Aikane X-5, a 62-Foot Catamaran, Is First to Finish in Ensenada Race

Erratic winds with occasional rain squalls Saturday made it a relative slow passage for the 500 boats in the Newport-to-Ensenada yacht race.

By 5 p.m., about 250 boats had finished, but freshening breezes in Todos Santos Bay were bringing the rest of the boats to the finish line in droves. Slightly before 5 p.m., the race committee reported 36 boats finished in 24 seconds, with many more on the horizon.

First yacht to finish, for the second year in a row, was the 62-foot catamaran Aikane X-5, skippered by Rudy Choy of Honolulu, who arrived in Newport Beach the day before the start of the race, after sailing 2,500 miles from Honolulu.

Aikane’s elapsed time was 16 hours 12 minutes, about 2 hours off its finish time last year.

First monohull to finish, about two hours behind Aikane, was Swiftsure III, a 68-foot sloop skippered by Ted Kerr of Bahia Corinthian Yacht Club.

The first 10 boats to finish were Aikane X-5, Swiftsure III, Citius, Shenanigan, Kathmandu, Minette, Cheetah, Merlin, Christine and Ragtime.

The race has provided everything from 0 to 22 knots of wind from all points of the compass. Several of the yachts were reporting blown-out spinnakers during severe wind and rain squalls.