NEW LONDON, June 18-"Boat race? What boat race?"

Such was the word from the manager of New London's gray and gaudy Griswold House, long synonymous with the revelry that goes with Yale-Harvard regattas, on the eve of the first post-war showing of this great sporting spectacle.

And such was the tone of the proceedings in general. The "Grizzle" where student spectators of a pre-war era frequently held the main stairway with a fire hose against the minions of the law, now caters to elderly ladies crocheting in the lobby. Elsewhere along the river conditions were not up to par either, Small crafts of all kinds were in abundance, but the mammoth yachts of old, from the great three-masted schooners to the nearocean liners of the more opulent old grads, were still in the moth balls in which they have lanquished since 1942.

Small window decorations in New London proper and a bumper crop of balloon venders added something of the spectacular to the occasion but an all day drizzle today considerably dampened the spirits of the revelers.