March 23, 2025- Banderas Bay regatta and thoughts about the future
wingssail images-vicki westphal
We’ve just finished another Banderas Bay Regatta, the eleventh one we’ve done on Wings since 1997. Last night we went to the Banderas Bay Regatta awards ceremony. We had some good sailing in this regatta (and a lot of hard work) but for the first time in the eleven times we have sailed it, since 1997, Wings was not on the podium. In the past we have typically been 1st or 2nd. Now this year we were forth out of 4 in our class; last place. It is disappointing. But all good things pass into history.
The question was asked, “Can you get back on top?”
Well maybe. It's partially about crew and partially about boat types.
This crew is getting better; they are good. But it takes years of experience to make really great sailors. This bunch will be ok with more practice and experience but even though I have some superstars I need a few more if I want to win. It’s tough to find superstars, and even keeping these people will be hard, some will move on to other things and others will decide the commitment and hard work is too much and I will have to rebuild. It would take two or three years to put together a really great team; we are on the way but it takes time. I know, I've done it before a few times.
Boat types is another challenge. In all three monohull classes this year the winning boats were modern, light weight, faster boats or much bigger boats. All were ones that reach better than Wings. The courses used by Vallarta Yacht Club favor lighter, reaching boats. If I am racing against similar boats, with a great crew, I can get back in top. Tenacatita this year proved that, we were dominant. But that was a different fleet, excellent pick-up-crew, and a course which didn't require fast reaching speeds. We also have one regatta here in the bay which is like that, the Blast, which occurs in December. We always win that. Last December we dominated it, winning by 20 mins in the second race. Wow! What fun.
For the other races the rating system could be changed that might help us older, slower boats, but there is little incentive for the yacht club to change it.
On top of it all it is hard work to keep this boat in racing shape and manage the program by myself. Harder each year as both myself and the boat ages. And expensive. For 38 years it was Judy and I. We were a good team. This year and last I have had crew who came to Vallarta and lived on the boat and helped do the work (a lot of it requires two people). Last year Rhonda was here a lot, she was wonderful. This year it has been Renee and she has been super also. These two women and some others have been close friends, not GF but friends, who were happy to come here and help. Mark, a very loyal crew member, has been a big help too. I have been very fortunate.
Since I have owned this boat I have raced it over 600 times, mostly winning or placing well, in addition to sailing around the world. Now I feel like I need to reassess my life. I will still sail but maybe a full-on, 26 race per year, program needs to be reconsidered. Is it worth it to carry on until the boat's glory years, and mine, are just a fading memory?
Now I will get to work for a week to convert back to a cruising boat and then go into the Sea of Cortez and relax for a few months. Rene, a great sailor who is another really good friend, is going with me for part of it and that will be fun. Then I see what life brings and how I feel about everything. One thing I know: this year was hard, more than anything getting and working up a crew. The boat is hard to sail competitively and these guys from this year are really feeling exhausted right now. I'm not feeling exhausted, not physically or mentally. I feel fine but just not sure it is all doable or worth it going forward.
Or maybe I am just down at the moment after this regatta. We’ll see how I feel in a few weeks.
We’ve jibed over are heading east towards Tenacatita It’s rough and instruments are glaring out the story: we are still seeing over 27 knots of wind out of the north and 7.6 knots of boat speed. We are sailing with just a reefed main and no headsail and the windvane is steering, as it has been all night. Renee has been on deck as I worked on the broken bilge pumps but I finally finished , went on deck, and took over the watch. Renee is getting some rest. It’s about time.
Frankly, we’ve overstood and that’s on me. We should have jibed two hours ago.
Why is it that it aways seems to be stormy and problems happen when we start out on a passage? I can’t tell you how many times on the first night out of port I’ve been head down in the engine compartment trying to get something fixed or something sorted out while outside the wind is howling. Right now it is as dark as the inside of a cow and Wings is sailing fast through the black night. It is pretty scary for the crews I’d guess, they are often new to sailing, especially sailing at night, but they have always turn out to be tough. Renee is.
We don’t plan it that way. Usually we leave port during the day, often by lunch time, but even then things happen.
This time when it got rough we found water in the bilge and the pumps decided not to work. In the end the boat was not found to be leaking, it was just left over water I missed, and after I got the pumps all running we were fine.
