The Harbor Report: Cabo race becomes my wild ride

I hope you are all starting to smile a little more knowing that our summer weekday sailing nights will start the first of May. Let’s not forget about April, which is always the most active month of the year for sailboat racing. Before I jump into this month’s main event, I thought I would review the Newport Harbor Yacht Club’s Cabo San Lucas race.

Team Linstar sailed its Santa Cruz 50 Horizon to a third-in-class, 47 seconds out of 2nd and 8th overall. We sailed very well off the starting line and led the fleet to San Diego. At this point, we sailed into very light wind while most of our fleet sailed further out to sea and put 8 miles on us the first night of the race. Rather than give you all the details, I’ll just say that we had to play catch-up for most of the race and hit the last three major wind shifts to place as well as we did. For my readers who have sailed this race before, the outside finish strategy paid off big dividends.

One of the most exciting moments of the race for us was when we had about 32 knots of breeze as we approached Cedros Isla on a very dark and chilly night. I was off watch and was awakened by the water rushing past the hull, sounding almost as if you could hear the rumble of an approaching thunderstorm, as we surfed down the big waves. With only 45 minutes left before I had to be on watch, I got out of my bunk and put on my business suit — some people call it foul weather gear — and life harness. Just as I came on deck, the crew on watch came down below and asked for everyone on deck to go through a gybe maneuver and spinnaker change to reduce sail area.

When you first come on deck after awaking from a deep sleep, it takes a little while to adjust to the pitch darkness and regain the feel of the boat’s movements in the confused sea state. As I walked into the cockpit and then turned around to the sea condition, I thought, “Oh, shoot, this is going to be Mr. Toad’s wild ride again,” clipped myself onto the boat’s safety lines and sank deeper into the cockpit. As we went into the boat’s gybing maneuver — moving the boat’s main and spinnaker sails from one side of the boat to the other — the waves seemed to become larger, while the night seemed to get even darker.

Just then, a large gust of wind hit us, and we rounded the boat up into the wind. It gets rather loud at this point with the helmsmen giving orders to regain control of the boat, the sails and gear snapping above your head and the wind howling past your ears. Let’s not forget about the fear factor of keeping yourself on the boat along with the rest of the crew. I have gone through this fire drill many times, and this time, the Horizon crew took it all in stride and regained control of the boat and our composure to complete the maneuver in record time. Now, while under control again and surfing down the huge waves with the spray hitting my face, I smiled because I knew we were doing very well and would be passing our competition in these dark and stormy conditions.

This year down the Baja coast, I noticed the normal amount of dolphins lighting up the night’s water photophores as they approached the boat like shooting stars along with a few sea turtles during the day. In fact, we had a rather loud bump one night and assumed we left a turtle with a rather gnarly headache. One afternoon, just past Cedros Isla, we noticed a large whale completely breach the water while the spray went high into the sky. We were over a mile away, and three of us said at the same time, “Did you see that? I’ve never seen that before.”

*

As we enter the month of April in Newport Harbor, one event jumps right at us, and that is the NHYC Baldwin Cup.

The Baldwin Cup will take place from April 10 to 12 and is sailed in Harbor 20s with a ton of support from NHYC members and Harbor 20 fleet one. If you are on the bay this weekend, you will start to notice all the moored boats disappear from the NHYC mooring field. All the racing takes place directly in front of the NHYC main dock and is streamed live from the club’s web cam. This event promotes our harbor and sailing better than anything I have ever witnessed. You can bet I will be on the main dock all three days.

Sea ya.

LEN BOSE is an experienced boater, yacht broker and boating columnist.