For 40 years, Duncan McIntosh focused on all things nautical, publishing magazines about fishing and boating, and running boat shows in three coastal California cities.

In 2010, he diverged and dipped his toe into journalism when he acquired the 100-year-old industry magazine Editor & Publisher.

This month he made another pivot, when he became the owner and publisher of OC Weekly, an alternative magazine he’d had his sights on for two years.

“I’m just this guy trying to make a living in the boat business,” McIntosh said. “Every once in a while, I make a right turn or left turn.”

Originally from Long Beach, McIntosh attended Wilson High School and Cal State Long Beach. While in Long Beach, he started working as a boat dealer and moved to Newport Beach in the 1970s.

At that time he and a few friends started a boat show to boost sales. In 1973, the Newport Boat Show was born. Six years later, he incorporated Duncan McIntosh Co. Since then, McIntosh has added boat shows in Del Mar and Long Beach in addition to the two he has in Newport Beach, and became publisher of Sea Magazine, Boating World, The Log Newspaper and FishRap.

McIntosh, 64, works out of a small office in Irvine, where a cheerful 13-year-old wheaten terrier named Bob greets visitors. Bright photos of ocean life line the hallway, and cubbyholes at the front desk are filled with miniature maritime signal flags.

In January last year, Voice Media Group announced OC Weekly was up for sale. McIntosh contacted the broker and signed a nondisclosure agreement. But after three weeks of mulling it over, he realized he was too busy with his boat shows. The timing wasn’t right. In August, he revisited the idea. Negotiations were contentious, and it took four months to iron out the details.

“It was like running uphill, negotiating every point,” McIntosh said.

OC Weekly is a free weekly publication distributed to bars and restaurants in Orange County and Long Beach with a print circulation of 45,000. The weekly’s website traffic, however, was one of the main selling points for McIntosh. The publication’s editor, Gustavo Arellano, estimated the paper gets more than 1 million unique visitors and page views each month.

“We’d kill for it in the boat business,” McIntosh said. “Here we don’t have to kill for it.”

On Feb. 5, Voice Media Group announced the sale. In buying the weekly, McIntosh becomes the 20-year-old weekly’s first local publisher in at least nine years.

McIntosh’s arrival as the paper’s new publisher caught Arellano by surprise.

“When we first heard that Duncan was going to buy us, my mind was boggled. A guy from Newport? A yacht guy? Is he going to shut us down? Is he going to make us report fluff?” Arellano said.

But meeting with McIntosh quelled some of his worries. “He strikes me as a man of his word. He doesn’t strike me as a Newport Beach Brahmin, the type easily offended. … He likes our coverage.”

“We’re cautiously optimistic,” Arellano said of his editorial team.

The first matter of business for the paper’s new publisher will be to find a permanent home for the publication.

During the sale process last year, OC Weekly’s 30-person staff split up. Business operations moved into a shared workspace in Costa Mesa. Editorial staffers were told to work from home. In October, Arellano opened his personal office space to the editorial staff, creating a tight, informal newsroom in Santa Ana.

Arellano and McIntosh are looking for a location in central Orange County, but wouldn’t say where.

McIntosh plans to give the editorial department free rein to introduce or kill features so long as the paper hits revenue targets. Arellano has already introduced a feature, an editorial cartoon called “Orange Feathers.”

“If something makes sense for them to do, and they hit their numbers, they can do it,” McIntosh said.

There are no plans to change the magazine’s staffing.

“I think they’ve got really good people from what I can see,” McIntosh said. “We’ll just help them do their job.”

Contact the writer: lwilliams@ocregister.com, 714-796-2286