Gran DIllusion gets beat by a bunch of kids!

Yup. It's true. We got beat! While one of my skipper friends (who, as he later admitted, chose to sit this series out because he found light wind sailing too frustrating) disparaged their victory, which he attributed to the light weight race boat (Santana 20), and the light weight of the crew (ages 8-14) I shall give them full credit for an outstanding sail. They must have been good students in learning how to race their relatively tiny pram dinghies -Sabots-which they mostly race inside the Marina, and even just inside our narrow Basin G, and they were certainly mentored brilliantly by their instructors...and..my gosh...they're prodigies! We chose to sail with our #3, the smallest foresail. For one thing, our largest sail, the #1 Genoa deck sweeper, is a bit unsafe because now the the Venture MacGregor Fleet Tuesday Nite Trials, with it's Pacific Mariner's Yacht Club sponsorship race is attracting so many new competitors, and it blocks the forward view completely from 12 to nearly 3 O'clock, it's dangerous to sail in close quarters of the main channel with other boats coming at us from all directions without having an extra sharp lookout aboard. Also, we'd accidentally left the jib sheets-its control lines- that go with that sail in a pail of fresh water back at the house to rinse out the dirt and salt, since we'd used it as a tow line after Saturday's lost wind regatta. But mainly, I thought the small sail might actually work best in light wind as, unlike the Genoa, its chord is too short to get caught and tangled up in the mast spreaders. Our turn to the start got fouled and delayed a crowd of boats headed toward the starting area, including boats that shouldn't have been there since their start was five minutes later, and after turning around for the start line, the wind was so friggin' light that our boat wouldn't accelerator beyond drift speed. Altho late across the start line, at least we were still high on the course, tho it is skewed to put boats low on the line well ahead. The trade off is, tho the breath of a breeze wasn't blocked by other bigger boat's sails to windward, it was significantly by the new tall condos on the opposite, upwind side of the channel. The boats below had more wind shown by the roughness vs. glossyness of the water surface where we were, and steadily pulled away from us. Aarghh! Besides our normal competitors, we could see ahead of us was one of the two small Santana 20 of the Santa Monica Windjammer's "Junior" fleet. They had gotten a good start, crossing the line with speed at the horn blast, at the middle of the line, and in a patch of wind shown by the ripples on the water. The bigger boats that were ahead, the race captain's Catalina 27 "Maine Squeeze" and Joe Cowan's "Crossfire" by half way to the windward mark, were now following the little boat in parade formation. The kids were giving the 'old salts' a sailing lesson. We were all ghosting along, the sun having set, and we were all sailing in darkening twilight. Once again, as in the previous weeks race, by the time we arrived at the shorten course windward mark, we were far behind, and as we finally rounded the first "NO SAIL" buoy on the south side of the channel, we did so in painfully slow motion, and a big power boat coming down the channel politely slowed nearly to a stop to give us 'sailboat's right-of-way'. After rounding, we spread our sails wing and wing, and sailed in chase of the leaders in our Group A who had a good distance lead on us. And this time-DRAT!- we weren't catching a magic breeze like we had the week before allowing us to play catch up. It didn't look good, as our sails hung limp and lifeless. But after ten or so minutes, I looked up at the masthead swiveling wind-tel arrow and noticed the wind-what little we had- was now nearly broadside, and coming from the north-our left side-, and I told Eric to bring the jib over to the right side of the boat, on the same side as the mains'l, and we picked up speed as shown by the ripple-sized bow wave. WE WERE SLOWLY CATCHING UP TO THE FLEET!...Ok. We rather whispered it to ourselves rather than shouted it, as we noticed the other boats hadn't caught on to the change in the wind direction... yet. We took a risk of having our new found wind being smothered by the north sides structures and trees, choosing the shortest route, and made a B-line for the finish line as we could take a fix on the row lights from the Del Rey Hotel in the distance, while the other boats were hugging the Mariner's Village side of the channel, where they would expect more wind as it was further from all the wind obstructions on the north side. As we gradually closed the distance to the others, we saw Joe's big Cal 36 nearly dead in the water. He'd lost so much of his little speed that his rudder could no longer holding steerage, as I could see his bow was now pointing at the UCLA boat docks instead of down the course, and after leaving him behind, he announced on the radio that he was abandoning the race. It was an ironic turn of events, given he'd gotten so far ahead of me on Saturday's Halloween Race only three days before. But Joe was not alone. More and more boats radioed in their abandonment, especially boats in the "performance class" that had started five minutes before and had to make it all the way out to the vicinity of the breakwater's NO SAIL buoy windward mark, and then return, as well as a few of the boats in the Cruiser B class that had started five minutes behind us, tho they had an even shorter course to sail than ours. As I approached the fleet I heard one of the big excursion vessels docked