Rain wrecks recreation

Lindsay Sandham

Although the rains this week were not as costly and continual as the

storms Southern California saw last month, they still had a negative

effect on many local businesses that rely on the sea for their

livelihood.

“This time of year, obviously it’s very slow down here, and when

the rain hits, it makes it kind of miserable for everybody,” said Bob

Black, president of Catalina Passenger Service and vice president of

Balboa Pavilion Company in Balboa Village. “This poor town just kind

of suffers because they depend on the recreational business coming

down here. That’s kind of what this area is about.”

Black also said the retail shops and restaurants in Balboa

suffered from the decrease in visitors this past weekend.

“Especially a holiday ... when the weather’s good, it’s busy --

it’s almost like a summer day down here,” he said. “This weekend,

there was nobody.”

Norris Tapp, manager of Davey’s Locker Sport Fishing in Balboa,

said the rain had a severely negative impact on their business.

“That’s one of the first weekends that we look for in the

wintertime -- Presidents Day,” he said. “We lost substantial

business.”

Black said passenger travel on his company’s various

holiday-weekend boat tours out of Newport Harbor dropped

significantly from last year to this year.

“Last year, we averaged 330 people a day for the four days. This

year, we averaged 30 a day, and that’s because there was no sun,” he

said.

Tapp said winter is not a good time for the fishing business, but

they conduct daily whale-watching trips through the end of March. The

California grey whales are in migration along the coast.

“We rely on whale watching, particularly the school trips during

the week,” he said.

School field trips, many of which had been planned since

September, were canceled or rescheduled because of the rain. Tapp

said many couldn’t reschedule because of their school calendars.

“We stand to lose any day it rains,” he said. “Probably anywhere

from, on average, 100 passengers per day, we lose them. We have to

reschedule anywhere from two to three hundred.”

Some water-based businesses were more fortunate and did not suffer

economically from the rain.

“We can still hold classes, so from a business perspective, it

didn’t hurt because we were still able to deliver education in the

classroom,” said Brad Avery, director of the Orange Coast College

School of Sailing and Seamanship

He said, however, they do not send students out on the water in

stormy conditions, so it cuts back on their on-the-water training.

“There’s been a couple of weekends where it’s been rained out,” he

said. “That translates into less experience on the water. It’s not

ideal.”

Despite the damaging economic effects, Black found some positive

things to say about the rain.

“Well, we needed it to clean things off. Everything is nice and

clean now,” he said. “It’s nice and sparkly and ready for people to

come back down. So we did need the rain, we just didn’t need as much

as we got.”

Avery said he thinks the rain is great, and he can’t wait to see

Catalina and the Channel Islands because they will be green and

beautiful.

“It wouldn’t be California without some precipitation. It wouldn’t

be green and nice and a nice place to be,” Tapp said.