Old's Cool

Two Ton's of Fun

Last weekend four crews from the San Diego Yacht Club flew south for a little team racing at the Club de Yates in sunny Acapulco Mexico. This wasn't ordinary team racing in CFJ's or Vanguard 15's.....far from it. Acapulco is the only yacht club in Mexico with an active big-boat racing program. The club, which is celebrating their 50th anniversary has, over the years, amassed an impressive array of racing yachts made famous in the states. This is really a hands-on museum of west coast yacht racing and boats such as Vendetta, Quintessance, Persephone, Juno, Sidewinder, Swing, Green Hornet, Wasabi, Farr Out and China Cloud have found their way here. Remember the fabulous 50's? Fujimo and Carat are there as well as Electra and about six other Nelson-Marek 41's. They have some more modern boats such as J-105's, 120's and a 145. There are also two Concordia 47's in the mix. Some of them look exactly the same, others have received bright paint jobs of blue, yellow, orange and red. Almost all have been upgraded with modern rudders and T-Keels.


The really cool part is that all of them are lined up like Etchells on the hard and the club has it's own Travel Lift to drop them in the water on race day. (They have a second lift on order and are expanding the yard).

Sailing them is a second step back in time. Big heavy running backstays, massive deck hardware, IOR bumps galore, PBO sails and our absolute favorite was that some still had the wire halyards......all the meat hooks you could handle! The only thing missing were bloopers, but if you look hard enough, you just may find one stuffed into a bow or two.

Code Orange!

Acapulco is a spectacular place to sail. The yacht club is beautiful and was completely rebuilt in the 1990's. The bay is unbelievable and we were able to race some windward-leewards, up the beach, down the beach and around the island located just outside. Racing up the strait between the mainland and the island can be tricky, as it is only a couple hundred yards wide and full of current. To do it right, you need to go toward the rocks until your bowman's eyes get to about 3 inches wide, count to 10 and then tack.....the closer the better. The locals do this better than the gringos and they know where all of the secret spots are to exploit and avoid....both in the strait and in the bay. This led to a humiliating defeat for the Gringo team but we took it in stride.

It's all about fun down there and we had a lot of it. Next stop is the other end of our exchange in San Diego. Acapulco will be sending five teams to San Diego for more racing and hopefully better results for us. Their J-145 Jieto is in town and will be taking on Stark Raving Mad to headline this three fleet-race series on November 5th. On Sunday, they will be participating in the first Hot Rum Race, so if you hear a bunch of guys at the mark screaming in Spanish, wave them through and wish em luck!

Kyle Clark, SDYC

10/26/05