We made it to Tenacatia at sunrise.
Tenacatia Bay is beautiful. We had a day of rest and then while Renee did her workout routine and went for a swim I went about lining up some crew for the race.
I keyed the mic on my VHF, “Hi, this is Fred on Wings, may I speak to Dave?”
“Speaking”
“You interested in racing?”
“Yeah, I think so, I’ll let you know.”
Bingo! I got the best guy in the bay. Others good sailors soon followed. By race day I had a full crew and a great one at that. Renee was navigator and everyone else just sort of fell into place. We practiced; it went well. We were ready.
Speeding across the bay in the dingy on race day with the flags for the Race Committee Renee and I must have been a spectacle. Anyhow the pre-race excitement around the fleet was tangible as crews were being ferried to the race boats and those already aboard were busy rigging.
In this race trash talk is encouraged and the teen and pre-teen girls were already into it.
“Hey you guys over there with Jim, look out, we are going to leave you in our wake”
“You just think so, beware we have secret weapons.” Then the water ballons broke out.
But we had none of that, we were serious (in a fun sort of way) and it paid off. While the kids played around with the radio and threw water ballons we sailed with intensity . Renee called the start perfectly, Dave called trim (he was the star) and we all worked as a team. We knew the weather leg in this bay, with its persistent right shift, was similar to the pattern we knew well from Banderas Bay, and it was the key to this race. We played it exactly the same as going to Punta Mita, rounded the top mark first and led the rest of the way around. A great day for Wings.
Next stop Barra. We weren’t so lucky. The race there, the Flamingo Cup, is a very well attended charity event and we were keen for a repeat but we missed the entry deadline and were not allowed to race. Dang!
But Renee and I were invited to sail on John and Donna’s Carmanah, a great custom C&C race boat from the late 70’s with an excellent record. John wanted to work the foredeck so he turned the helm over to me. We sailed hard and finished second, missing a possible first when the spinnaker tack line failed on the final leg. Congratulations to Baja Fog.
After the race we volunteered to pick up some of the inflatable marks. Renee had to fight to get them fully deflated for the ride back to the marina.
I may have cut it a bit fine at the start however and we may have been a second early. I didn’t think so and we were not called by the RC but anyhow a competitor notified the race committee after the race. He was sure we were that we were over early, and he complained, “They should be thrown out.”
The RC asked me, “Fred, were you guys over early?.”
“Could be, it was close”
“Did you go back”
“No, we didn’t hear any radio hail or see any recall flag., so we figured we were good”
That was true, but how could we have heard? The radio was filled with a shouting race announcer and the trash talk was in full force, and there were no flags. We heard nothing so we went on, and I acknowledged that.
It was a deciding moment. We could have been disqualified. But the complaining skipper allowed us to exonerate ourselves by buying him a drink at the bar, Whew!
So that was Tenacatita and Barra this year. All that was left was the sail home to La Cruz.
Renee and I had a good sail then, all night again, with the wind on the nose (wouldn’t you know it?) and a bit more breeze than we wanted but not too bad, and the rounding of Cabo Corrientes in the morning with flat water and a nice brisk cool wind, was glorious.
Springtime sailing is usually good in Banderas Bay and this March and April we’ve had great winds and great competition.
And we’ve done well but it’s taken a bit of work getting ready for it all.
After returning from Tenacatita we had to get the boat set up for Banderas Bay Regatta and that meant getting racing sails on-board, all the cruising equipment off, the bottom cleaned, and the crew roster finalized. It was quite a bit of work in a short time frame, but we got it done.
Then we had some hard practices with a few mistakes and mishaps but generally we were pretty good at our jobs and we worked out the kinks and were ready for the BBR. This year, with the help of the practices like that, our crew has been our strength; we have a boatload of keen racers with lots of experience on board. In the BBR the boat handling was excellent and as well as good boat speed (credit attentive trimming), good starts, and excellent tactics. All in all, we sailed well in BBR. Second place in our class (class #2) was satisfying. Even more so when we compared our times with the boats from class #1, we would have beat most of them too and would have second there as well. We got our trophy at the big awards party and went home happy.
The next (and last) race of the season was a real stunner for the rest of the fleet. It was called a “Saturday Smack Down” intended to resolve a dispute between two bigger boats. The race wasn't about us,
they allowed us to enter just to fill out the ranks.
