Where have you been?

The Queen Mary Regatta is an event hosted by the Redondo Beach and Shoreline Yatch Clubs. The race is from just off Redondo Beach to the bow of the Queen Mary which is moored in Long Beach harbor. In all the race covers about 23 nautical miles. There are several classes of ships, some of which are actual race boats that use this race to prepare for the longer Newport to Ensenada race.

If I remember correctly this was my first time in "real" open ocean on a sail boat. The Beer Can races were all relatively close to shore - if things went pear shaped I could always just swim in. In this race, however, we were much further out to sea and the nearest coastline was not always that welcoming. An example is shore just below Point Vicente Lighthouse shown above.


Fortunately we were always in visible contact with the shore which was at least a bit comforting. We didn't actually need GPS guidance but it helped. Pluse it was cool to chart our progress and try to maximize our speed.


I could not imagine sailing in the days of sextants where you just wanderd about guessing where you were. Thanks to technology we only needed the binoculars to watch our competition and try and see where the best wind might be. Here is (finally) a photo of our captain steering us home and his girlfriend watching for better wind.