Mexico: The race is safe

Prospective sailors and their families should have no concerns later this month traveling to Ensenada, Mexico, for the 62nd annual Newport to Ensenada International Yacht Race despite reports of increasing violence at the border, Mexican government officials said Thursday.

“We know there’s violence in some places, but it’s not spread all around the country,” said Carlos Rodríguez y Quezada, a consul of Mexico based in Santa Ana. “People have asked for more arrangements to be more safe” and they’ve done that, he said.

Race organizers expressed concern earlier this year when violence in Mexico caused by the government’s war with the drug cartels spread north to Tijuana, the main entry point for tourists headed to Ensenada, and appeared to cause a dip in families joining their sailing relatives down south.

The latest total for registered sailors in the race is expected to come in today, but already they appear slightly below average — thanks to a combination of a sagging economy, violence in Mexico and a competing event the same weekend, organizers said.

Sailors are generally worry-free out in the ocean; it’s their families crossing over land that has people worried, Mexican officials said. More than 18 million people visit Mexico annually, said Jorge Saenz Flores, the president of international relations for Ensenada.

Before and during the weekend of the largest international yacht race in the world, officials will post signs directing visitors headed to Ensenada on where to go through Tijuana to get to the right roads, he said. In the race’s 61-year history, there has never been a violent incident in Ensenada, he added.

The Police Department there will have added 180 new police cars to the city by race weekend, Saenz Flores said.

The repres- entatives could not say Tijuana was as safe as Ensenada. Recent travel alerts by the U.S. government urge tourists to stay in well-lit places and in groups at night.

Jorge Gamboa Patron, director of the Mexico Tourism Board out of Los Angeles, said the violence in Tijuana is between authorities and cartels, or the cartels battling each other.

“When I talk to my clients when they come back from their vacations they’re happy, they enjoy it,” he said.

For the first time in recent memory, federal, state and local authorities are joining to stop the violence, he said.

Friends and family wishing to meet their sailing buddies in Ensenada can also look into cruises out of Long Beach or charter buses scheduled to make the drive down that weekend, race officials said.

The Newport to Ensenada International Yacht Race is scheduled for the weekend of April 24.

Reporter JOSEPH SERNA may be reached at (714) 966-4619 or at joseph.serna@latimes.com.