The race went to Punta Mita and back, non-stop. What a race we had. We blew out of the starting box to an immediate lead, and continued to grow our lead all the way. The big boats lacked the windward performance (and also the local knowledge needed to find the fastest way to Punta Mita). It was fun sailing and we covered the faster boats behind us aggressively. We even felt that we pushed them into tactical mistakes. It was fun. We rounded the windward mark at Punta Mita well ahead.
After rounding we set our biggest kite and beam reached in the strong breezes back to La Cruz. It was beautiful, fast sailing. In the end one boat got past us but only by seconds and we were first place on corrected time. The race “fee” was a bottle wine to be shared afterward and we all told stories and lies and we enjoyed the whole event including paying off the bets we all made against each other where the winners of the bets had to contribute to the Vallarta yacht Club youth sailing program. We paid happily.
After BBR we made a serious effort to convert Wings back to cruising mode, another four days of hard work, so we could be ready for our spring cruise but we were in waiting mode because of some pending doctor appointments and stayed tied to the dock. More on this later.
Other Sailing Action
Meanwhile Fred raced on Greg and Gloria’s Beep Beep with a boat load of good sailors and they won that race too!
Next a delivery from Barra de Navidad. Mike from Honu needed to get his boat back to La Cruz so three of us lucky amigos took a car ride to Barra and sailed Mike’s boat back. Good fun.
We did get Wings out of the marina and we began what was supposed to be our spring cruise by sailing to Punta Mita (again) and anchoring there.
That sail was pretty good but it got off to a chaotic start. The autopilot broke and Judy was left on deck steering while I fixed it and meanwhile the wind piped up over 20 and it was a real handful for her to manage alone. “Fred, get up here", she shouted.
Then the galley lockers opened up and with a loud crash spilled all their contents on the cabin sole. What a mess. So we were dealing with a broken autopilot, the wrong sail set up and a total mess down below. But we got it all squared away and all was good again. We sailed on to the anchorage, and actually managed another good elapsed time despite the chaos.
So now we had some peace and quiet.
Yelapa
But wait! There’s more! The following Saturday was “Spring Fling” to Yelapa, a part of Mike Danielson’s birthday celebrations. Several of our friends were going so we decided to join and we sailed to Yelapa. It’s not a race, but we’ll sailed like it was.
Yelapa was great fun with a good mooring and lots of fun ashore. Sunday’s race home, however, was disappointing. We got a late start, the winds were light, and our cruising sails just didn’t cut it. We were the slowest boat out there, barely nipping two other boats to the finish. Our friends on Beep Beep were first and they asked, “What happened to you guys?”. “Well,” I answered, "for two oldsters we did the best we could”.
Next: Medical Stuff Puts Our Spring Cruise on Hold
We’ve elected to have some medical procedures that are needed, which will delay our cruise this year, (end it, actually). We’re back at the dock in La Cruz and we will most likely be here all summer. We’ll write more later on this subject.
For more photos of Banderas Bay Sailing, Click here
wingssail images john mangataCrew Work
“Four minutes to the layline”
It was Judy’s voice from the back of the boat. She was getting data from the “brick”, our navigation computer. She was telling us that in four minutes we could tack and sail directly to the windward mark which nobody on the boat had caught a glimpse of yet.
We were sailing off to the right of the course with our arch rivals off to leeward. We were ahead of them and nobody wanted to tack away and let them go to the new wind everyone expected from the right-hand side. But if Judy was correct then we had them; we could tack and if they continued off to the right they would overstand.
But if she was wrong and we tacked away they could get a bit more of the new wind and might catch up.
Where is that bloody mark?
We couldn’t see it yet.
The hell with it, I thought, Judy has been all over her new job as navigator, it’s time to trust her. “OK. Let’s tack” I called.
“Ready”, from the genoa crew.
“Tacking”.
We made our turn and then, as if by magic, the mark appeared right on our bow. I looked behind; our rivals had tacked right on our course. We had them.
That was the way it went for the Vallarta Cup this year: Judy did her job; everybody did their job. We had excellent all-around crew work and the results showed it: four races and three first places and one second place. We won the Vallarta Cup.
