Radio host gives sailboat to OCC

Author and radio personality Laura Schlessinger has given a boat to the Orange Coast College School of Sailing and Seamanship, marking the latest in a series of high-profile donations to the school in recent years.

Schlessinger, known to listeners as “Dr. Laura,” delivered her vessel to the sailing school on Friday. She bought the 58-foot sailboat in 2004, she said, but had grown more interested in racing by the time construction work on the boat was finished.

“It was my baby,” Schlessinger said. “I put it up for adoption at 10 in the morning on Friday. Now it’s their baby — and it’s a good child. It’s well-behaved.”

Brad Avery, director of the sailing school, estimated the boat’s value to be around $2.3 million. Schlessinger had named it On the Air, but Avery said that OCC has renamed it Bluefin. The school, he added, would use the vessel for offshore sailing and other classes beginning this summer.

“We’re very grateful to Dr. Laura for a magnificent gift for our program,” Avery said.

OCC’s sailing school has received a number of high-profile donations in recent years.

Former Yugoslavian President Milan Panic provided a vessel to the school in 2003. Marina del Ray businessman Jim Kilroy gave the school his racing yacht Kialoa III in May 2005. And Roy Disney, the nephew of Walt Disney and a longtime sailor, donated his vessel Pyewacket two months later.

The sailing school, founded in 1955, is based in Newport Harbor and offers workshops and boating lessons seven days a week.

The school is not publicly funded and operates on tuition and community donations.

Avery said he heard about the offer from Schlessinger through his friend Ken Kieding, the vice president of Chandlery Yacht Sales in Santa Barbara.

Schlessinger, a Santa Barbara resident, said she had mixed feelings about parting with her vessel but was glad to know that it would be of use.

“It was the second-best thing,” she said about her decision. “I wanted them to bring the entire school up to where I was so I could start taking courses, and they couldn’t do that.”