It’s a Race to the Finish, Then the Real Party Begins

It’s a rite of spring, like digging out the cutoff jeans, and it recharges the spirit with an electricity of tradition that once turned a dusty little Mexican village upside down. It’s Hussong’s Cantina and Humphrey Bogart, topsails and topless women, hard sailing and afterward, for some, harder drinking. It’s the Newport-to-Ensenada International Yacht Race, which will mark an unbroken string of 50 races Friday when as many as 600 boats flock to the golden anniversary start off Newport Beach at noon.

Billed as “the world’s largest international yacht race,” the Ensenada has evolved into Southern California’s floating answer to Woodstock, with a race thrown in. The race is only 125 miles and takes little more than a day, with fair winds. But because it starts in one country’s upscale urbanity and finishes in another’s soul of simple pleasures, Baja California, the mood swing is enormous, and the crush has been overwhelming. There were a record 703 entries in 1983. Multiply each boat by an average crew of six to eight, add the hundreds who drive down to warm up the town for the arrival of the sailors, and for the locals it’s a better deal than NAFTA.

*

Bogart sailed his boat Santana in some of the early races when Ensenada was a sleepy Mexican village, with few lights. Late one foggy night he radioed the race committee boat to turn on its spotlight so he could find the finish line. A few minutes later he radioed back, cursing and yelling. “He thought he was following the beacon,” said Bob Allan of Carmel, the race chairman that year. “Turned out it was a truck on the highway and he almost ran aground.”

*

Late in 1947, when World War II was over and the seas were deemed safe again, local sailors longed for destinations beyond Santa Catalina Island. The Newport Ocean Sailing Assn. had been running some offshore races, and board member George Michaud suggested a race to Ensenada. Allan said, “The first couple of years weren’t meant to be a race as much as it was a diplomatic deal to get us sailors into Mexico.” The race was first called the “Governor’s Cup,” with one of the two major trophies named for then-Gov. Earl Warren, who was expected to be in Ensenada to present it. After Warren failed to show, the race was renamed. The Newport association expected a couple of dozen boats, but there were 117 entries.

On race day, the wind blew from 25 to 35 knots. Ninety-seven boats started and 66 finished, led by Hollywood producer Milton Bren’s 87-foot Pursuit. Donald Bren, now chairman of the Irvine Co., was 13 when he sailed on his father’s boat in that race. After finishing, Bren wrote for this year’s race program, “My next memory is walking with my dad into Hussong’s, where I learned that we had won. . . . It was my introduction to Mexico.” Allan sailed in the first race and was chairman the next three years, during which time he restructured the organization, the committees and the formats that remain in place today--including the long, split starting line with the primary committee boat in the center. Dick Lawrence of Newport Beach remembers the first race too. Lawrence, 72, has sailed in more Ensenada races than anybody, but not the first one. “I watched them leave and said, ‘Well, I’m not going to let them go off without me again.’ This will be his 45th race.

*

Lawrence sailed 17 of his races with his friend, Jack Baillie of Newport Beach, who has done 43 Ensenadas. They recalled the time Baillie was tossed into jail in Ensenada. “It was a bum rap!” Baillie said, explaining that he is color-blind and jaywalked because he was confused by the signal lights. But Lawrence said the local police, striving to maintain order, had started arresting people who carried drinks out of the cantinas. “Baillie was out there directing traffic at the intersection of Hussong’s,” Lawrence said.

*

After the first couple of years the race was scheduled to coincide with Mexico’s Cinco de Mayo celebrations--not a good idea. One time, with so many tourists, sailors, bikers and local celebrants, the police called for fire hoses to calm things down. Later, after the race settled into the last weekend in April, a few longed for the good old days. “I remember when Ensenada would block off the streets and we would dance all night,” the late competitor Peggy Slater told Santana magazine. For some, the party atmosphere prevailed, right from the start. Lorin Weiss, a Newport sailing association official who has sailed in 34 races, said, “We were the first [crew] to come out in costume--dark suits, derbies and red roses in our lapels.” One crew calling itself the Prospectors sailed in tuxedos, escorting topless dates and projecting X-rated flicks on its mainsail at night. Winning never has been everything in the Ensenada race. Last place gets a special prize: a spittoon. D.C. Shannon’s Solano holds the record for the slowest time: 68 hours 1 minute in 1949. One year a photo finish for last loomed as two boats jockeyed for worst position. Finally, one skipper dramatically threw up his hands and dropped his sails as puffs of smoke blew astern--indicating he had started his engine, thus disqualifying himself. But as soon as the other boat broke away and sailed across the line, the first boat raised its sails--and displayed a smoking hibachi from the cockpit.

*

Lawrence said, “People used to ask me, ‘How do you find Ensenada?’ I said, ‘You can smell it.’ That’s when that abalone factory was in full operation. In the early morning, you could smell it miles out to sea.”

*

The race has become more serious in recent years. “We haven’t had to get anybody out of jail for a while,” Weiss said. Records became the reason for many to sail. One of the windiest races was in 1953, when Richard Rheem’s 97-foot ketch Morning Star ran the course in 14 hours 20 minutes 30 seconds, a record that stood for 30 years. In 1983, it was even windier. Four boats broke Morning Star’s record, led by Gary Tingstad’s 84-footer Christine in 12:09:55, which remains the record for monohulls. But by then a different breed of cat had improved on Morning Star’s mark.

In 1958, after years of lobbying, multihulls were admitted, and Frank Hooykaas sailed the 24-foot catamaran Foamy to Ensenada in 12:23:52. Over the last few decades, Vic Stern has energized Southern California multihull activity as secretary of the Ocean Racing Catamaran Assn. He’ll celebrate his 74th birthday Saturday while sailing his 35th consecutive race to Ensenada.

Stern has won his share of trophies but also has delighted in the multihull performances of more famous sailors, such as Dennis Conner. In ’94 Conner, sailing the “soft-sail” sister ship of the 60-foot “hard-wing” catamaran Stars & Stripes that he used to defend the America’s Cup in 1988, set a record of 8 hours 27 minutes. In ’95 adventurer Steve Fossett sailed his trimaran Lakota to victory in 8:42, and then in February of ‘96, apart from the race, set a “course record” of 7:35.

This year, after flying a record halfway around the world in a balloon, Fossett is sailing Stars & Stripes, which he bought from Conner last year. Conner will sail Low Orbiter, his New York 36 monohull. Roy E. Disney, vice chairman of the board of the Walt Disney Co., is the race’s honorary skipper and was first to finish two years ago.

The race is still laid-back for others. Two San Pedro boats that sailed in the original race will go again. Mike Fabian will sail his father Ed’s Resolute, a 40-foot gaff-rigged ketch, and Vance Stapleton will skipper Eventide, a 38-foot Ingrid ketch sailed by Stephen Newmark in 1948. Also, in ’95 the Newport association introduced a “cruising” class for sailboats that could use their engines if the wind failed to blow--which is what happened last year. As the pure sailors--including Conner on his catamaran--struggled to finish, several cruisers completed the race with their engines running, much to the chagrin of traditionalists. Perhaps that much of the race’s spirit remains: Almost anything goes.

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

Newport to Ensenada

* What: 50th-anniversary running of the Newport-to-Ensenada International Yacht Race.

* When: Friday, noon.

* Where: Starting line is about half a mile west of the entrance to Newport Harbor.