STARS AND STROKES

Dana Outrigger Canoe Club to represent the U.S. at the World Championships in Samoa

BY ZACH CAVANAGH

The ocean has a rhythm.

The ebb and flow of the tide, the buildup and crashing of the waves, the push and pull of the currents. For six members of the Dana Outrigger Canoe Club, they’ll have to be in town so far from Los Angeles and San Diego.

One of his plans that never happened was an oceanfront resort.

The original map of San Clemente shows a 12-acre parcel of land just above where T-Street is today. Ole Hanson was sure that the hotel would be built even after the stock market crash in 1929 that led to The Great Depression.

He had an architect draw up the design. It would have been a two-story, 100-room Spanish Colonial Revival-style resort surrounded by 12 cottages.

Two grand wide avenues with greenbelts, Esplanade and Avenida Valencia would lead all the way down to the beach and to the resort location.

All of the buildings that Ole Hanson built helped give San Clemente everything that it needed to be a town, but the one missing item that a small oceanfront town might have was a beachside resort that would attract vacationers from around the world.

Ironically, Dana Point also had plans for a resort hotel on the bluffs. The Great Depression ended those plans as well. The hotel began construction but was never finished. which is a Spanish Colonial Revival structure that opened in 1926. In Santa Monica, Shutters on the Beach was built in 1926 in the Craftsman style. In Pacific Grove, the Asilomar Resort and Conference Center was built between 1913 and 1928. touch with that rhythm of the ocean and the rhythm of their fellow paddlers as they paddle more than 6,000 strokes at the 2023 International Va’a Federation World Distance Championships on Aug. 14 in Samoa.

Today, there is an arched concrete ruin that has been preserved, but no hotel was ever completed.

San Clemente might have been a very different town if the resort had been built.

The team of six—John Skorstad of San Clemente, Allan Horn of San Juan Capistrano, Tim Hamchuk of Laguna Beach, Duane Vroom and Greg Mount of Laguna Niguel, and Glenn Norwood of Tustin—will represent the United States in the six-man Master 60 division in the 16-kilometer race around Apia Harbor in Samoa. The Dana Outrigger team qualified by winning the U.S. Championships last year at Catalina Island.

The team of 60- to 70-year-olds will face competition from Australia, New Zealand, New Caledonia, Hawaii, Canada, Germany and Brazil.

“We’re going up against the world’s best,” Hamchuk said. “It’s going to be pretty cool to see the different caliber of paddlers there.”

There is a varied amount of experience among Dana Outrigger’s six paddlers, from Horn’s 37 years paddling and several world championship trips

Historical Happenings

BY CHRINSTINE LAMPERT

Several other California towns during the same era had large beachfront resorts. Hotel Del Coronado in Corona was an example of a resort built in 1896, which still stands today and has brought millions of visitors to Corona.

In La Jolla, there is La Valencia Hotel,

Christine Lampert is a member of the San Clemente Historical Society, as well as the American Institute of Architects (AIA,) and has designed many projects in San Clemente and in California. She has been a professor of architecture at USC, OCC and SCAD Hong Kong. She and her family have lived in San Clemente for more than 46 years. SC

From The Archives

First-, second-, and third-grade students at San Clemente Grammar School pose for their school picture in 1935. This photo can be purchased from the San Clemente Historical Society at sanclementehistoricalsociety.org.

to retired firefighter Vroom’s four years paddling. Despite any of those differences in paddling experience, every member of the group has some water sport background, and they’ve come together to form a working team.

“We’ve been practicing really well together,” Skorstad said. “You’ve got to find the right mix of people to put them in the right seats in the boat so things will work optimally. If you can get the boat running as finely tuned as you can, that’s a really good feeling.”

While some took up the sport for their health and others for the competitive spirit, that feeling of accomplishment is shared among them, as they all put in their amount of sweat equity into each outing.

“I think they’re all events that you take pride in,” Hamchuk said. “You’re experiencing it with five other people, and in some of the other stuff that we’ve done, like the Molokai Crossing from Molokai to Oahu, you’re out there with 12 guys swapping through on a 36mile journey competitively. After you’re done, you’re so fulfilled that you’re able to accomplish this at this age. I look back at my dad when he was 62, and there’s no way he’d have been able to do this.”

That group experience is tantamount to the success on an outrigger canoe. Whether it’s that 36-mile Molokai Crossing, 16 kilometers in Samoa or a few laps around Dana Point Harbor, every member of the team has to be in lockstep with each other, feeling that rhythm from the crew and the ocean.

“You don’t really know your miles, because you’re not really gauging that,” Hamchuk said of the distance races. “You’re so in tune with the guy in front of you to make sure you’re not missing a stroke, because every stroke that you miss could be three or four seconds.”

Like the pioneering Polynesians in outrigger canoes thousands of years before them, traversing the same waters they’ll compete on in August, the members of the Dana Outrigger Canoe Club tap into that “Aloha Spirit” and “Ohana” wherever they go with a paddle.

“The ocean is our happy place,” Vroom said. “We get to be out there and run with whales and pods of dolphin. It’s pretty spectacular, especially in the early mornings. It’s peaceful. It’s a very Zen-like feeling.” SC

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DENTISTS

Benjamin Stevens, D.D.S. 3553 Camino Mira Costa, Suite B, San Clemente, 949.493.2391, benstevensdds.com

Eric Johnson, D.D.S. 647 Camino de los Mares, Ste. 209, San Clemente, 949.493.9311, drericjohnson.com

Arcadia Electric 949.361.1045,