Buz in Mexico at the Big Race

Hello sailing friends,

Report from Mexico: This is my sixth Newport to Ensenada, billed as the biggest international yacht race in the world, with close to 500 yachts competing from mega sleds and 90 foot multi hulls to cal 25s. Two starting lines send about 70 or so off on a rolling start every 10 minutes. The sleds like PYWACKET, PELIGROSO, MEDICINE MAN, MERLIN, with ratings of negative 80 zillion start first.

Let me put this in perspective how fast these boats are. Some of you may remember Jerry Popes' F27 trimaran CRAZY KID and how fast that was. It was rated at PHRF 81,Our C&C 29 DOUBLOON.. was.. PHRF 176, PYEWACKET is rated.....NEGATIVE.. 270..... This was an incredible site as they battled for position. I looked up as SCOUT SPIRIT (100 footer) passed not 20 feet away from our Olson 30 ( SOUTHERN COMFORT XL) heading for the line, covering boat lengths in seconds.....WOW.. I swear I saw birds falling out of the sky just ahead of the head sails.

In our class of 38 boats, all were much faster than our tiny Olson 30. We were competing against Farr 40s, Columbia 50s, Soverrel 33, J36...C&C46, and other Olson 30s. We were the slowest boat in the fleet (PHRF F). For our start, the right side of the line was favored and we hit it full speed 3 feet back at the gun, 6-8 knots of wind on the nose and boat speed of 6 knots, a good start. (Last year we were over a foot and had our spinnaker up and powered before the call back.(poor committee work) so we had to do a drop / jib hoist / sail back and restart and still managed a second place.)

This year was a year of hardly any wind. Our top speed was 10.8 knots GPS, pretty tame compared to other years when I've seen our boat speed hit 22 knots for mile after mile. But light air sailing will separate the men from the boys and being the hot team we had (Skipper, Cole Price, won over 120 trophies: Pit, George, 2 time national champion: Trimmer, Stew, 2nd at Worlds Snipes: Foredeck, Mike, 16 years old Coles son: Paul, national champ, lasers: and myself, Buz Branch, Hick from the sticks: Crew chief, driver, rail meat, and trimmer.) The team work was awesome.

The night was cold, wet, sleepless, no moon, dark clouds and not one star to steer by...Next morning, we saw we were in the company of "A fleet" yachts that started an hour ahead of us so we were feeling pretty good about the "night fight "We saw 1 whale and 100s of dolphins (which had given us an escort all night). As the wind picked up during the day, we surfed the big swells rolling down from Alaska. We finished just as the sun set and the wind completely shut off. I felt sorry for the racers that were still out as they had another long night (you could look out and see literally 100s on the horizon).

We were 2nd over the finish line to claim the #2 trophy (or first to lose is how we look at it). We were happy as we had passed Shock 35s, J boats, a Reynolds 38 and lots of other very fast boats. Only a Columbia 50 beat us across the finish line (said he found wind 50 miles out) to just barely correct to first. Our corrected time put us in the top 10% of finishers for the whole regatta. We have trophied the past 5 out of six years in this regatta but have never gotten a first...yet....

Log on to Newport Ocean Sailing Association for lots of pics and results.

See you on the water,

Buz Branch,
S/V Doubloon,
San Juan Sailing