Burgee exchange – Mexico

In April 2019, club member Sarah Kent exchanged burgees with members of the Club Nautico in Mexico. She sailed in the J24 North American Championship with the Sea Bags Women’s Sailing Team at Club Nautico in Valle de Bravo. She reports she had an amazing time and the hospitality of the club was incredible.

Club Nautico was founded in 1964 by the Condumex Company from Mexico City for executives to come and relax on weekends. Condumex was Mexican wire company who dominated the electricity industry and was founded by Perelli from Italy and Andaconda from the US. The club is the premier one-design sailing club on the lake. In the late ’60s, to promote sailing, the Condumex Company began making Flying Dutchmen and Flying Dutchman Juniors in its factory. Currently, the club has 120 family members who sail J70s, J24s, JY15s, Lasers, Optis and Santana 20s. They have hosted many large regattas including J24 North Americans in 2003, 2009 and 2019 as well as Central American Games and many Mexican Nationals. The venue is beautiful on a large freshwater lake at 6000 ft of altitude surrounded by mountains with water lilies floating everywhere.

At the awards ceremony, Sarah exchanged burgees with the Vice Commodore. I am attaching both a picture of the exchange as well as an 18-second video. In addition, please find attached two photos of my team racing. We ended up 13th out of 30 boats and received honors for being the top (and only) all female crew. Our team was made of 6 women, four from Maine two from the East Coast.