For Mexican Boat, It’s Ole! in Wild Race to Cabo : Sailing: High winds, heavy seas mastered by the boat of Antonio Elias. It is rare victory for Mexico.

Wild sailing, a close finish and a victorious old boat owned by a Mexican--what else to say but Ole!

The tributes to the race and the winner’s name were the same in the 802-nautical mile race from Long Beach to the tip of Baja California. Ole topped the IOR-A class, sailing level--no handicaps--with the other seven boats.

In this elite company, the victory for Antonio Elias, a Mexico City businessman representing the Acapulco Yacht Club, was as rare as it was for the host country.

Elias said, “I’m very happy, but my English is not very good.”

But his smile spoke well, as champagne flowed and Mexican rock music blared over the harbor in front of the Plaza Las Glorias Hotel late into the night.

Yet to arrive were others with tales of trials and terror on the highest seas they had ever seen in the most exciting and enjoyable Mexican race they had ever sailed.

“It was scary,” said Camille Daniels, co-skipper with husband Richard of the MacGregor 65 Joss from Long Beach Yacht Club, which organized the biennial event.

“It was great,” crewman Brian Eichenlaub said.

The Daniels’ told of sailing at night into 40-knot headwinds--”Not what you’d expect in a Mexican race,” Camille said--with the rotating helmsmen standing in water over their knees and a crewman saved only by his life harness from washing away in the dark.

Another boat, Mike Turi’s Fastrack from Bahia Corinthian YC, did lose a man overboard but recovered him. Many others blew out sails.

Off the wind, Joss hit speeds of up to 28 knots--”The fastest that boat has ever gone,” Camille Daniels said.

Their story was typical.

When flying downwind behind their straining spinnakers, some of the larger boats dipped and rose so badly that they were sailing under the waves.

“It was the wettest we’d ever been in our lives,” said Cheetah’s Dick Pennington, a veteran ocean racer from Long Beach.

Don Smith of Oklahoma City told of his disabled Tripp 40 Falcon “hurdling over the crests and through the troughs, with the rudder chattering. Six of us were on the transom, hanging on, just scared. . . . We’re from Oklahoma. I’ve never seen this.”

A bearing had worked up into the fiberglass housing of the rudder shaft and eventually broke the housing “like three shotgun pops,” Smith said.

The steering got worse until there was hardly any steering at all, so Smith put into Turtle Bay and dropped out.

Elias had no major problems. He had not won a race in the highly competitive ULDB 70 fleet since he bought the boat, formerly named Citius, two years ago. It was the third Santa Cruz 70 built, dating to the mid-1970s.

Rechristened Ole, it struggled until now, when Elias changed the rudder, dressed the boat in new sails, stripped out comforts to save weight and rounded up a crew that could drive it in gale-force winds.

Ole covered the distance in 3 days 8 hours 17 minutes 11 seconds. Only light winds at the start and near the finish, 1 3/4 miles south of Cabo Falso, left it 4 1/2 hours shy of the record set by Blondie in 1985.

Ole would have been a couple of minutes faster, but it jumped the gun at last Saturday’s start and had to circle back and restart. “Within the first 10 miles, we were up with everybody again,” said Ric Magrath, Ole’s Australian navigator from Long Beach.

“Since Antonio bought the boat, we’ve done a lot of work to it . . . 60 hours a week up to this race. We stripped out a thousand pounds of interior furnishings--the owner’s cabin, extra tanks--anything that wasn’t necessary to make the boat go fast.”

Victoria, Mike Campbell’s new Andrews 70, was the early leader, but Ole passed it Monday evening while sailing toward the beach.

“After that she was outside of us,” Magrath said, “where we wanted her to be.”

Victoria finished 41 minutes behind to win PHRF-A class, holding off a three-boat threat from Mike Holleran’s Starship I, John DeLaura’s Silver Bullet and Brack Duker’s Evolution, which finished in that order.

In Tuesday night’s finish, the running lights of Starship I and Silver Bullet were locked in an agonizing duet along the beach all the way from Cabo Falso to the blinking light signifying the end of the race.

As Starship I fought to protect the windward position, Silver Bullet forced Starship I closer and closer to the surf line as Holleran watched the depthmeter hit 10 feet, knowing his keel drew 9 1/2.

“I’ve got insurance,” he told his crew. “Go for it.”