This momentous day dawned bright and early in Palm Desert, California located

in the beautiful Coachella Valley that includes the cities of Palm Springs,

Rancho Mirage, Indian Wells, and La Quinta. The Lakes Y/C Commodore Marvin

Rosenberg with the help of Rear Commodore Chuck McNeil had laid out the

course on one of the larger of the 23 lakes at the Country Club. For weeks

the members had met every Sunday, 3:00 PM at the appointed lake to practice

starting proceedures, port rounding of the windward and leeward marks with

sometimes a fierce wind or maybe 3 to 4 MPH. In fact our standard nighttime

prayer was to ask for decent winds available for the upcoming inaugural race

with the San Diego Y/C. The Lakes Y/C was founded on July 1, 2000 with the

approval of the Club Board of Directors. There are 12 members who have

either made their boats from kits, purchased complete boats from the

distributors, or in the process of being constructed. For this regatta there

were 5 very complete and race ready CR 914 models.

Many phone calls and e-mails between Marv Rosenberg and Commordore Sandy

Purdon of the SD Y/C assured that all the details would fall in place. San

Diego was able to bring 2 members up from the south and both Sandy Purdon and

Tom Healy were ready to go. There was a small semi-pro golf match arranged

the day before the race between Marvin, Chuck, Sandy and Jim. It's too bad

that the golf finals were not a mirror image of the regatta results.

Normally, there is not much wind in the summer, in fact sometimes for days on

end there is barely a whisper. Sunday, the day of this regatta was a day

that the Good Lord blessed the racers with a whoppiing gale of 20 MPH with

gusts to 30 MPH. To say that this breeze was overwhelming would be the

understatement of the year. Just think, for 6 months there was hardly more

than 3 to 4 MPH and now this typhoon appears on the scene. All of the racers

were hardly able to cope with this new development. We had boats that were

flooded which knocked out the batteries, boats that submarined on the down

wind legs, and boats that were knocked down frequently on the tacks. As a

result many of the servos stopped working.

There were over 50 spectators at the scene. Ice water and cold drinks were

furnished to all the people and many had brought their portable chairs and

golf carts. There was a very large American Flag on a staff from Chick

McNeils golf cart that was in the straight out position at all times. There

were three heats starting at 4:00PM and each heat was won by the same person.

Thie final results were determined by the only three boats that were able to

finish the last race. The time keepers had trouble reading the sail numbers

as most of the time there were in a near prone position due to the heavy

winds.

All of the racers and their guests were hosted to a beautiful cocktail party

at the home of R/C Chuck and Janet McNeil. The winning trophies were

presented as follows: Sandy Purdon (3 first places) FIRST PLACE, Buzz Radoff

SECOND PLACE, and Bob Burgess THIRD PLACE.

All inquiries should be addressed to Commodore Marvin Rosenberg, 181 Wild

Horse Dr.,Palm Desert, CA, 92211, (760) 568 6177, N6ijz@aol.com.

(Pictures to follow via snail mail)