Its all about Karma with the wine you serve

Its Thursday April 21st 2016 and the main thing on my mind is the Newport to Ensenada International Yacht Race. I will be aboard the Santa Cruz 50 Horizon, the boat is ready and looking like she is doing ten knots of boat speed just sitting in her slip. Hope you all noticed Hannah Fry story “Newport to Ensenada yacht race sets sail Friday” in the Daily Pilot on Thursday the 21st.

I just sent out my final email to the crew reminding them to bring their passports and reviewed the food menu with them. Now our menu is not even in the same league as the Tres Gordo Sailing teams vessel It’s OK with its five course dinner and wine pairing. Their menu looks like it has been printed at Newport Stationers and handed out to each crew member on their arrival to the boat in the morning. The It’s OK menu  Lunch C'est Si Bon assorted sandwiches. Dinner Small Plates and Appetizers. Gulf Prawns with horseradish cocktail sauce. Spinach and Feta Cheese phyllo triangles (spanakopita), Bacon wrapped jalapeno “poppers”, Muldoons "Sindi Rae's" gourmet sliders, Warm pastry cheese sticks a la Pacific Club, Gilroy Valley Fresh Artichokes with spicy aioli, Assorted domestic and imported cheeses with gourmet cracker selection.

Wines are listed below (actual wine pairing with each item an ITS OK! secret)

2015 Fragile Catalan Rose

2013 Mer Soleil Santa Barbara Co. "Reserve" Chardonnay

2013 Beran California Zinfandel

2014 Runquist "Salman Vineyard", Clarksburg, Petite Syrah

Our crew receives an email and reads as follows  “I am headed out to provision the boat in a couple of hours, Great Mex breakfast burritos, C’est Si Bon sandwiches for lunch, home made Pasta Bake for dinner. For grazing food I will stop by Trader Joes for dried fruit, trail mix, chocolate covered espresso beans and a couple of others things that catch my eye. We will have instant coffee and hot chocolate along with a handle of Mount Gay Rum for our arrival.”

As I travel around town today the excitement level has been high with the two big trimarans in front of the Newport Harbor Yacht Club, Marina Park has fifteen race boats in their guest slips and Bahia Corinthian Yacht Club docks are filled to capacity. The talk around town is always about the weather and this year looks like a better than average race. The true test on these participating yachtsman will not be the race it will be the delivery home. Looking into my crystal ball, the weather will and should make the big boats have their crews jump off the dock on their arrival and head for the barn. We call that turning and burning, for the smaller boats don’t even think about coming home until early Wednesday morning. So for all you people that have love ones, friends doing the race and the delivery home. I would not be surprised if you get a phone call informing you that they will be a little late coming home.

For use on Horizon the race is looking pretty good that we can three-peat for the overall win but that would be bad luck for me to say. As most of my readers know I am very superstitious and I have found the perfect karma ingredient. On the day of the race I will pick up three pieces of plastic out of the water. That could be anything from a plastic water bottle or a grocery bag while walking down the dock. I even try changing course just a little bit, while racing, to pick up that plastic ballon out of the water. You should try this sometime and see if it as lucky for you as it is for me. I still do not know why the race committee does not give a time allowance to the cruisers, who are allowed to run their engines during the race, for picking up plastic along the race course.

So if you are reading this story on Saturday morning we should have finished the race before 3:00 AM and we are probably checked into our rooms talking about where we messed up our how good of sailors we are. I am sure there will be plenty of conversation on how spectacular it is to sail at night under a full moon and how gnarly that last jibe was in twenty knots of wind was.

As always the competitors need to give a big shout out to the Newport Ocean Sailing Association for all their hard work finding participants, sponsors, cleaning trophies and coming up with new ways for making this race better for everyone. If you are looking for more reading about the race head over to my blog site at lenboseyachts.blogspot.com I wrote a story for the race program “Reflections on Winning” and I posted what our strategy will be on race day.

As always wish us luck.

Sea ya

Thunder and lighting on the harbor this weekend.

BY: Len Bose

The mooring balls have been removed from in front of the Newport Harbor Yacht Club and there are a lot of really good sailors in town this week. Must be time for some 25-cent beers and the 2016 Baldwin Cup.

The three-day NHYC Baldwin Cup, which has J.P. Morgan Chase as its presenting sponsor again, sails Friday through Sunday just off the main dock of the yacht club in Harbor 20s.

This year's teams come from as far away as West Itchenor, England. Five of the teams are from the East Coast of the United States, while four teams are from the West Coast. The West Coast teams hail from Seattle, San Diego and Newport Beach.NHYC has two teams entered named Thunder and Lightning. Team Thunder seeks its third straight Baldwin Cup victory.

Justin "Lawman" Law, the Thunder captain, knows what makes the championship team so great.

"Team Thunder is a solid squad made up of Newport Beach locals who get to spend the most time in the boats and know what the Lido Lift is," Law says on the event's website.

Skipper Michael "Big C" Menninger with his father, five-time Harbor 20 champion, Bill "Dollar Bill" Menninger as his crew are on the Thunder roster. Also for the Thunder are: skipper Brian "The Cruise Missile" Bissell sailing with his wife Perry "Peronicus" Bissell; skipper Jon "Ropes" Pinckney sailing with his wife Gale "White Thunder" Pinckney; and Lawman will be sailing with Jeff "Gordo" Gordon.

The regatta is fantastic not just because of the 25-cent beers. For an especially unique perspective you can almost give your favorite team members a high-five as they sail past the dock during the racing.

The real excitement actually comes from the regatta's format of 4-v-4 team racing. It's best described from the Baldwin Cup website: "Team racing, like most traditional team sports, involves strategy, advanced skill, and teamwork. However, unlike other fleet racing, team racing pits a team of four against another team of four boats. This added dimension forces players to have tremendous boat-handling ability and quick reactions.”

The key to watching these races and understanding if your team is winning the race is counting the place of each of your team's boats and if that number is less than 18 your team is winning the race. This is why you will see leading boats turn around and try to slow down the opposing team's boats making an effort to have their teammate pass an opponent.

Another fun aspect of attending this event is just hanging out with your friends and informing the umpires of their bad calls. Yes, team racing has umpires on the water similar to an umpire on the baseball field.

Quite often you will hear from the gallery, "Come on, ump! Make a call!”

The sailors are the players and they also can hear all of your comments from the bleachers.

Now just blend in the cost of beers and you can almost hear Harry Caray singing "Take Me Out to the Ball Game."

Who knows, maybe the Baldwin Cup play-by-play announcers might start playing this tune after the seventh heat each day?

There always needs to be a big shout-out to all the volunteers. This list appears to be over 100 people. From boat owners, race committee, pit crew and housing it takes a whole lot of people to run an event of this caliber.

Make sure you visit www.baldwincup.com for team information and other important features. The short interview with each sailor is a good read. If you want to check the weather conditions, go to the regatta cam link and you will be able to see what's going on at the main dock and across the harbor.

You will be able to find me at the event for some of Saturday and most of Sunday for the final series.

Newport to Ensenada

It's time to wrap up the preparations for this year's Newport-to-Ensenada race. We will be back this year aboard Horizon, and with your luck again we will be trying for a third consecutive overall win.

I will be making my predictions for the class winners in my next column and give you a hint about our strategy.

Sea ya!

LEN BOSE is an experienced boater, yacht broker and boating columnist for the Daily Pilot.