Newport-to-Ensenada Race Is World’s Largest, Shortest

The waters off the Newport Harbor jetty will be blanketed by sailboats at noon Saturday as more than 600 craft jockey for position at the start of the 38th Newport-to-Ensenada race.

The race is touted by the sponsoring Newport Ocean Sailing Assn. as the world’s largest international yacht race, and indeed it is, in numbers. But with just 125 nautical miles from start to finish, it is also the shortest.

The start, at least, is also a premier yachting spectator event as thousands of spectators line the Balboa Peninsula and Corona del Mar vantage points to watch the yachtsmen struggle to find the dual starting lines for their respective starts.

The fleet is divided into four divisions, which are subdivided into classes. Starting at noon, the classes start at 10-minute intervals.

By far the largest division is the Performance Handicap Racing Fleet with 465 entries in 10 classes. Next largest group is the Ultra-Light Displacement Boat (ULDB) with 74 boats in two classes. The International Offshore Rule (IOR) division has 67 boats in three classes; the Ancient Mariner Class --classic wooden boats--has 18 entries, and the Ocean Racing Catamaran Assn. has 18.

The battle for first-to-finish will be among Class A ULDB yachts and the catamarans. Among the ULDB speedsters are such veteran campaigners as Saga, Drumbeat, Cheetah, Ragtime, Merlin, Shenanigan, Cheval, Lean Machine, Joss, Anthem, Swiftsure III and Whistlewind, all with minus time allowances.

Favorite among the multihulls is the catamaran Machete, sailed by Bob Hanel of Los Angeles. Hanel was at the helm of the 65-foot catamaran Double Bullet when it set an elapsed time record of 10 1/2 hours in the 1983 race. Double Bullet was destroyed last year in a trans-Atlantic race from Quebec to France.