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Newport Harbor Yacht Club to Cabo Race Sailed Out of the Darkness

It was a dark and stormy night… a very unusual way to start a classic downwind race to Cabo. The Newport Harbor Yacht Club to Cabo Race started amidst another California storm, which produced rain, fog and dark, black skies. Matthew Sessions, who crewed on Greg Dorn’s Dehler 46 Favonius, wrote in to say, “The race was brutal at times. The first two nights were pitch-black for the darkest of nights.”

Matthew Sessions aboard Favonius
Matthew and crew reveling in the sun that appeared after two days of dark clouds.
© 2023 Matthew Sessions

“We aboard Favonius missed nearly T-boning the brand-new J/145, Aimant de Fille, at 2145 on Sunday night. We were on starboard and I was driving in pitch blackness. We were fogged in going 10-12 knots. About 60 seconds before the incident we saw some quick light flashes off to our right. The next thing I saw was a red masthead light getting taller and taller rapidly on a collision course. I slammed the boat to starboard and they crossed ahead by 1-2 boat lengths. We didn’t know who it was until we checked the Yellowbrick tracker the next day.

“At the awards, I found their team and we had an honest chat. They said they saw us on AIS for 10-15 minutes and were VHF hailing us but we didn’t hear the calls. They also said they made noises with an airhorn, which we also did not hear. They acknowledged that their AIS was not broadcasting as they are still working out some new-boat bugs. The good news is we did not collide. It certainly has us and many others thinking that AIS broadcasting should be mandatory for offshore racing.”

It is interesting to note that, as reported in Scuttlebutt Sailing, Ernie Richau from the Dencho/Kernan 68 Peligroso made a request to the NHYC race committee that AIS transmitting be required for the duration of the race. According to the race instructions, transmitting was only required from the time boats left the dock until two hours after their start. The race committee considered the question over a few days while polling much of the fleet. Consensus came down on the side of not requiring AIS to be on transmit, so the request was turned down.

Newport Harbor Yacht Club to Cabo Race.
Favonius shows the way life should be on the way to Cabo.
© 2023 Matthew Sessions

Matthew credits Dave Moore’s Santa Cruz 52 Westerly for the right call. “The Westerly team (Will Paxton) were awesome. It was super-foggy, rainy and windy at the start. They nailed the first shift three to four hours into the race and ran it from there. The rest of us were within a mile of the shift and stuck. If you watch the tracker again closely from the first 20nm of the race you’ll see how they punched through and the rest of us spun in circles. Good for them. Well deserved!” Favonius sailed on to take third in the largest class, ORR E.

The weather did finally clear for the fleet of 31 boats that took off from the Newport Harbor Yacht Club. As the photos show, “You can’t always get what you want, but you get what you need.” Rocking down the coast of Baja was still a great ride for all who joined in.

Dehler 46 Favonius
The Dehler 46 Favonius rocks its way south.
© 2023 Matthew Sessions

Brendan Huffman sent in a few pics of the racing, noting it started in 20 knots on the nose, and rain. They didn’t really see the sun or moon for the first half due to rain, then fog and mist. Finally, things got back to normal. Brendan comments, “[T]he second half was pleasant sailing with stunning sunsets and more stars than usual.” Brendan sailed with Aaron Wangenheim and family aboard their Santa Cruz 52 City Lights. The friends and family aboard included two of Aaron’s daughters and a cousin who were also aboard for last year’s Pacific Cup.

City Lights to Cabo San Lucas
It started out gray, windy, wet and tiring.
© 2023 City Lights
Santa Cruz 52 City Lights to Cabo
Andy Blakeslee (cousin), and Emily, Aaron, and Brooke Wangenheim.
© 2023 City Lights

Brendan reported the Wangenheim family, above, had previously sailed together to Cabo about five years ago after Andy Blakeslee bought Aaron’s Pretorien 35. Andy and his wife then did the Pacific Puddle Jump. This family has been putting on the ocean miles.

Downwind to Cabo
After a gray start, things finally started looking right on City Lights too.
© 2023 City Lights

This is just a snapshot of this year’s challenging Newport Harbor to Cabo Race. It was grueling at the start, and sunny and warm at the finish. Roy Disney’s Andrews 68 Pyewacket took the sled class, Tom Holthus and crew aboard his Botin 56 BadPak took first in ORR A, Jason Carroll and his MOD70 Argo took the multihull class. We’ll have a report from Andy Schwenk in Racing Sheet in the April issue of Latitude 38. In the meantime, you can see full results here.

1 Comment

  1. robert cleveland 1 year ago

    I guess I’m missing something here but I’ve done a few Mexico races many years ago and at night it was pitch dark unless clear sky’s and some moon
    Otherwise it was dark

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