Independent from Long Beach, California • 87

I V5 I 0 Sun, Sand, and Sea Spell Sports on the South Coast was little apparent activity in the cockpits. But it takes as much skill to sail faster than competitors in light air as in heavy and the relaxed of the racing crews were largely illusory. Tense skippers fussed constantly with the trim of their sails, fretted about anticipated maneuvers, worried over competitors' strategy. Hike up Old Saddleback. Go shooting, fishing, bird watching, rattlesnake hunting.

Race your sports car at Santa Barbara nr Riverside pr Palm Springs. Play volleyball on the heath. Maybe you'd like group in Orange County who train arctic sled dogs or those kite buffs who get together to fly (or try to fly) their imaginative creations. There is something for everybody. By PAUL WALLACE We live by a warm and sun-washed sea in a summertime land where the living, indeed, is easy.

At' our backs. the mountains shoulder into the sky and, beyond them, -the tawny wastes of desert stretch eastward toward another sort of country, greener and more compact. Ours is' a land of broad horizons a young land, growing spectacularly, full of the excesses of youth hut hrimmng, too, with youth's easy optimism and it vitality. Ours is a prosperous land arid we. wth our leisure ever 'increasing, are a pleasure-seeking peoplrf.

We are youthful in outlook and recreation is a dominant interest, ap interest dratyn outdoors by the gentle climate, scattered into infinitely diverse channels by the variety of this land's terrain, the richnesss of its natural resources. SPORT IS THE THING. We are watchers. kinds of spectator events draw throngs. But, above all, we are-doers.

And where else on earth is the choice of things to do wider x. Surf at the Huntington bluffs or ski Mt. Baldy; sky (five at Elsinore or take a jeep out exploring across the open desert: play tennis or golf (any day of the year) or ride a horse over the steep trails of the Palos Verdes Peninsula. 4 THEIR EYES FLICKED from the sea ahead to their sails, from their sails to an approaching buoy where a change of course was necesssary. from the huoy toother boats converging on it, then bark to their sails.

So it went through the sunny, winter afternoon, the sea air bracing in the sailors, faces, the water chuckling under the hulls. Then they were over the finish line. Concentration dissolved. Shoulders drooped. Beer cans popped open.

Shouting across the water, crews needled each other good naturedly. Now suddenly, euphorically tired, savoring the feeling of an afternoon spqn. at something thoroughly worth' doing, an afternoon in their- Sport, the sailors headed for shore, pointing their while-winged craft back toward the land this summertime land where. -the living is easy. TAKE SAILING.

With our proximity to' the sea. pro-liherating marinas and prevailing fresh breezes, small boat sailing is one of the fastest-growing of all our faat-grnw-irig sports. One recent Sunday afternoon, more than a hundred boats of a dozen classes sailed nut of Long Beach's Ala-mitos Bay Yacht Club for an afternoon of racing. Called by some man's most graceful creations. sail- boats seem to glide over the water as effortlessly as a' soaring gull.

This impression, however, exists only for shoresiders who never have been in the cockpit of a sailing craft under way. The crew erf a small centerboard, boat, racing in a piping breeze, cam make the heralded efforts of a one-armed. paper hanger seem like a coffee break. This Sunday, though, the wind was light and the boats The race was almost a drifter. There 1 di -1 -A' i.