club around the globe.

“We’re proud of who we are and what we do,” Bercovitz said on Friday.

His reasons to get involved in the first place were practical. An avid

sailor, Bercovitz was looking for a place to park his car while he took

his 40-foot wooden Mariner ketch ‘Fairwind’ down the coast in the Newport

to Ensenada International Yacht Race.

“Parking got me into the American Legion,” said Bercovitz, who worked

at the Army Intelligence Center in Maryland during his service in the

early 1950s.

It didn’t take long from that first step to get involved in the yacht

club and move up the chain of command. He’s now serving his second term

as the club’s leader.

Bercovitz first began sailing as a teenager on a lake in New Hampshire

in the early 1940s. His Manhattan-based family owned a farm there and

Bercovitz joined a neighbor’s kid on his sabot.

“I fell in love with the water,” Bercovitz said.

That’s as long as he doesn’t have to get into the water himself.

“People have tried to teach me how to swim,” he said. “But I still

can’t do it. I really don’t think I could swim across the bay.”

After his military service, Bercovitz moved to California, where he

worked for insurance companies. He finally settled in West Newport Beach

in the early 1980s and still works as a private investigator “when it

doesn’t interfere with the yacht club,” he said.

He’s ultimately responsible for the club’s activities, which include

the Fourth of July Old Glory Boat Parade, races throughout the year and a

special sailing event for people with visual impairments in the fall, he

said.

At the moment, however, the most pressing issue seems to be the club’s

future. A developer plans to build a 156-room luxury hotel resort on the

Marinapark site where the legion and its yacht club are located.

The plan includes moving the legion from its current home at 15th

Street to 18th Street, where a new legion hall would be built and given

to legionnaires for free. The legion currently pays about $105,000 in

rent per year to the city, which administers the land for the state.

City officials have made it clear that the hotel won’t be built unless

the veterans approve the plan.

And Bercovitz said it’ll be tough to convince him and his fellow

legionnaires to move.

“If [the developer] gave us everything we want -- adequate parking,

dry storage, a marina -- if they guaranteed us everything, it might be

considered,” he said. “But we have really strong feelings for this place.

This is our home. This was promised to us in perpetuity. It would have to

be economically awfully sweet, because emotionally we have our ties

here.”