at Mariner's Village blasting it's powerful ship's horn over and over again, to warn our small approaching fleet of its intention to back out into the main channel. Apparently he saw our racing boats as just a nuisance to his charter schedule, and we should all...what?..abandon our race, turn on our motors, and get out of his royal way? In reply, I shouted "BEEP BEEP BEEEP" as loud as I could, back in jest. After pulling even, but still some distance to the side of the fleet I noticed our mainsail boom no longer wanted to stay swung out to the right, and wanted to center itself in line with the cockpit. And the shape of the jib was inverted. Could that mean there was just no wind at all? Using the flashlight beam I lit up the wind tell on the masthead, and to my surprise I saw the wind direction had reversed 180 degrees and was now blowing from the east, and we brought the main and jib over to the port side of the boat to take advantage of this. Again, it seemed the other boats hadn't caught on to the major wind shift. And their proximity to the tall peaked roof New England style buildings of the Village, and built up close up against the water, was interfering with the whisper wind and now must have been working to their disadvantage. We pulled away and thought we were now safely ahead. By then, as we left the village behind and approached the park, the Excursion Ship had pulled out of it's berth and was slowly puttering along it's shore, matching our speed, parking itself 100 feet up wind of us, and it's multi-story height was about to entirely block all our wind. I began to shout at him to speed up and get out of our way. He wasn't about to hear from us shouting "BEEP BEEP, HURRY UP, GET OUT OF OUR WAY", and kept going at his putzy pace, and getting the last laugh on us! Faced with the choice of holding our course, stalling out, and being left dead in the water, or doing SOMETHING, we chose to turn almost 90 degree right, directly towards the park and try to pull in behind him, out of his wind shadow, but now to be stuck behind him as he was going even slower than we were...and now all the boats behind, heading straight for the finish line, were now hot on our heels and overtaking us. And then, 100 yards from the finish comes "Sunshine" a J91 speedster from the Performance Class, gliding along and overtaking us, and...alas...about to take all our wind in the process. Luckily, we held him off just long enough, tho he pulled ahead and passed just as we both crossed the line, and got the finish horn just seconds apart. Whew! But as we'd just crossed the finish, I glanced around and could see, off to my left, having already passed and now loitering the finish line center channel "pin" buoy, awaiting for the club's inflatable to tow them in, the 'kids' on their Santana 20, jabbering away and laughing in their imitation ghetto slang. Me thinks: "They must have beat us!" Sigh...and a sudden embarrassing deflation right after our bubble burst of joy. Normally a down wind run, we now tacked up our Basin G and into our slip with the last breath of wind, then tied up the boat, lowered the sails, to put the boat to bed, a necessary shore of this pastime. We are getting better at figuring out how to roll up our new mainsail into a tube, not easy, because the way it's built with a bolt rope, the whole sail must come off the mast when you take it down, but we've discovered it's easier than trying to evenly flake it from side to side atop the boom as we take it down.... but maybe we'll eventually figure out how to do that more easily as well. But by the time we arrived at the the Pacific Mariner's Yacht Club a drive all the way around to the opposite side of the marina, the parking lot was full, and we had to park almost half way down the mole, passed the stretched out, newly built and fully occupied tall condo structure-strictures, about 200 yards away. Eric was so exhausted by then he elected to stay in the van and go to sleep, while I hiked down to the club. Being the last race of a series it was cook your own crowd around the BBQs "STEAK NIGHT" again. 1 lb. each (!) steaks for a $7 premium over our normal $5 dinner (which was a huge baked potato with every imaginable trimming, with a heaping Caesars salad and deserts. Our race captain, The club's orator rang the cow bell then gave an announcement, gracing the Race Committee, volunteers preparing the feast, then race captain Mike McKinsey, having completed the calculations for the results, went thru the litany of placers and winners of each division, accompanied by applause. First place for the Performance class, went to the boat who caught us at the finish line, who not often wins but always preservers "Sunshine". Class B went to, and also not often winner, the green hulled Olympic sloop "Seedwings". Last to be announced was our group, Class A, and we took second place behind the children in "Goat". LOTS OF WELL DESERVED CHEERS AND APPLAUSE FROM ALL! Then, as it was race 5, the last race of final Series 6, he ran through the total scores of the boats to determine the series winners. Again, last to be announced was Class A. Captain Mike's boat "Main Squeeze, with 26 total points (one point for every boat you 'beat' depending on the total boats competing in each race, minus the lowest scored race, totaled), second place; and, with 27 points, "Gran Dillusion"! HOORAY!...And lots of cheers and later, many congratulations and well done's as fellow racers came by my table. Thank you thank you, thank you! And thank YOU for reading this drivel. After all is done and said, isn't it just a 'grand delusion'...anyway? Gerald Sobel Gran dIllusion, Cal24-Mk1