Six years before retiring from her job as a high school principal, Judy Weightman was shopping for a timeshare when a friend suggested she’d be happier with a sailboat. Weightman had never sailed before, but the friend turned out to be right. Her Harbor 20, a sporty, compact yacht, has changed her life, she says — profoundly and for the better.

“The first thing I do every morning is check the direction of the wind,” Weightman says.

Weightman has found a close group of friends among her fellow sailors at the Balboa Yacht Club in Newport Beach. She loves getting out on the water, sometimes as often as four times a week, and is also a passionate volunteer — including managing the annual Harbor 20 Midsummer Regatta.

“It was a smashing event,” she said after the last race, in late July. “The weather was gorgeous, and we were the only ones sailing until some passenger boats came traipsing across our lines.”

More than a simple boat race, the Harbor 20 Midsummer Regatta in Newport Harbor reflects a slice of local history.

The boat was designed in Newport Beach in the mid-1990s, when the harbor’s recreational-boating culture was already overshadowing its roots as a shipyard and commercial fishing site. Sailing has been a constant, however, since 1922, when the Southland Sailing Club, later renamed the Balboa Yacht Club, was founded as a family-friendly enterprise initially based in a beach cottage on the Balboa Peninsula.

Some 70 years later, a group of local sailors went looking for a boat that could be easily managed without great skill and adapted to both solo sailing and family outings. “As the sailors were aging, they were looking for something they could sail in the harbor with their wives,” says Steve Schock, whose father, W.D. Bill Schock, had established a boatbuilding business in Newport just after World War II. Steve Schock created the design for the Harbor 20 and launched it in 1997.

The boat has several features that have made it particularly popular in Newport Beach. A major attraction is that it can be “wet-sailed” — kept in the water rather than hauled out and reassembled each time. Owners don’t have to worry about trailers and hoists; arriving at the dock, they need only uncover the boat, raise the mainsail and roll out the jib, saving time they’d rather spend on the water. An auxiliary motor makes it even more convenient, allowing for cruising, and the simplicity of the design makes it especially inclusive, attracting novices and experienced sailors alike.

The Harbor 20 is also unusually comfortable.

“Basically, you’re sitting on a couch,” says Balboa Yacht Club Commodore Keith Duarte. “You’re sailing a couch.”

The BYC hosts several annual events, including offshore races such as the Governor’s Cup, one day after the midsummer regatta, and the Wooden Boat Festival, which last took place in June.

Still, there’s something special about the Midsummer Harbor 20 Regatta — especially for the participants. CRC Marinas, a division of Irvine Company, which owns 475 slips in four Newport Harbor locations, recognized that this year by distributing tote bags emblazoned with logos for the Harbor 20, the yacht club and CRC. The bags were a small token of the support CRC provides to all boaters using the facilities year-round, says Greg Sinks, CRC’s general manager.

“Our mission is to make the boating experience as effortless as possible, which is what the Newport Beach demographic wants,” Sinks says. That includes maintaining the docks in pristine condition and having dockhands a phone call away, seven days a week, to help boat owners load and unload their vessels.

The convenience and comfort enhance getting out on the water for Weightman and her fellow sailors. “It’s such a giant harbor that there’s lots of opportunity for casual sailing during the year,” she says. “So we’ll sail the course and then end up at someone’s yacht club or house or a picnic spot, where we drink and talk and eat. You don’t have to be a great sailor; you just need to know how to sail.”

At the midsummer regatta, competitors joined in five short races. After a three-minute countdown of beeps from a squawk box, small clusters of the sailboats — with cheery names including Dolce Viento, Upbeat and Whim — took off for brief circuits within Newport Harbor. Weightman, who sailed with a skipper friend, says she didn’t earn a high score but didn’t particularly care because, “You don’t have to win to have fun.”

Weightman named her boat Amazing Grace, an homage to what she described as her trust that everything works out somehow, on the water. “If things aren’t going well, you just swing the tiller the other way, and then you go in the right direction,” she says.