Actually, we probably had the best crew we’ve had for years. Foredeck was Terry and Dennis: hot shots on the bow. At the mast and feeding tactical information back to the afterguard was Jim Brainard, magician of the yacht Brainwaves. Rena held down the halyards with Cristine helping. John from Mangata and Russ from Jazz were trimming and Pat tailing made a solid center of the boat. In the back, Richard excellently trimming main and calling tactics, Sherri doing runner and all-around assistant, me steering and Judy navigating. Superstars all!
So the boat was hot, the crew was hot, and the racing was great. In the end when we had two wins under our belt and one second place it all came down to the last race. Our rivals had one win and two seconds. Whomever won that race would win the regatta.
We were right on their tail, meaning we were winning, as we charged towards the finish line of the last race.
Then the wind died. I mean completely died. They drifted across. We had about four minutes to finish to be able to beat them, but we were stopped.
We dropped off the heavy spinnaker guys and manually jibed for the line, barely moving.
I watched the clock and I watched the committee boat. What would come up first, the line or the time limit? There was not a sound on the boat nor a movement. We caught a slight puff and crossed the line. It was 22 seconds to go, just soon enough.
wingssail images fredrick roswoldHappy Crew
So it was a happy boat onboard Wings as we sailed back to our berth in La Cruz. The second big race of the year and our second first place. We’re doing well and it felt great.
wingssail images fredrick roswoldTrophy
Click here for more photos.
Fred & Judy, SV Wings, La Cruz Mexico
Twenty knots of wind, the biggest kite up, time to jibe.
The bowman yells “Made!”.
The afterguy is attached, good, but it needs to come in.
“Grind, Larry!”
But Hell! Why did the old sheet get tossed off the winch? I don’t know why but there it goes.
I grabbed the errant sheet just as it began to run out. Holding the sheet in one hand, the tiller in the other, the boat is oscillating, someone is yelling, “Who has the sheet?”
I could feel the sheet slipping.
“I do, and I could use some help.” I answered.
Richard turned to me but I could see he didn’t see what to do.
“Put some turns on that winch please, right now, and grind it in.”
There is tension in all of our voices.
But by now the afterguy is coming in, I regain control of the boat, the kite is pulling like a runaway freight train, we are surging, the power is on.
In this way we made a big gain on the asymmetrical boats. This is our wind, our point of sail. We are flying.
Bottom mark, early take down, jib and main in, come up to weather for the last time, the boats from the class ahead are right there, seconds ahead of us. We get a first.
The next boat is minutes behind; we owe him only seconds.
Perfect!
This is how we won the Banderas Bay Regatta. Strong winds, strong boat, strong crew.
It was a fantastic regatta, we all felt it.
On the ride home after the finish we were jubilant, we drank Champaign. Some of the crew broke into song. It was a beautiful song. God why didn’t I capture that song? But those voices are in my head. They will stay there.
Sailing in Banderas Bay these days is better than ever. The blue skies, flat water, and steady winds have reminded us how much we love this place.
Saturday (pictured) was fantastic. Sunday was challenging (to say the least) but we survived.
Today, Wednesday, the Beer Can race was so good we stayed out for an hour afterwards having cold drinks and being amazed at how stunningly beautiful it is here.
The crew is great, the boat is fast, and the competition is as tough as ever.
I am a sailor, born of a nautical tradition passed to me by my father and my Grandfather Alfred. I’ve spent most of life on my passion which is the sea and the vessels which go upon them. I have had many such vessels and now I live on and sail on the sloop WINGS.
which I acquired in 1986 with my wife Judy
who shared my passion. For ten years we lived on Wings in Seattle and sailed, including racing. Then we left the Pacific Northwest and voyaged across the world, across the seven seas, to faraway places, and made them our own.
For thirty-eight years I have lived and loved this life. I still live on Wings, in Mexico, and sail and race often. Judy passed away in June, 2023 and I miss her but you can still join us and sail the seas as we did for all those glorious years. Fred Roswold, SV Wings, Mexico
Wings About to Round 
Wings Leads Olas Lindas 
Bonfire in La Cruz 
We left our wives at home, Judy, Gloria, Deb and Judy 
Navigation Brick
Yelapa
Five Guys
Crew Work
Happy Crew
Trophy
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