Kids on board for regatta

The gleaming metal trophies, championship pewter plates and awards placards locked in glass cabinets in the lobby of the Lido Isle Yacht Club bring to mind images of sailors with years of experience racing in sleek, streamlined boats.

The Admiral Sir Joseph Porter Regatta, going on this week, seems to fit in with such images — until you learn who Admiral Sir Joseph Porter was.

Phil Gautschi knows all about the admiral. That’s because as a teen serving on the board of the junior summer sailing program at the Lido Isle Yacht Club during the early 1970s, Gautschi and other teen board members made him up.

“We came up with the idea for a fun regatta, which is really all it was. It wasn’t for real serious sailors to go and beat the tar out of each other, because there was too much of that already,” Gautschi said. “We even made up the name Admiral Sir Joseph Porter to sound kind of regal and yet kind of mythical all at the same time.”

Gautschi, now 51 and a Lido Isle resident, added with a laugh, “I think we’re only just now being discovered.”

Yesterday was the first day of the three-day regatta, which takes place in the turning basin and includes more than 163 sailors ages 8 to 15 from five different yacht clubs in Newport Harbor as well as competitors from other clubs.

Gautschi’s children, Lauren and Ryan, have sailed in the race their dad helped create.

Lauren, who’s now 18, said she likes the race’s conclusion, because “they throw the winning kid in the water.”

Another regatta tradition: the Old Salt trophies: carved wood statues of peg-legged, pipe-smoking mariners wearing blue, black or yellow rain slickers.

Madelyn Koll-Bailey, 50, began sailing when she was just 5 years old. She participated in the first Admiral Sir Joseph Porter regatta in her early teens. All of her six children have also sailed in the race.

“There are many Old Salts in our house. I think there are six different ones, and we might have one of each. The kids love them so much, most of them at one point or another have taken them to school for Show and Tell,” Koll-Bailey said.

The current Sir Joseph Porter Regatta is somewhat different from the original race of the early 1970s. One important difference is that the event is highly competitive. Today’s sailors race with the hope of placing high enough to win an Old Salt and move into a higher-level class. Also unlike the original regatta, this year’s race will end Thursday, with a closing party in which competitors make their own sundaes and root beer floats, and then settle in for the trophy ceremony.

Regatta sailor Maxson Richley, 13, said that when the race is over, even if he hasn’t won a trophy or moved up in his class, “it’s pretty good to end the day with a root beer float.”