I attended the Viper 640 NAs the first week of September in Long Beach, California, with two goals, to enjoy myself and not have any collisions. I was really focused on the latter goal since the last regatta I went to over the summer I got a hole put in my boat below the waterline and had the boat out of commission for over a month. To the end of achieving the first goal I arranged to have Geoff Raymoure and his recently wed wife Sarah sail with me. There are no other people whose company I enjoy more so I felt good going into the event I should be able to achieve both goals.

For those unfamiliar with the Alamitos Bay area where the event was held, there is a long, narrow eyebrow of a breakwater a few miles offshore of the inshore area where all the boats live in a variety of moorage facilities. Sailing in Alamitos Bay is basically sailing in the Pacific Ocean with one direction of waves being mitigated as a result of this mile-long breakwater. The end result is pretty lumpy conditions if there’s wind, which there was in spades for this event. It blew in the high teens to 20 every day.

With 34 like boats competing, it was congested at the start and immediately thereafter. I failed in my second goat for the regatta during the first upwind leg of the first race and multiple times thereafter. I was hit and I hit others over and over again. In one case I was on port and ducking a starboard tack boat when my foot slipped the hiking strap. The result wasn't much of a collision, more a light brush fortunately, but was certainly embarrassing. The worst encounter was when I was on starboard and a port tacker hit me while out of control as we crossed and put a nasty long dent in my port quarter, ironically very close to where I was holed only a month or so previous in a very similar situation.

I also couldn’t get a good start for the entire regatta. My timidity at the starting line was well justified, but it didn’t keep me from getting tapped a few times. It was very frustrating not being able to force myself to press the front edge of the queue of boats as they lined up. The end result was finishes in the 20s.

On the third day we had the most wind we’d seen so far, a pretty solid 18-20. As we were finishing the last race, the spinnaker halyard parted and down came the spinnaker. That was probably the best timed event of the whole regatta for us. At some point during the racing I did something to my left wrist that bothered me throughout the day, but wasn’t debilitating. However, as we headed in, I put my full weight on it and just about jumped out of my skin from the pain that resulted. I iced it all that afternoon and evening, but it was still too tender to race the final day. Another bummer, when approaching my car I saw a dent someone had left while the car was parked. Nope, no note taking responsibility.

On the positive side, our accommodations were close to the yacht club and very nice. A good find on the VRBO site that Sarah discovered provided us with a pleasant home with a hot tub, big screen TV, and a nice kitchen that was walking distance to a nice variety of restaurants and not too far from the airport. The race management was great. I also won a new Ullman headsail in a raffle. That definitely helped assuage some of the impact of the boat, wrist, and car damage I suffered. Also the travel down to the event and back up was uneventful, definitely a good thing in this case.

So would I do it again if I had some foreknowledge of what was coming? Probably not, but that’s sailboat racing. You never know exactly what you’re in for.

Rafe Beswick, Dragonfly