Newport Harbor Yacht Club has enjoyed a long-standing
tradition of hosting the Newport to Cabo San Lucas Yacht Race. Since its first
race in 1971, sailors have enjoyed the 800 mile race down the Baja coastline to
the warm weather and big breeze of Cabo San Lucas. Over the 40+ years of
hosting the Cabo Race, NHYC has witnessed the tremendous evolution of yacht
design and offshore sailing.
Typical entries in the 70’s and early 80’s we IOR boats with
unique downwind sailing characteristics; the ultralight (ULDB) boats arrived in
the early 80’s with the Santa Cruz 50 making their debut in 1981. These offwind
speedsters opened the door to bigger ULDB’s and the 70 footers began their
reign of the Mexican Races in the mid 80’s. Bigger, faster boats evolved through
the 80’s into the 90’s with the development of the 80 footers like Magnitude
and Pyewacket. These boats brought along asymmetrical spinnakers, canting
keels, and daggerboards. Elapsed times records were always at stake once the 80
footers arrived.
Today the regatta sees a resurgence of the legacy ULDB boats
with the 50 and 70 footers returning to the West Coast for the offwind races
like Cabo and Transpac. The regatta also continues to attract new designs in
all size ranges and speeds to compete in these tremendous offwind races.
Should be a spectacular sight when they arrive off Cabo soon.
Keep up with the action here.