After 81 Years, Baillie Still Under Full Sail in Local Yachting : Newport-Ensenada: He has raced 43 times in the 45-year-old event, which ends today.

Sometime today, Jack Baillie expects to sail his 65-foot yacht, Newsboy, into Ensenada Harbor with a familiar thought on his mind.

Never again.

When it comes to the annual Newport-to-Ensenada boat race, which began Friday, Baillie, 81, has reason to feel a bit burned out. This is the 43rd time he has sailed in the event, which is in its 45th year.

“I have decided I’d never do it again for the last five years,” Baillie, a Corona del Mar resident, says. “I guess I’ll keep going.”

Or so his many followers hope.

Baillie, a former bank executive, is a popular figure on the area’s yachting scene, as is the sleek, elegant Newsboy.

The vessel is moored in front of the Balboa Yacht Club, a short sail from the entrance of Newport Harbor and just down the hill from Baillie’s house, which sits atop a bluff.

Not that Newsboy is moored for long. Baillie races about 30 times a year, usually in local races--around oil islands, to Catalina and back--and several times a year in longer events.

Baillie has won the Newport-to-Ensenada race five times, in different classes with different boats. He has also had his share of mishaps.

On a return trip from Ensenada, an eight-meter craft Baillie skippered had its wooden mast broken.

“We were sailing into a brisk wind,” he said. “We saw a big thing of kelp in Descanso Bay. We bore off to avoid it and bang! It sounded like someone shot off a cannon.”

Another year, also on the return trip, Baillie and his crew saved a man and a woman whose powerboat had sunk about two to three miles off the San Diego shore. Baillie said other sailboats were going past because their engines were drowning out the couple’s cries. Baillie’s boat wasn’t motorized.

“We thought they were seals at first,” he said. “They had gunned their outboard motor boat, throttled back and sunk the boat.

“They were out there with an empty gas can, a water skier’s belt and an upholstered seat (for flotation). There had been another man, too, but (he died).”

Baillie first learned respect for the sea during the 1920s, when his father, a news reporter, took him on motor cruises to Catalina. Baillie said his family constructed their own mooring at Cherry Cove by filling a bathtub with cement for an anchor, and attaching it to a railroad tie for a float.

At 21, Baillie worked as one of 11 crewmen on the 134-foot schooner Enchantress docked at Wilmington during the 1932 Olympics. The vessel, Baillie said, was a favorite of the sailing community.

Baillie wrote a letter to the ship’s owner, hoping for a job. He got one--and was paid $1 a day.

“The owner (who was also an Olympic sailor) told us if he paid us more than that he’d lose his amateur status,” Baillie said. “My guess is that wasn’t true.”

Baillie started racing seriously in the early 1950s. His first boat, Babboon, was a 50-foot black schooner built in 1888.

“I was very low budget, and it was suitable for a very low-budget person,” Baillie said.

He raced several boats until he purchased Newsboy in 1968. He also owns an electric-powered boat, which seats 10 and makes for a nice outing to the area’s bay-side restaurants, Baillie says.

Some might think Baillie, at 81, should be ready to spend more time cruising the bay than racing in the ocean. Baillie says he occasionally considers retirement--for about a second.

“Usually it’s when you run out of wind that you decide to quit,” Baillie said. “It’s not much fun to just sit there and have the powerboat people go by and wave at you.”

Besides, if Baillie quits, who will race Newsboy?

His three children aren’t that interested, he said. And his 9-year-old grandson, Jason, takes sailing lessons, but has other priorities.

“He’s into baseball now,” Baillie says. “He got hooked on baseball and all of a sudden he’s very good. We may lose him from sailing, I guess. But to each his own.”

Race Notes

The race had 398 starters, the smallest field in a number of years. There were 39 dropouts because of the continuing violence in Los Angeles. . . . The first finishers in the race, which started in southeast winds of 7-9 knots, were expected late Friday night.