Club to Sponsor Olympic Racing

More than 120 championship sailors will participate in the Olympic Classes Regatta on three Olympic-size courses in Long Beach from April 18-20. The regatta is sponsored by the Alamitos Bay Yacht Club.

All seven Olympic-class sailboats--the Soling, Flying Dutchman, Finn, Star, International 470, Tornado and Sailboard--will race.

As in the Olympics, there will be men’s and women’s divisions in the 470 class. The sailboards will have three divisions: Windsurfer and Open Classes I and II. It will be the first major regatta for the newly added women’s division.

The United States Olympic Yachting Team will use the regatta for ranking the sailboard competitors to determine financial assistance.

Race chairman is Ken Weiss, a former Olympic-class competitor and international sailor, who may be contacted for additional information at (213) 434-9955.

Seven new waste pumps are expected to be installed in Newport Harbor by the beginning of summer. Two additional pumpout stations are planned during the next couple of years, said Newport Beach Mayor Phil Maurer.

City officials are trying to equip the harbor with sufficient stations to demonstrate to the Regional Water Water Quality Board that they are taking steps to clean the bay.

Other sources of bay pollution, such as chemicals flowing into the waters from surrounding uplands, pose another problem for city officials.

New pumps will be installed at the Bayside Marina, Balboa Marina, two at the Harbor Patrol Dock, the Newport Harbor Yacht Club, Balboa Bay Club, two at Newport Dunes and the Newport Landing.

Sailing Notes

Three marine artists--John Stobart, Keith Renolds and Randy Puckett--will appear at the Maritime Show & Exhibit at the Balboa Bay Club, Newport Beach, on Mar. 9 from noon until 4 p.m. Their work will be displayed at the yacht club and at the Whitman Galleries in Corona del Mar.

Monique Parent of Huntington Beach became a boat owner the easy way. She won one of the “Boat-a-Day” giveaways at the recent Southern California Boat Show at the Los Angeles Convention Center. Parent took home an eight-foot Addictor runabout with a 30-hp Tohatsu outboard.

Signs of spring: Raymond Ally, Fish and Game marine biologist and unofficial grunion prognosticator, says March 12 will be the season’s first significant grunion run in Southern California. After that thousands of the fish are expected to struggle through the surf to deposit and fertilize their eggs in the sand. The grunion will do this for at least 40 nights during the next five months from March through July.

The process lasts about 30 seconds, after which the fish reenter the sea on the next wave. Each female may leave behind as many as 3,000 eggs buried in the sand. Grunion may be taken only by hand and by licensed anglers. There is no way to predict when grunion will run on any given night, Ally said.

The grunion, a member of the silversides family, is a good fish to eat. Clean and scale them and, using a cornmeal batter, deep fry them. But first you’ve got to catch them, and that’s easier said than done.