Welcome aboard to Newport Beach, California. Here is a beginner’s pilot guide to the basics of Newport Beach, focusing on the harbor and surrounding area. Remember — land was created to provide a place for boats to visit, so let me know in the comments which port you would like me to highlight next. Newport Beach is in Orange County, just south of Los Angeles, and Newport Harbor is considered one of the largest pleasure boating harbors in the United States — making it a great destination for a visit or the perfect place to make your home port. For more harbor guides, check out the rest of the channel.
The History of Newport Harbor
Newport Beach was first mapped by Juan Cabrillo in the 1540s, though it took another 200 years before Europeans settled the area. Modern Newport Harbor really started in the late 1800s when James McFadden created a commercial port where the Newport Pier stands today — the largest business in Orange County at the time. That port declined once the US government built the Port of LA and San Pedro in 1899, and developers began dreaming of a residential harbor instead. The city was incorporated in 1906, the same year that the Balboa Pavilion and Balboa Pier were finished. The Pacific Electric Railway extended into Newport Peninsula from Los Angeles to bring in tourism, the sandbar-riddled harbor was dredged, and the islands that exist today were created from the sand and silt.
Harbor Layout
Newport Harbor is made up of two sections — the Upper Newport Bay, also called the Back Bay, which is a nature preserve, and the Lower Newport Bay, which is the harbor area. Each is about three miles long, divided by Pacific Coast Highway. One of the defining characteristics of Newport is that Pacific Coast Highway moves inland and does not cross over the harbor entrance, meaning no bridge constricts the height or size of vessels able to enter — a big reason Newport is such a popular boating harbor.
The Back Bay used to be a water sports area without a speed limit but is now a nature conservancy. It is really only popular for boaters accessing the Newport Dunes launch ramp. When transiting, stay between the channel markers — the water is not fully dredged and it is a popular spot to run aground. The crown jewel is the lower harbor, which consists of eight islands over a three-mile stretch of waterway, protected by an equally long peninsula shielding it from the Pacific. Most of these land masses are filled with single-family homes, which limits commercial marinas and preserves the water for sailing and transiting. Instead of large marinas, Newport uses a mooring system with 12 fields and two anchorages, allowing the harbor to hold around 14,000 boats.
Hazards and Navigation
Those mooring fields should be transited carefully because individuals maintain their own moorings. It is not uncommon for floating lines to drift and foul a vessel’s propeller, so stay in the marked channels unless you know the area. Water depth is not a huge factor to most boaters, but once you leave the federally marked channel, areas near shore can become quite shallow.
Newport’s harbor entrance is one of the safest due to its large West Jetty. The Army Corps of Engineers built the jetties in the 1930s — before that, surfers rode waves all the way into the harbor, which was great for surfers but terrible for boaters. The creation of the West Jetty also created one of the most famous surf spots in the region — The Wedge, an accidental man-made break that occurs during large south swells when waves bounce off the jetty and double in size. Not particularly hazardous to boaters, but boats have been known to miss the entrance at night, so when entering in low visibility make sure you are between both jetties.
Weather and Swells
Swells are primarily from the northwest, funneling between Catalina Island and Palos Verdes. In summer, southern swells from Mexico bring warm water and the best fishing of the year. Winds mimic the swell pattern, blowing from the northwest in the afternoons and peaking around 15 to 20 knots on stronger days. In the fall, Santa Anas bring hot strong offshore winds above 30 knots, though the coastal terrain tends to keep the wind off the water and create flat sections near shore.
Resources and Visiting
Newport has a wide variety of boating resources for those willing to pay — dock space is typically double to triple the cost of neighboring harbors, and that trend snowballs into every aspect of the harbor’s services. Newport Harbor has four shipyards, two fuel docks, and about a dozen yacht clubs. If you are a member of a club with reciprocal privileges, contacting one of the yacht clubs is your best bet for a slip.
Transiting dockage is difficult to come by, but the city has been working on it. You can stay at the Marina Park facilities with docks for up to 55-foot vessels at roughly 90 dollars a night — holiday weekends book up fast. Another option is renting a mooring from the city at about a dollar fifty a foot per night, using one of the 12 public dinghy docks to get to shore. Those dinghy docks are handy because many have space to leave your tender. You can also anchor in one of the anchorages, but you are not supposed to leave your vessel. For trailering, the Newport Dunes Marina north of Pacific Coast Highway is a private launch ramp with boat storage and wash-down stations — and it is the only launch ramp in Newport Harbor.
Things to Do
Newport Beach is central to Laguna Beach, Catalina, and the Port of Long Beach. Laguna is the best day trip — anchor up in Emerald Bay about four miles down the coast. Inside the harbor there are bars and restaurants offering dock-and-dine experiences, and you can cruise the entire harbor in about two hours. Sailors can join weeknight regattas during summer. On shore, Balboa Island has shops and the peninsula has miles of boardwalks. The two piers are the main tourism zones, and across from the Balboa Pier is the Fun Zone with a ferris wheel, parasailing, and whale watching. The Balboa Ferry shuttles cars and people to and from Balboa Island. If you are in town over Christmas, catch one of the biggest boat parades in the nation — Wednesday to Sunday the week before Christmas, over 110 years running, with around 100 decorated vessels going around the harbor together.
Newport Harbor comes highly recommended to anybody considering a trip to Southern California. Thank you for sailing with us.
