ON THE RIGHT TACK : From the Ambivalent to the Ambitious, Youths Take to the Lake for Races at the Westlake Yacht Club

Chip Werner, a 9-year-old former landlubber with a week of sailing lessons behind him, was about to take part in the first regatta of his life last Sunday afternoon. If he was nervous, it didn’t show when he casually approached no less an authority figure than the rear commodore of the Westlake Yacht Club and inquired, “After the race, then are we allowed to just sail around?”

To Werner, the elaborate ritual of racing regattas was standing in the way of further fun on the lake. There were those colored flags that he was supposed to decipher. And lots of blasts from an air horn that signaled something. And markers on the water that had to be followed. All he wanted to do was jump into his 8-foot sabot and run with the wind.

“That’s what I really like,” he said.

The Westlake Yacht Club is also hoping that once Chip begins to understand the rituals, he’ll like racing enough to make it a lifelong sport, perhaps even reaching the heights achieved by one of its former junior members, Allison Jolly. Jolly, along with crew Lynne Jewell, won a sailing gold medal in last year’s Olympic Games.

Chip was the youngest sailor--the oldest among the 14 competitors was 15--in Sunday’s Bill Vrooman Memorial Regatta, which got the same treatment from club members as the big regattas that draw some of the best sailors in the country to the 150-acre man-made lake. Chip would be racing in the B class against sailors who had more experience but still had never won a regatta. Once a sailor wins in B, he must move up to the A class.

Standing on the dock in front of the club, Chip felt a sudden breeze ripple across the water, starching the sail on the sabot. Almost every day at this time, the ocean wind funnels down the Conejo grade and turns Westlake into a sailor’s paradise.

Ron Hine, the rear commodore who runs the regattas, also noticed the wind making its daily appearance. He was talking to Chip’s parents when he saw a young sailor on the lake take advantage of a gust. Sailing a nimble C-13, the boy extended his body over the port side in a maneuver known as “hiking out,” and the boat sped across the lake, its sail nearly touching the water on the starboard side.

Hine pointed to the boy and said, “That’ll be Chip in a couple of years.”

The air horn sounded and Chip looked up at the observation tower where a white flag was being hoisted. An A-class heat would start in precisely 10 minutes, the Bs five minutes after that. All the young sailors started to prepare their boats, mindful of the red-and-yellow flag on the tower that told them to wear their life jackets.

Each class would race on specially marked courses that wouldn’t be made known until the race committee announced it by hanging a number from the tower. The sailors would have to read a chart of the lake in their boat and figure out the right course, which wasn’t easy for inexperienced navigators. The circular course took the sailors to an island about a quarter-mile away and back to a dam before winding up at the finish line in front of the club.

Sailing races, even within the intimate confines of a lake, don’t generate the same kind of hysteria as, say, a football game. Mostly, parents and other observers sat under green umbrellas on the deck during the races and enjoyed the scenery, occasionally scanning the lake for signs of junior’s progress.

Hine was kept busier than all but the sailors while the races went on. As rear commodore, his white flag flies third from left on the mast that rises above the deck. It’s his responsibility to deal with problems. When another club member noticed a sailboat tied to a marker in the middle of the race course, Hine started the 6-volt battery in his trusty 15-foot Electra, the Rot ‘n Don, and went to investigate.

The Electra rolled over the water at about 3 to 4 knots and Hine, a retired banker who lives on the lake, popped a Beach Boys tape into his stereo system. “Never a wake and no noise,” he said about his boat, which was custom-built for him and his wife Dot. “You don’t have to have a 50-foot yacht to have fun.”

Hine steered to the sailboat and saw two teen-age girls sunbathing inside. “These marks are private,” he told them in a friendly way. “We have a race going on and would appreciate it if you would cast off.” The girls obliged and Hine headed back to the dock. Passing a sabot, he saw two small girls having trouble making headway.

“Let the sail out,” Hine instructed them, “then pull the rudder back to you.” When the boat was under control, he said, “Now you’re sailing!”

Hine relaxed under the Electra’s canopy and set a course to the island to check the progress of the race. Despite the wind, the tiny sailboats were tacking slowly across the lake and Hine was able to putter up next to the leaders in the A class, Ryan Coyle, 14, and Brian Foster, 12. Each sailor was trimming his sails like an old salt. At the end of the race, Coyle and Foster were bow and bow until Foster’s sabot edged ahead to win by a half-boat length.

“Ryan is a real comer,” Hine said, “and Brian is a natural. He can feel a change of wind on his cheek.”

Foster’s communion with the wind is no accident. When he was 2, “I got interested watching flags blow in the wind,” he said. At 4, he was building his own kites. Four years ago, his mother, whose parents live at the lake, gave him sailing lessons at the club. “He kind of goes with the wind,” said Karen Foster Caruso, who lives in Newbury Park.

While Brian went off to practice rigging a C-13 and wait for the next heat, the B class finished its race, and Chip Werner was first across the finish line. Happy to see him do well was his stepfather, Frank Marshall of Agoura, a lifelong sailor who would “rather have Chip out here sailing than hanging around video arcades.”

But Chip’s win didn’t count. In the tower, race committee chairman Don Anderson disqualified the B class for sailing on the wrong side of a marker. The youngsters could protest, “But we have a saying at the club: The protest committee meets at midnight and you have to be present,” said Anderson, who was wearing a T-shirt that read: “Sailing--the fine art of getting soaked and becoming sick whilst slowly going nowhere at great expense.”

Anderson excused himself and got ready for the next heat. When Lois Littlefield, who was in charge of the official clock, counted down to zero and blasted the air horn, Anderson hoisted the white flag. But neither Chip Werner nor Brian Foster fared well. When the regatta finally ended, Coyle won the A class and Eric Steelberg took the B. Afterward, the young sailors snacked on cake in the clubhouse, and Chip was finally able to get out on the lake by himself.