Report by Rich Roberts
Whether Christmas is just for kids is arguable, but the day after played to the younger set in Alamitos Bay Yacht Club’s zephyr-plagued 10th annual Boxing Day Race Saturday.
The event is traditionally raced on the Saturday between Christmas and New Year’s Day, but this year it actually happened on Dec. 26, as celebrated throughout the United Kingdom, and was made memorable by its youngest winner, Steven Hopkins, 14 years, and youngest competitor, William Flam, 6 months.
You read that right. The latter made his racing debut as the youngest of three generations on the family Cal 20, along with his grandfather Barney, ABYC friend Ron Wood and William’s dad Steve at the tiller with the kid on his lap, bundled up in blue on a wind-starved but chilly afternoon.
“He has to start sometime,” Steve Flam said.
They finished only 26th among the 47 starters but second among a handful of Cal 20s in the event that is sailed inside on Alamitos Bay as a casual sort of interlude in ABYC’s busy year-round schedule. It’s a pursuit race, meaning that the slowest-rated boats—the Naples Sabots—started an hour and 4 minutes ahead of the fastest, a Formula 18 catamaran sailed by ABYC’s Olympic silver medalists, Jay and Pease Glaser.
Oddly, they finished 1-2.
Places are determined by the order of boats when the predetermined time runs out, in this case at 3:30 p.m., 2 hours 17 minutes after the first start.
By that time, Hopkins’ Sabot was a couple of hundred yards ahead of the Glasers in second place—pretty good handicapping, especially given the quirky conditions offered by frustrating winds of 1 to 3 knots shifting around the compass. The start was below the tower at the entrance to the ABYC basin marina.
Hopkins said, “I had an OK start, but when I was getting down there [to the first mark off Long Beach YC] the wind was shifting and I thought, ‘This isn’t good,’ since I usually don’t do well in light winds.”
He did fine. Although his comfortable lead at the first weather mark appeared in jeopardy when he stalled out downwind in the incoming current, he soon was able to tack free of the stream. For the rest of the race, even when the breeze became steady, though still light, no other boats threatened his lead.
Hopkins, who sails on the local Wilson High School team, was introduced to sailing by his grandfather, Joe D’Amico, a veteran Lido 14 and Finn campaigner who lives in Sequim, Wash. D’Amico taught Steven, according to his dad Ginn, that “anybody can sail in heavy wind, but it takes a good sailor to win in light wind.”
Even when you’re racing a slower boat against Olympic silver medalists.
Top finishers
1. Steven Hopkins, Alamitos Bay YC, Naples Sabot.
2. Pease and Jay Glaser, ABYC, Formula 18 catamaran.
3. Dan Gilboa/John Gresham, ABYC, Lido 14.
4. Bruce Golison, ABYC, Lido 14.
5. Bill Johnson, Cabrillo Beach YC, Admiralty 30