Taste of Oregon on Baja Coast : Windsurfers Head South to Mexico for Winter After Gorging Themselves

“Boardheads” on mountain bikes are awaiting its arrival from the hills above town. Those on the tennis court are watching for it between games, while snorkelers, sun-soakers and book-readers are maintaining their vigil from the water and beach.

The telltale signs of what attracted them to this area could appear any time. The shimmering on the horizon, the band of rough water steadily approaching the coast.

This could mean only one thing: The wind is on its way.

As for the biker, the tennis player and snorkeler, the transformation is immediate. He or she becomes a windsurfer and nothing else.

“You have to understand that, with us, it’s more of a passion than a sport,” says Guy Guynes, 35, an Oregon carpenter who prefers sailing on boards to pounding nails into them.

Guynes is typical of the windsurfers here.

These are people who have affectionately adopted the label “boardheads” bestowed upon them not-so-affectionately by people in the Pacific Northwest, an area that windsurfers have invaded by the thousands so they could ride the wind-whipped waters of the region, notably the Columbia River Gorge.

“I actually get headaches during prolonged periods of calm,” says Gary Gorman, 52, the president of a sail-making company in Hood River, Ore.

When the rain and cold hit the Pacific Northwest, the windsurfer decides it is time to head south for the winter, or at least part of it.

“We do this for the lifestyle,” said Tom Mastbaum, 35, who with his wife, Cathy, spends winters directing the Baja Surf Club at the Hotel Palmas de Cortez. “We’re not making a lot of money, but it’s an incredibly nice lifestyle. And besides, somebody’s got to do it.”

Mastbaum had previously worked as a surgical associate in northern Utah; his wife as directorof a ski school at Beaver Mountain, Utah. Both quit after deciding they had “reached the peaks” of their respective careers.

Actually, they had spent too much time in the wind, driven by it and loving it.

Instructors Shawn and Leslie Peterson both call Hood River home, working in the windsurfing industry during the summer. Both live behind the Baja Surf Club in Los Barriles during the winter.

An estimated 60% of the visitors in this area are from the Pacific Northwest, and those who aren’t have at least been to the Columbia River Gorge. “If you’re good at sailing, you go to the Gorge,” says Mike Kerr, 31, a Eugene builder who sails 40 to 50 times a season back home.

And like the Gorge, Los Barriles, a sun-baked village a dozen or so miles north of the Tropic of Cancer and about 50 miles north of Cabo San Lucas, is part of the “circuit.”

“Definitely, there’s an incredible cross influx of people from the Hood River and Baja,” Mastbaum says. “It’s uncanny.”

Kerr, who with Guynes has purchased property in the Gorge area, has been coming here once a year for the last five years. “I’ve seen people here and there,” he says. “I don’t know them by name but by, ‘Hi, how are ya?’ It’s a circuit. Absolutely.

“There’s a guy from Las Vegas. I played basketball with him here and I’ve played basketball with him at the Gorge . . . when there was no wind.”

On a typical day here, there is plenty of wind. It picks up offshore in the morning and develops into a strong northerly that blows steadily across a large bay, ideal conditions for the windsurfer.

“On the norm it blows 18 to 24 knots 70% of the time,” Mastbaum said. “The wind typically comes up at 10 or 11 a.m. and blows until dark.”

Such winds have transformed the region from a secluded and seasonal fishing village into a year-round operation that caters to two entirely different crowds.

During the spring and summer the hotels fill with fishermen, who find some of the most prolific fishing in the world.

Come November, however, the wind becomes so predictable that fishermen find it wise to go elsewhere. The windsurfers take over.

“It’s been a salvation for us,” says Bob Van Wormer, owner of Hotel Palmas de Cortez, which used to close for five months of the year because of a lack of customers. “There were times when we would only have a half dozen or so,” he said.

Now, with the Baja Surf Club being the largest windsurfing center in the area, Palmas de Cortez is a bustling year-round operation. The club has seven full-time instructors, between 80 and 90 new-model boards and about 120 sails from which to choose.

The Club offers three packages that range in price from a few hundred dollars to several hundred.

The Hotel Playa Hermosa north of Palmas runs a successful windsurfing operation as well, and Rancho Buena Vista south of Palmas has found it beneficial to maintain a fleet of sailboards and instructors.

Windsurfers on a budget often stay at the local trailer park or camp along the barren stretch of coast.

On a typical day the ocean comes alive with the brilliant colors of sails, full of wind and carrying their sailors across the water in all directions.

“It beats Cristo’s umbrellas, I’ll tell you that,” Mastbaum says.

Perhaps, but Cristo’s umbrellas were treated to more wind than Mastbaum’s customers were during a stretch that carried well into February.

The noon temperature was 80 degrees. Billowy clouds floated overhead. The wind was puffing ever-so-gently at about eight knots.

Mike Kerr, Guy Guynes, Aaron Wayne and John Petersen want no part of this.

They head for the hills on four of the Baja Surf Club’s 20 mountain bikes. They keep an eye out for developments on the Sea of Cortez, but on this day the only wind they would enjoy is that which blows in their faces during their downhill run back to the hotel.

Mark Albert, Ward Buckingham, Ken Frendenberg and Kim Doutrich, who like Kerr and his friends come from Oregon, did not travel 3,000 miles to improve their tennis game.

But they would leave having done nothing more.

Cathy Mastbaum is busy gathering the names of guests who might want to take a tour of the hot springs, or of the church, the library or local tortilleria.

Shawn and Leslie Peterson are left tinkering with the tools of their trade, offering clinics to anyone who wishes to watch and listen.

Leslie, who has been an instructor here for four years, takes advantage of the unseasonable doldrums to hike nearby Flat Top mountain and then walk along a deserted stretch of sandy beach south of town.

“I’ve never seen it before, in my four years here, because we’re usually so busy,” she says.

Gary Gorman, meanwhile, was running low on aspirin.