(Newport Beach, California)- The Newport Harbor Yacht Club has enjoyed a
long-standing tradition of hosting the Newport to Cabo San Lucas Yacht
Race. Since its first race in 1971, sailors have enjoyed the 800nm race
down the Baja coastline to the warm weather and big breeze of Cabo San
Lucas.Over the 40+ years of hosting the Cabo Race, NHYC has witnessed the tremendous evolution of yacht design and offshore sailing. Typical entries in the 70’s and early 80’s were IOR boats with unique downwind sailing characteristics (like “bloopers”?).
Later,
the ultralight (ULDB) boats arrived in the early 80’s with short rigs
and huge poles and fat round kites. These offwind speedsters opened the
door to bigger ULDB’s and the 70 footers that began their reign of the
Mexican Races in the mid-80’s.Bigger, faster boats evolved through the 80’s into the 90’s with the development of the 80 footers like Magnitude and Pyewacket. These boats brought along asymmetrical spinnakers and other innovations like canting keels to advance offshore sailing.
Noteworthy was the fact that J/105s in 1991 were the world’s first offshore keelboat of any size (18 ft to 500 ft) to make use of retractable sprits. Many J/105s have sailed successfully in offshore races since in both fully-crewed as well as short-handed divisions (Cabo San Lucas & Puerto Vallarta Races, Fastnet Race, TransPac Race, Trans-Atlantic Race, etc). Most notably, with the J/105 leading the offshore keelboat “sprit revolution”, many other classes have followed since (e.g. TP-52s, America’s Cup 75’s and foiling catamarans, for example).
In
this year’s Cabo Race, we find one of the top west coast offshore J/125
teams participating this year; Viggo Torbensen’s TIMESHAVER from Dana
Point Yacht Club. While Viggo’s J/125 may not sport semi-submersible
foiling lee-boards (see photo here), we have no doubt their more than
capable crew can handle the conditions. So, when TIMESHAVER crosses the finish line in Cabo, what should they expect from their hosts? Well, Tuesday afternoon it’s the “Happy Hour Fiesta”! Hosted happy hour food, beers and margaritas for all race competitors. No reservations needed!!
On Wednesday, the fun and celebration continues again at the “Baja Cantina” for our Happy Hours Fiesta #2 at 6:00pm. Competitors will be treated to more happy hours food, beer and margaritas. Then on Thursday, everyone heads over to the “Baja Cantina Beach,” for more food, drink, music and the awards ceremonies!! No wonder it's been a long-term popular offshore race! For more Cabo Race sailing information.
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