The 70s are back and sledding to Ensenada

by Rich Roberts on 24 Apr 2007 There are about 450 reasons for sailing the 60th Lexus Newport to Ensenada International Yacht Race that starts at noon Friday, one for every boat in the race.

A few, like Doug Baker's Magnitude 80, will be sailing seriously for records and others will be going strictly for fun, while others still will be sailing seriously for fun.

Those would include a half-dozen ultralight displacement (ULDB) 70s---the celebrated 'sleds' that once ruled the West Coast waves from the mid-80s to mid-90s before migrating to the Great Lakes. Now they're coming back, as evidenced by seven entries in the recent Newport-to-Cabo San Lucas race and six in this event, including a couple of past campaigners: Ed McDowell with Grand Illusion and Brack Duker with Holua.

The West Coast revival is led by McDowell, who has homes in Hawaii and Hermosa Beach, Calif. and never really left the class even as it disappeared around him. Most of the boats wound up with new owners on the Great Lakes, where they enjoyed spirited competition for several seasons.

Duker, like almost everybody else, lost interest when the class moved away. He sold his boat Evolution and bought a Farr 40, which was fun buoy racing but not fun offshore.

'The next step would be a Transpac 52,' Duker said, 'but I didn’t care for those boats in part because it’s becoming more Mediterranean and East Coast oriented, and it seemed that every new boat that hit the water obsoleted the boats [built] ahead of it. It left me asking myself what is a good platform for me to go offshore.'

Then, as the Great Lakes fleet ebbed, from out of the past some sleds came calling on the market.

'Although they did a really good job with their fleet, it got down to the fact that some of those guys got old and couldn't get around the boats anymore,' Duker said, 'so the guys from the West Coast stepped in.

'I know the sleds and I know they're fun to sail. They're not state of the art, but that didn't bother me because by then there were three of them out here and I thought, well, if I get three or four boats to sail against that's fine with me. It's a fairly comfortable boat compared to a TP 52, and it doesn't bother me that they're 20 years old.'

So last year Duker bought another 70, Holua, a former West Coast boat, and in the Newport-Cabo race last month finished third on handicap time in Class A to McDowell's victorious Grand Illusion.

Besides Grand Illusion and Holua, both Santa Cruz 70s, other sleds entered for Newport-Ensenada are Chris Slagerman's Dencho 68, Cheetah; the Yabsley/Compton/Parker-owned Reichel/Pugh 68, Taxi Dancer; Robert Krause's Dencho 70, Alchemy, and Peter Tong's upgraded SC 70, OEX, a successor to his former Orient Express.

The 70s once dominated Newport-Ensenada, but in their absence speed machines like Roy E. Disney's Pyewackets and Baker's Magnitude 80 took over first-to-finish honors. Now the sleds will be in the hunt for a new trophy donated by Jim Madden, owner of Stark Raving Mad III, an R/P 66, for the best corrected time in the Maxi class.

Baker's aim will be more ambitious. He briefly held the race record of 11 hours 23 minutes 53 seconds set in 2002 until it was bettered by Disney's third Pyewacket a year later in 10:44:54, a record that still stands—and, of course, is subject more to the whims of the wind than all of the technology on earth. The multihull record hasn't been seriously challenged since Steve Fossett clocked 6 hours 46 minutes 40 seconds in 1998---the only boat ever to finish before sundown.

Magnitude 80 and Stark Raving Mad III each were first to finish in recent races to Mexico. Baker's Andrews 80 from Long Beach rode strong breeze all the way to smash the 22-year-old record for Del Rey YC's race to Puerto Vallarta by 31 hours. Madden's new boat from Newport Beach led the way to Cabo in mild wind, beating another Ensenada race entry, Bob Lane's twice-modified Medicine Man, now an Andrews 63, by 79 minutes.

The fleet will include boats as small as 20 feet to four times that size, most built of fiberglass but some of high-tech carbon fiber and a few Ancient Mariners built of the original marine material: wood. Some will have one hull, others two or three, all grouped into a variety of 24 classes calling for a dozen starts---one every 10 minutes beginning at noon on a divided line just outside the Newport Harbor jetty.

For the most part, the biggest and fastest boats will start first, the smallest and slowest last. The latter include the Cruising classes, which comprise about a third of the total number. They will be allowed to use their auxiliary engines at night between 8 p.m. and 8 a.m. but will pay a proportionate time penalty in the final tally. Do they care?

Awards will be presented in the jam-packed courtyard of the Bahia Hotel Sunday afternoon. The top two are the NOSA trophy for fastest elapsed time and the Tommy Bahama trophy for best corrected handicap time. Both awards are open to monohulls or multihulls but not to the Cruising class.

A few more tons of hardware will be distributed to the top finishers in each class, first doublehanded, first female crew and first female doublehanded crew, as well as the prestigious brass Spittoon awarded to the last boat to finish before the time limit at 11 a.m. Sunday.

Also, Ensenada businessman Cesar Juaregui of Bajarama Tours has donated the 'Amigo' trophy to be awarded annually to the race's outstanding first-time competitor.