It Was a Beauty of a Blast

Is there a better place for mellow cruiser racing than Banderas Bay in mid-December? We don’t think so.

The lead-up to the Banderas Bay Blast was the Riviera Nayarit Tourism’s Welcome to Banderas Bay Sailors’ Splash for arriving Baja Ha-Ha and other cruisers last Friday night. Free shirts, hats, tequila, food and music next to the amphitheater of the Marina de La Cruz. Much fun.

After a day to rest up, there was Blast ‘Ha-Ha style’ racing on Sunday, Monday and Tuesday that attracted 21 boats. The weather for the first race was perfect — 85°, bright sunshine, flat water — but almost no wind. The Great Water Balloon Drop after the race at the marina pool almost made up for the missing breeze.

Monday’s race to Punta Mita for the annual opening of the Punta Mita Yacht & Surf Club was sailed in perfect conditions. Light air at the start gave way to as much as 20 knots of true wind halfway up the 8-mile course. Profligate was hitting just under 10 knots going to weather in flat water and bikini conditions, but even that wasn’t enough to overtake some of the higher-pointing monohulls. If that wasn’t enough, the background was jungle and the early arriving humpbacks were breaching.

After the dinner at the yacht club — where two of the three waiters had to be sent home for having had a little too much to drink — new Commodore Donna Melville of the Gabriola Island-based Baltic 42DP Northwest Passage initiated new club members with the carbon-fiber SUP paddle. White Male Privilege was observed, as the male members all got an extra hard swat — if not two — from the lovely commodore. Who knew Canadian women were so powerful?

The final race of the Blast was the Pirates for Pupils Spinnaker Run for Charity, a 12-miler to Paradise Village Marina. While the wind was a little on the light side — 10 knots dropping to about 8 knots — the mostly reaching conditions still made it a delight. Fred Roswold and Judy Jensen’s Serendipty 43 Wings — which they’d sailed around the world for 18 years — nipped three other boats at the finish to take overall honors. But everybody was a winner, no matter if they were flying a chute for the first time or ‘racing’ with eight others on their boat. It was racing with friends, not against them, and one of the best Blasts in years.

During the awards ceremony at a packed Vallarta YC, Ronnie ‘Tea Lady’ announced that the goal of raising $1,500 from the small group for educational supplies for children around the Banderas Bay had been reached.

For a video of of Profligate and her 18 crew during the Pirates for Pupils Spinnaker Run for Charity, shot by Brian Charette of Cat 2 Fold, visit our Facebook page, www.facebook.com/Latitude38.