Valle de Bravo, Mexico
February 5-6, 1999
Report by Chris Snow
Mexico conjures different images for different people. Some may think of the beaches of Acapulco or Cancun, maybe centuries old Mayan culture or cross border disputes, perhaps even tequila and a cold Corona! Great sailboat racing doesn't exactly pop right into your head. Yet for the last ten years or so a very active fleet of J/24 sailors have been racing practically every other weekend on a large reservoir two hours outside of Mexico City in a placed called Valle de Bravo.
This last weekend "Valle" played host the 1999 Mexican Nationals and I was lucky enough to be able to go and race with a customer of mine Roberto Colliard, his sister Cynthia and two of Roberto's teenage kids.
Valle is the "real" Mexico. This ain't no Tijuana. Cobblestone streets, a two century old Catholic church, open air markets and street vendors everywhere make up this very old town that until the mid-50's did not have a lake right next to it. Then a hydroelectric dam (which created a lake 2 miles wide by 3 miles long) was built to supply power to Mexico City, which is about a hundred miles away over a 10,000 foot mountain range. The town of Valle itself is located at an elevation of 6,000 feet, which creates some challenging conditions wind-wise.
Roberto was kind enough to pick me up at the airport and drive me with his family up to the lake. Actually, that would have to be a foregone conclusion, because after the drive up (actually up and down) to the lake, the one thing I realized is that there is no way anyone in their right mind would consider renting a car, driving through the labyrinth of downtown Mexico City, and then over some incredibly winding and rural roads to the lake. It is much better to be driven by a true Mexican driver. Besides it gave Roberto and I a chance to talk about our sailing careers and get to know each other. Roberto has been sailing all his life but it seems the thing that really got him hooked on racing was when the 1968 Sailing Olympics where held in Acapulco. There, as a teenager he was a "boat boy" for Lowell North, who won the Olympic gold medal in Stars that year. According to Roberto, Lowell really had a "Star and a half" and the rest of the fleet had to sail their lowly "normal" Star boats. Preparation has always played a big role is sailboat racing.
Friday morning we got up, had a quick breakfast and headed down the street to Roberto's sailing club "Club Vela de La Pena" The "La Pena" comes from a huge volcanic outcropping that towers over the club and is a major geological feature of the area. The rocks are spectacular and jut about 200 feet straight up in different shades of red and black. The "Calamity J" was waiting for us and we took an hour or so to go over the tuning guide to make sure the boat was tuned correctly. We ended up moving the mast butt a bit forward as the mast had about 3" of prebend with the shrouds at the base 25/20 setting on the uppers and lowers. We trailer launched the boat (no hoists anywhere on the lake) and towed the boat over to Club Nautico Avanadaro which is where the Nationals were run. Pulling into the dock, there were 30 J/24's getting rigged up for the regatta.
At about 1:30 we started the first of two races for the day. After a couple of general recalls the fleet got off fairly cleanly and then the fun started. Sailing at 6000 feet, the air is less dense and so the puffs move much more slowly than at sea level. This demands a incredible amount of patience as it is really easy to spend your whole day chasing puffs that never get to you or are gone by the time you get to where they were. The lake is surrounded by fairly high hills and when you get close to the shore, things get really squirrelly. It was not uncommon to lose 5-10 boats right at the weather mark as breeze suddenly appeared from the opposite shore and brought boats 50 yards back right up to you. We tried our best to take all that in good spirits.
Upwind the best boats would position themselves so as to intercept puffs as they moved down the lake. You basically had to force yourself to be patient and wait for the puff to come to you rather than chase it all over the race course. One other thing we found key on a lake like this is to stick to playing a side of the course and avoid going back across the middle if at all possible. Time and again patience paid off by sticking to your guns and working a side hard even if it didn't look good for a while. Practically every beat had the breeze going through at least two full oscillations and those who were not patient were quickly punished and sent to the back of the fleet.
After the first day of sailing Yon Belausteguigoitia (B-17 to his friends) sailed to a consistent 1-2 to set the stage for a dominant three days. Our team had a good day with a 4-7 to end the day in 4th place overall. Luis Morales on "Orion" sailed very well and had a 1-4 after day one. It was very apparent that consistency would be key as many boats had scores after the first day that included both top ten and bottom ten finishes.
Day two started a lot like the previous one except that thermal breeze never really filled in. On this day the wind topped out at about 8 knots with the breeze mostly in the 4-5 knot range.
This made the breeze a lot more inconsistent and swings in direction were much larger than the previous day. A certain sense of randomness covered the course testing everyone's patience and sense of humor even further. Despite the randomness of the wind, Yon still had his boat in the right position at the right time and he took two bullets for the day.
On board the "Calamity J" we had a little tougher time of it following up a 16th in the first race with a 6th in the second race. Luis Morales sailed well again to have a 4-3 for the day to put him firmly in second place. At this point we knew we would have to have two good races the following day to be in the money. Our problem was getting off the line cleanly.
In light air the J/24 accelerates really slowly and creates gobs of bad air. The key to a good start was to be firmly planted in the front row with about 1:15 to go AND have nice hole to leeward to drive off in to. A lot easier said than done! Especially in light air! The times we got a bad start we either had a boat parked directly to leeward of us off the line or ended up starting in the second row.
The third day was pretty much a repeat of the first wind wise. A very nice 10-12 knot breeze blowing from the dam set the stage for the last day. Yon B-17 was off his hot streak and dropped to have a 7-13. He ended up discarding the 13, which still won him the regatta over Luis Morales, who finished very strong with a 3-1. Mauricio Leon de la Barra had always been a factor in the regatta and has a 9-2 on the last day to wind up third.
Roberto and the crew of "Calimity J" fell a little short in their goal to have two strong races on the last day. We had a disastrous first race finishing 17th in the first race, which pretty much sunk our chances of doing well in the final results. A final race 5th place brought us back up a bit to finish seventh overall.
In the sail department, the top boats in the regatta all used North Sails. Yon took delivery of a new Pentex® GP-2P genoa just before the regatta and he was very pleased with his speed and results. Many of the top boats used the GP-2 genoa, SD main and SD-3 spinnaker. These sails seem to perform well in the changing velocities of this mountain lake.
Many thanks to the fleet in Valle. If you ever get a chance to sail there jump at it. It's a great place to sail and the people could not be friendlier.
Chris Snow: chris@od.northsails.com
Results (top five):
