On the water: Kids learn water safety

It’s easy to take the ocean for granted living in the Newport-Mesa area, where the smell and sound of the sea floats in with the breeze.

But not for a group of about 20 children who call the Costa Mesa Motor Inn on Harbor Boulevard home.

The children live month-to-month, crammed into one room with their family, and the only body of water they see usually is in the over-chlorinated pool outside their temporary home.

Some of the area’s more-privileged residents have banded together to give these kids a nautical experience they won’t soon forget.

Longtime Balboa Yacht Club member Alan Oleson joined with Mariners Church in Irvine, Rock Harbor Church in Costa Mesa and the Orange County Sheriff’s Harbor Patrol to set up a day of water safety and enjoyment.

At 11 a.m. Saturday, volunteers from both churches will bring the youngsters, ages 7 to 14, down to the shores of Newport Harbor for a crash course from the Harbor Patrol.

Sheriffs will cover all of their training and responsibilities in protecting the harbor.

Harbor Patrol deputies work as fully trained officers and rescue workers, and often fight fires at sea. A dive team on site has worked underwater search, rescue and recovery operations during many emergencies in the harbor.

Harbor Patrol deputies have 480 hours of navigational training as well as marine fire-fighting, heavy-weather rescue boat operations and advanced first aid.

“They are going to pull a red fireboat up to the dock, talk with the kids and tell them what they do,” Oleson said. “It gives the children a positive experience with law enforcement.”

The kids may even get to see the onboard fire hose in action.

The yacht club will provide lunch at noon. Then the real fun begins as three 40- to 45-foot yachts take the kids out on the water.

“We let them pull the lines and steer the boat,” Oleson said. “We let them participate as much as they can. “They just get out there and go wild.”

It’s such a change for some of these kids, some who have never seen the ocean before, said Russ Beauchamp, a volunteer coordinator at Rock Harbor.

Once a month Rock Harbor’s volunteers bring food and clothing to the people living at the motel.

Some families have resided there nearly seven years, Beauchamp said. They move out every 28 days and then moved back sometimes the following day.

Living in such a manner really deprives the kids of a sense of community, Oleson said.

“To some point … I am thankful that I am blessed with what I do have and sad that they don’t have what the rest of us have in Orange County,” Beauchamp said.