Dave Grant doesn’t sail the ocean blue like he used to, but there are few anywhere, on land or sea, who can spin tales of voyages quite like him.
Whether it’s sailing or rowing, Grant is a master among the waves and knows the deep history of both like a true professor.
President Emeritus at Orange Coast College, Grant is in a class by himself, having sailed or rowed enough times to have circumvented the world more than once.
The Orange Coast College Rowing Center along Mariners Mile on West Coast Highway in Newport Beach is named for Grant. He dazzled the Tackling Sports forum last month at the Oasis Senior Center in Newport Beach, providing fascination, lore and insight into the origins of discovering the world by sea and the unique vessels used by the first explorers.
Here’s a small sample:
*“People in the Philippines didn’t know there were any other people on earth,” Grant said, referring to the Portuguese navigator Ferdinand Magellan’s 1521 European discovery of the Southeast Asian islands.
*“Fifty years before the pilgrims, there were (Native Americans) who could speak some English, and to prove it (to English explorer Francis Drake) one of them asked for a beer,” Grant quipped.
*“At the time of the (Norwegian) Vikings (initial explorations) to Iceland and Greenland, they would have a team of 25 ships, but only 13 made it. It was a pretty dangerous business,” Grant added.
*“The Chinese explored before (Christopher) Columbus and they sailed 30,000 miles to the Persian Gulf, Somalia and the South Pacific. (Chinese exploration) ended in 1430,” Grant said.
*“Navigating was hard, because there were no maps. Typically, learned people like Columbus knew the earth was round. But you didn’t know how (the ocean) was going to lead you,” Grant said. “Usually, you were very lucky to actually get to where you wanted to go.”
Grant, a member of Newport Harbor High School Hall of Fame and Intercollegiate Sailing Hall of Fame, put OCC on the global map through his sailing and crew programs.
Grant, who received the U.S Rowing Medal of Honor for his work with the U.S. Olympic Rowing team, sailed a 28-sloop to Hawaii, Samoa, Fiji and New Caledonia, retracing some of the routes of Capt. James Cook.
He has sailed extensively in New Zealand and Australia, having competed in the Sydney-Hobart yacht race several times, circumnavigated New Zealand’s South Island aboard OCC’s sloop Alaska Eagle, as well as sailing with that vessel in the Society Islands and through much of Northern Europe.
Grant has sailed amongst the Galapagos Islands, through the Straits of Magellan and was a member of an expedition to South Georgia Island, 1,500 miles east of Cape Horn, and has competed in several Trans Pacific and Mexican yacht races.
In 1989, he climbed with a team to the 19,240-foot summit of Mount Kilimanjaro in Africa.
In addition to serving as a dean and president at OCC, Grant has been coaching rowing at the college for most of his adult life, fitting in those early morning hours before his “real job” on campus. During his tenure, the Pirates have become a formidable rowing power in the U.S. His crews have won numerous championships and have competed many times at the Henley Royal Regatta in England.
OCC was the first American college crew to be invited to race in the People’s Republic of China (1985), and Grant also coached rowing for elite Chinese oarsmen for a summer in Shanghai.
Grant was asked his most harrowing adventure on the high seas, and replied: “We were some place and we went swimming, because the water was calm. But that’s not a great thing to do, because the boat started moving away from us. It was a lesson learned never to do that again. There are always currents, even though you can’t see it.”
Grant, an Orange Coast administrator for 34 years, was named the college’s president in 1989 and served in that role through 1997.
Richard Dunn, a longtime sportswriter, writes the Dunn Deal column regularly for The Orange County Register’s weekly, The Coastal Current North.
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