Cabo Race: All about the adventure

Twenty-two team have entered the biennial Cabo Race, taking the fleet from Newport Beach, CA south along the Baja California Peninsula to Cabo San Lucas, Mexico. Monohulls (19) will start on March 11 with the multihull fleet (3) starting on March 12.

Keith Magnussen files this pre-start report.

I was waiting to write something with the hopes that this dismal forecast for the 2017 Cabo Race would change. As we motor towards Newport Beach one thing remains clear – it will be a long one for us on the J/125 Timeshaver.

The crew is happy and optimistic that we can tough it out and do well on our class. This appears to be a waterline competition and we are aware that it will most likely be a big boat race for the overall. No worries though…it is all about the adventure.

Crew has changed slightly since last time as we brought on Damian Craig for navigation. The rest of the crew is the core crew consisting of owner Viggo Torbensen, Cody Schlub, Tom O’Keefe, Blake Hamilton, and myself.

I have really been looking forward to this race and the fleet is filled with old and new boats. The Melges 32 is an interesting prospect and we are stoked to be lining up against her for the first time. Also in the mix for our class is a Summit 40, an Andrews 40 and some others… totally diverse class. We also enjoy racing overall against the SC-50’s and of course our friends on the Santa Cruz 52 Lucky Duck who always seem to be near us. Always means we must be doing something right because they are such a great team.

Ullman Sails has helped us step up the program with a new mainsail for ORR, new 2.5A and a new spinnaker staysail. We are excited about the new set up and want to thank Bruce Hollis (Lead designer at Ullman) and Bruce Cooper (Owner of Ullman Sails Newport Beach) for all their hard work designing and building the sails for the program.

Race details – Tracker – Crew lists – Facebook