The big winner in this year’s Newport to Ensenada Race was Cleve Hardaker and crew on the 1981 Catalina 30 SOJOURN. This popular 125-mile race between Newport Beach, California and Ensenada, Mexico is known as the biggest international yacht race in the world. Cleve won the race with a full inventory of UK-Halsey sails, none of which was new this year. SOJOURN didn’t just win, she took home a bundle of trophies — so many that Cleve was worried about how to get them home on his boat. The crew won “President of the USA” for best corrected time, “Tommy Bahama” for overall corrected time, “Frank Butler” for first corrected Catalina, “Converse Wurderman” for first in Class K, and the icing on the cake was a fancy Corum watch for first overall. Cleve’s crew included Kathy Spencer, her husband Mark Spencer, Buz Boyd, and Ensenada rookie Brendan Inglis. Congratulations SOJOURN!

      “Our strategy, from long before the start, was to sail the rhumb line,” said Hardaker. “It can be risky. That course takes a boat inside the Coronado Islands and can put one into a horrible wind shadow. When we cleared Point Loma near San Diego at about midnight, and I was confident that the wind would hold, we committed to sailing inside. Most boats sailed a ‘natural’ course that had them outside the Islands. And since we all kept the breeze, the boats that sailed outside the Islands just sailed extra distance.”

       After jib reaching for two hours on starboard tack the wind moderated and freed up enough to set a spinnaker. Their chute stayed up for the rest of the race; in fact, they stayed on starboard tack until a few miles from the finish, when they had to jibe to port. Talk about a comfortable race! But that doesn’t mean the crew didn’t work the boat. Cleve told the following story in an article he wrote for the Catalina magazine:

There is no kicking back while the skipper takes a nap. In fact Kathy, who is the primary driver and watch captain for this race, sailed into a hole in the early hours of Saturday morning. Boat speed fell out of the sixes and into the low fives and she erupted! She chased the grinder back to the transom with a spotlight to look for kelp on the rudder. Nagged the trimmer to light up the sails to see what was wrong. Then conceded that the wind had dropped off three or four knots. Nobody relaxed though until the helm heated up the boat and speed notched back over six.

Close friends Larry Wilson and Tim Coker, who sailed the Catalina 27 CARPE DUMANI, provided close competition throughout the race. The guys had been sailing with and against each other for 19 years, including a TransPac race. Here is a sample of the intense competition between the two boats, as written by Cleve:

     The watch change at 0700 (second day) brought bad news. As the blanket of night was lifting and occasional running lights were turning into boats, CARPE DUMANI‘s spinnaker emerged behind us but not nearly close enough to the horizon for us to hold our time on her.
     Damn! How did they close up on us like that? What is our track? Check the GPS. We’re not trimmed right! Check everything. Open up the snatch block on the starboard rail and release the lazy-sheet/after-guy. No need to strap that down any more. Wind is further aft than it had been. Traveler down more and tighten the boom-preventer so the quartering swell can’t spill air out of the mainsail. Take all the outhaul off. Ease the main halyard!
     “They’re sailing higher than us skip,” says Brendan. And so they were. “Cover them, Buz, we’re not letting them get away.” Now I have to dance around the boat putting the trim back the way it was. We’re sailing about 15 degrees high of the waypoint. Boat speed notches up a bit into the solid sixes. Wind is down to ten knots so heating it up a bit is good. But the bearing on CARPE is not changing so we are not pulling away.

     The crew of SOJOURN kept their eyes on the competition throughout the race and at the finish they thought that their smaller rival was close enough to correct out. But it turned out that they were watching a different boat that also was flying a white spinnaker.
     Even though CARPE DUMANI finished second in Class K to SOJOURN, CARPE had a terrific race as well. She hit the line with four new sails from UK-Halsey San Diego after being out of a commission for a year-long refit that was completed just days before the start of the race. Larry was very happy with the performance and the cost of his new sails as well as the service he received from sail designer Luis Gianotti. “The sails were really wonderful”, said Larry, “ They looked great, were easy to trim and they caused the boat to perform extremely well.” CARPE DUMANI finished second in class and second overall on corrected time. Larry and Tim were double-handing so they also won the “Volvo” trophy for best-corrected time double-handling. And just to put their incredible performance in perspective, the average age of Larry and Tim is 62.
     Larry Wilson wrote, “We all know second is first loser. However, our big concession to be competitive was buying a new set of UK-Halsey sails (main, Tape-Drive No. 1, Tape-Drive No. 2 and a .6 oz chute). Our one regret was not buying a 3/4 oz chute, which we use as our excuse for not winning. That's our story and we're sticking to it!”