Records Trampled in Ensenada Race

Every yacht race has had that one special year when it blows like stink out of the right direction and an unprecedented level of race craft shows up to absolutely demolish all the records. For the 125-mile Newport to Ensenada International Yacht Race, 2016 was that year. Featuring small cruisers to mini-maxis and with an emerging maxi-trimaran scene in the mix, the 2016 Newport to Ensenada was truly one for the ages.

Offshore on Friday, April 22, the breeze blew a perfect 20 knots, allowing the fleet a quick and record-setting downwind sleigh ride to Ensenada. Tom Siebel’s Sausalito-based MOD70 Orion was able to capitalize on the ideal conditions to displace Steve Fossett’s race and overall course record set in 1998 on the catamaran Stars and Stripes. Skippered by multi-time Olympian Charlie Ogletree, the 70-ft VPLP trimaran romped down the course at more than 25 knots average boatspeed to cross the finish line in 5 hours, 17 minutes, 26 seconds, breaking Fossett’s former record of 6:46:40 by more than 1 hour, 29 minutes.

H.L. Enloe’s ORMA 60 Mighty Merloe was just 20 minutes behind Orion — itself finishing more than an hour under Fossett’s record — having played cat and mouse with the bigger MOD70 down the coast. Unfortunately, John Sangmeister’s recently modified-to-foil ORMA 73 Tritium broke a foil just 30 miles from the finish and retired.

Despite having quite a rough start to its life, Bill Gibbs’ South African-built Schionning-designed G-Force 1400 catamaran Wahoo appeared to be fully up to speed, having picked up trophies for Best Corrected, All Boats; Best Corrected, ORCA; and Best Corrected, Catamaran.

Former Bay Area stalwart Invisible Hand, now owned by Steve Meheen and known as Aszhou, won big in her first N2E. The Reichel/Pugh 63 claimed a dramatic course record, likewise crushing the existing mark by a whopping 1 hour, 28 minutes to finish in 9:35:34. Drugstore owner Bob Lane and his aptly named Andrews 63 Medicine Man would claim division honors, however. Andrew Rasdal’s hot new Bolt 37 Valkyrie claimed overall monohull corrected time honors, besting Scot Tempesta’s Melges 32 Anarchy by just 25 seconds on corrected time in PHRF-C.

We’ll have more in the May issue of Latitude 38.