Crossing the finish line, whenever

Alex Coolman

Larry Walter understands the arithmetic of good times.

The skipper of the Cha-Cha-Cha, a 40-foot boat that will run in the

Newport to Ensenada International Yacht Race, laid out the numbers that

make the event as entertaining as it is.

“You figure 530 boats. Ten guys in each boat,” Walter said. Get them all

together in Ensenada and the result is almost inevitable. “That’s quite a

bit of fun.”

For an elite few, of course, the race is very serious business. In sleek,

multimillion-dollar vessels with 70-foot hulls and Kevlar sails, these

top-notch competitors will spend the race pushing themselves and their

boats to the limit.

But for most of the people on the water, the race is about something

else: the sheer satisfaction of sailing, and the camaraderie that comes

with it.

For 11-year-old Joel Buffa -- a junior sailor at the Bahia Corinthian

Yacht Club in Corona del Mar, who will be the youngest skipper in the

race -- heading to Ensenada on a boat called the Ahsante will be a way of

plugging into a long family history.

His grandfather, Lou Comyns, will be co-skippering the 40-foot boat. What

will be Joel’s first voyage in the race will be Comyns’ 40th.

“In our family, it’s kind of become a tradition,” said Joel’s mother,

Cindy Comyns Buffa. “You get down there and you get to see a lot of

friends you haven’t seen in years.”

Walter, however, said that he and his crew, all of whom are accomplished

sailors, will be taking the race fairly seriously.

But winning isn’t the point, he said.

“I have two rules,” he said. “Rule one is you have fun. Rule two is you

come back with all your fingers.”

And if the Cha-Cha-Cha comes in with a fast time, that’s just a little

bit of gravy.

Spending all night on a boat and staring at the tossing waves might not

sound like a particularly delightful experience, but for the people who

enjoy the racing life, there’s nothing quite like it.

The labor on a race such as the Newport to Ensenada is broken down into

shifts, with crew members alternately trying to grab a nap below deck and

coming topside to work.

The division of work, said Neville Wittey, helmsman and tactician for the

Cha-Cha-Cha, makes for serious rivalries among the crew, with each shift

trying hard to go faster than the last.

“It gets pretty competitive,” Wittey said.

But in order for a boat to sail well, everyone on the crew needs to be

communicating well. Trimmers need to know what the bowman is doing, and

vice versa.

They also need to have a sense of humor about what they’re doing, or it

can get a little bit ugly.

“Crew is so important, because you’re spending a lot of time with these

guys in close quarters,” Walter said. “You better get along with

everybody or be the biggest one on the boat.”

And despite the legends of tippling that seem to go along with the

sailing life, Walter insists that making a more-or-less sober voyage is

the only way to go.

“It’s a communication thing,” he explained. “If you have people saying

they know what’s going on and they don’t, it sets off a chain reaction.”