Boater dreams eyeing a storm

Newport Beach resident Wayne Chase has been mooring his boat in Newport Beach for the past 30 years, but he worries he’ll have to sell his 40-foot sailboat if the city raises mooring fees in Newport Harbor.

“I probably wouldn’t be able to continue boating,” Chase said, a member of the Newport Beach Mooring Assn. “My grandkids are the third generation in the family that has been boating out here. It’s something we all enjoy, but at some point it gets too expensive to continue.”

A recent city-commissioned study recommends raising offshore mooring fees in Newport Beach from $87 per lineal foot — a significant jump from the current $20 per lineal foot, or about a 435% increase.

“A huge amount of us on the harbor are retired and on fixed incomes,” Chase said. “That would just be too expensive for a lot of us.”

In a bid to recoup some of its expenses for keeping up its tidelands, Newport Beach commissioned the study to assess where fees could be raised.

The city spent about $21.8 million on a variety of tideland services like offering tours of tide pools in Corona del Mar, commercial pier permits and investigating incidents involving sea lions between 2006 and 2007, but the fund the city uses to pay for these services generated only about $8.1 million during the same period, according to the study.

The services end up being subsidized by the city’s general fund, the study found.

The study has provoked ire in the local boating community and the Newport Beach Mooring Assn. has attacked the methodology of the study.

“There’s an attitude within the city that boaters can afford anything — if you own a boat, the sky’s the limit,” Newport Beach resident Nigel Bailey said, who said he has been boating in Newport Harbor for the past 50 years. “But if you go and drive around, a lot of those boats are very minimal, little 25-foot sail boats that costs $3,000 or $4,000 they bought used.”

Bailey estimates that the mooring fees on his 44-foot sailboat in Newport Harbor would increase from about $1,000 a year to nearly $4,500 a year under the pricing suggested in the city’s latest study.

Bailey had hoped to enjoy sailing more when he retires in a few years, but now he questions whether he should sell his boat or buy a smaller one that he can haul away on the back of a truck if mooring fees go up.

“We’re just waiting for the other shoe to fall and then we’re have to decide what were going to do about it,” Bailey said.

Calls to Newport Beach Harbor Resources Manager Chris Miller and Assistant City Manager Dave Kiff were not immediately returned on Wednesday.

Reporter BRIANNA BAILEY may be reached at (714) 966-4625 or at brianna.bailey@latimes.com.