SAILING / RICH ROBERTS : Thousands Will Take Part in Regatta

Sails will be breaking out all over with the 64th Midwinter Regatta from Santa Barbara to San Diego and other events as far inland as Arizona today and Sunday.

It’s the biggest sailing weekend of the year and the Southern California Yachting Assn.’s way of saying there is only one sailing season in the Southland, but it lasts 12 months. Twenty-eight clubs in 29 locations will conduct events for monohulls, multihulls, radio-controlled model boats, land sailors and even power boats, with cruiser navigation contests. Several thousand sailors are expected to participate.

Holua owner Blake Quinn and navigator L.J. Edgcomb defied the conventional wisdom for races to Mexico when they won Del Rey Yacht Club’s 12th biennial 1,125-mile race from Marina del Rey to Puerto Vallarta by about eight hours and 80 miles this week. They finished Thursday morning with an elapsed time of 5 days 18 hours 39 minutes 34 seconds, for an average speed of 8.1 knots.

Holua, a Santa Cruz 70 from the Monterey Peninsula Yacht Club, went inside Santa Catalina Island on the first day, while most of the other boats looked for better wind seaward of the island.

“We were surprised that everyone went around Catalina,” said Quinn, who runs a heavy-equipment business in Fresno. “We had never planned to do that. We had wind--and it’s shorter (to go inside). It might be better to ask them why they chose to go around.”

By the next morning they knew their strategy to sail the shorter course was good, but they were so far ahead that they had to scrap the other half of their plan: to stay with the fleet.

“The game plan went overboard,” Quinn said.

Said Edgcomb: “It was one of those races where you get out in front, protect your lead and sail in good wind. There was never a slowdown.”

It was only the second Mexican race for Quinn, 38, since he bought Holua from Davis Pillsbury last summer.

Roy Disney’s Pyewacket beat Mike Campbell’s Victoria by 2 1/2 minutes for second place late Thursday afternoon.

This weekend’s Midwinter sailors will never be far from shore, unlike competitors in events under way elsewhere in the world.

Leaders in the Vendee Globe Challenge for single-handed sailors that started last summer are around the far turn--Cape Horn at the tip of South America--and headed back toward France. Four of the 11 have dropped out to repair their boats. That means disqualification.

The sailors are tracked by satellite and are in daily touch by radio. Alain Gautier and Philippe Poupon of France are running 1-2, about 426 miles apart, and reporting no serious problems. Far behind, it was a different story for last-place Jean-Yves Hasselin early this week.

“I’ve just gone through the strongest gale in my life,” he reported. “For four hours the wind blew at 75 knots. The boat (listed) up to 60 degrees, constantly swept by breaking waves and tossed like a cork.”

Hasselin dropped all sails and retreated into the cabin to ride it out.

“I was afraid, for I knew I could not do anything,” he said.

Vittorio Malingri was caught in the same storm and had his rudder broken in 60-knot winds, forcing him to withdraw and detour to Tahiti, 2,200 miles away.

“It was a matter of survival,” Malingri said by radio. “I am leaving the race sick at heart. I won’t be a Cape Horner.”

Meanwhile, “the greatest match race of all time” has begun. That description came by fax from Cam Lewis, a crew member from Newport, R.I., aboard the French entry Commodore Explorer in the Trophee Jules Verne event.

The competition is ENZA New Zealand, co-skippered by Peter Blake and Robin Knox-Johnston. Unlike the Vendee Globe monohulls, ENZA and Commodore are large catamarans built for speed--to sail around the world in 80 days.

Both started from the south end of the English Channel two weeks ago, with ENZA getting a seven-hour jump. Commodore closed the gap initially, but ENZA then found better wind and at last report had crossed the equator about 300 miles to windward of Commodore, three days ahead of schedule and averaging 14 knots.

Sailing Notes

OFFSHORE--Early entries for the 37th biennial Transpac in July indicate strong interest in the new Performance Handicap Racing Fleet class--more than half of about 60 received, especially from J-35s and Santa Cruz 50s.

AWARDS--Kevin Mahaney of Bangor, Me., and Julia Trotman of Cold Spring Harbor, N.Y., have been selected as the Rolex Yachtsman and Yachtswoman of the year--the top U.S. honors in sailing. Mahaney won an Olympic silver medal in the Soling class, then was runner-up to New Zealand’s Russell Coutts in the Mazda World Championship of Match Racing at Long Beach. Trotman won a bronze medal in the single-handed Europe class at Barcelona.